Editing for Instagram

People often ask me how I edit my Instagram photos. I take most of my photos with my Canon 6D but sometimes I use my phone. In fact, some days I like my phone photos better than my camera photos. The angle or the depth of field might be better. The one thing I do when I edit my phone or camera photos is trying to make it look like I saw the scene with my eyes.

I used to edit all my photos in Photoshop but if you have a lot of photos in similar lighting or in an area it’s easier to edit them in lightroom using presets or custom edits. You can then use editing from one photo on another with the click of the “copy” button. I wish I would have learned Lightroom years ago but it does fall short when it comes to removing objects or combining area of a photo with another.

With my phone I use Snapseed to edit. It kind of reminds me of Photoshop or Lightroom. It’s a pretty powerful tool. You can edit so many aspects of the photo and do it all on different layers. I get a chance to bring back those highlights that got slightly blown out or make the photo more vibrant and less washed out. I error on taking darker photos (as you can see above in the before side) because I know I can change the exposure and still keep my highlights.

For phone cameras I’ve really enjoyed my Galaxy s6 but I’m not sure what I’ll get next. This was the first phone that took really good night shots and rivals a real camera. Plus, the panoramas are just way easier than hand stitching it with your camera.

Light edit to decrease the shadows with snapseed:

Major edit with snapseed to make it look more like it did in person, eliminating the shadows, brightening the colors:

This is a fun with friends edit. Abandoned church turned sinister:

Don’t forget if you are editing photos for Instagram here’s some tips on your feed.

Also a great tool for editing is Lightroom mobile although I much prefer to edit in Lightroom on my desktop.