By now, it’s clear that creating great visual content is critical for everyone who wants to make a living on social media. Especially using Instagram to gain the social influence. Instagram has doubled its monthly active user base in the last two years, which means a lot more people are viewing and sharing photos in 2018. Plus, visual content is 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types. And what I have learned from this year, is video will be the future!
Ok, now I am done with the serious talk. It’s time to discover some fun apps that can make our life so much easy on creating compelling content on Instagram! And most important, is we will have fun doing it! 😉
1.Meitu Photo Editing App: Free
I have written about this App in What Tools And Apps I Use To Take and Edit Photos, you can read more for extra info about other tricks I use. Anyway, when I was in China for my month-long vacation early this year, all my friends were using this Meitu App. They were so surprised that I never used any App like this to edit my photos. They said I am not quilted to be a blogger since I didn’t even know it. Lol! Anyway, this is a super powerful App that literally can make everyone look perfect. I always dislike heavy touching up with my photos. The only thing I do is to lighten up the image if it is too dark. You can explore more to see the magic results. Anyway, I just wanted to show you one function that I really like, the Eraser. This can help you erase all the people or things that you don’t want in your photos. Recently I have used it a few times to erase the 3rd party brand logo for some sponsored posts. See examples below.
The original photo:
Erased all the people:
2. A Color Story: Free
Named ‘Best New App’ and ‘App of the Day’ by Apple! Over 8 million installs and counting. This is the main App I use when I need to brighten up my photo, and video. Yes, you can brighten up video too! It has all the advanced editing tools which I was quite overwhelmed at first. I have never used any Apps or filters before, as you can imagine how foreign this type of apps was for me. Anyway, I slowly learned how to use the basic tools and I am very happy with the results. It has so many filters that you can use but I just don’t feel like using it. 😉 Overall, it is my favorite app to use when it comes to editing photos and videos.
With the Quik app, you can create awesome videos with just a few taps. Choose your favorite photos and video clips then let Quik work its magic. In seconds, it finds great moments, adds beautiful transitions and effects, and syncs everything to the beat of the music. I use this app all the time to make some fun Instagram story videos, sometimes I do for an in feed post as well. Below you can see a few videos I have made only by using this app. The best part is I don’t really need to do much, just simply choose what photos and videos clips I like to use and this app gives me many options to choose from. By the way, I paid to not have its logo on my videos. It is only a few dollars so it totally worth it.
I like to use this app to create fun Instagram stories. It gives me many Layouts & Templates to use. For example, I can put 4 videos on the same page with a very stylish template. You have to try it to see what I mean. By the way, it is free but it will not hurt to purchase some more cool templates for a very reasonable price 😉
5. InShot Video Editor Music, Cut
This is by far the best video editor app I’ve ever used. I’m a new vlogger and I get the most vlog-like videos using it. It allows me to speed up or slow down my videos, add filters/ adjust brightness, contrast, saturation etc, I can also add pictures to my videos and record voice clippings in the app. You can see below for some of the videos I have made by using this app. By the way, the music in this app is royalty free.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqXjFAuHwXV/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqLeQF5n7W8/
6. CutStory for Instagram Stories
This is a very handy tool. Just import a long video, and CutStory will cut it up and save it in your smartphone’s camera roll as fragments of 15 seconds or any other length. How easy!
Ok, I am not expert on any of them and I only use very basic tools they offer. But I hope you find this post useful and discover so many cool ways to create fun and beautiful content easily!
Photo credit: Grace Liang/@melita_moda_
Thank you for reading! If you like what you read, please comment below, or share it with your friends. Don’t forget to follow me on Facebook and Twitter for new updates. For all the amazing fashion/beauty and lifestyle products I share, also follow me on Instagram. Remember to check out my Instagram stories daily to know me better as a person. Finally, don’t forget to follow me on YouTube for my fashion/beauty and lifestyle videos. Have a great day and see you soon!
|TODAY’S LINKUP PARTY:|
Grace
colorandgrace.com occasionally receives vendor/brand sponsorships for mentioning their products and services.
8 Comments
Maureen
Funny how you are writing about editing photos. I don’t really edit my photos that much either. Just brightening up as well and making the image larger. But in some ways, I am thinking I need to learn other basic editing procedures. I was taking pictures of my son yesterday and I had gotten a few good shots but most were dark and the one that didn’t turn out dark was the one that ended up with shadows! I wasn’t sure how to edit so I left it alone. So as a goal this upcoming year I will learn new editing procedures and try some of the apps you listed. I hope you had a great weekend and wishing you a fabulous week ahead!
Maureen | http://www.littlemisscasual.com
jodie filogomo
Thanks for all of these Grace. I was just telling Rob we need to find an easy video editor that we could use on the phone!!
XOXO
Jodie
http://www.jtouchofstyle.com
Emma Peach
This is such a useful list Grace! I’ve downloaded A Color Story and Unfold, although I don’t use them at the moment. Inshot Video Editor sounds great – I have Final Cut Pro on the desktop computer for when I finally start vlogging regularly, but it’d be great to have something simpler for a newbie like me!
Emma xxx
http://www.style-splash.com
Cheryl Shops
Thank you for sharing all about these apps! I use VSCO to edit my photos, but totally need to try Meitu and the others—I’d love to be able to erase people! 😉
Cheryl Shops | http://www.cherylshops.net
Maria | passion fruit, paws and peonies
Thank you so much for writing this – I’ve just got CutStories – it’ll make life so much easier! xx Maria
https://www.passionfruitpawsandpeonies.com
Sheela Goh
A Color Story is my App of choice too!! Have you investigated Word Swag? I love it for adding fun captions and effects to my photos.
Bry Jaimea
Amazing! I’m downloading these right now to test out! Thanks for sharing x
Grace | Graceful Rags
Those stats you started your post with are super interesting! Sadly, I can’t use a lot of these apps because I don’t have an IOS device, but they all look like great tools. Thanks for joining today’s Thursday Moda Linkup, Grace, and I hope you have a great rest of your day! Not to mention, I love your name. 😉
Miles of smiles,
Grace
gracefulrags.com