Make Any Picture Professional & Pretty for Instagram

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Moms and bloggers are always striving to get the perfect picture, myself included. I climbed on our counters, head cocked away from the ceiling, attempting to capture the innocence of a fun sink-bath the other night. I knew it was dark out, and all I had was the artificial light of our house, (which is not good for photos) but, I didn’t let that stop me. I snapped away, and I just used my fool-proof editing routine to make the picture prettier than it was before. This post contains affiliate links.

Now, I am not a photographer at all. I use automatic on my camera most of the time, because I get confused on the settings. So if you’re a photographer reading this, I’m sorry, this is all so beginner/probably against all photography rules, but it works for me. This process is really great for those of us with a strong desire to have a nice photo, but very little photography knowledge or equipment! I do have a Cannon Rebel T7, which I just got for Christmas, and I use this lens for portrait-style shots. Most of my favorite photos are with this lens because it blurs the background. It takes a bit of manual work, but so worth it! In my opinion, its the best lens to get that’s totally affordable to really up your photo game!

Now, I don’t always bust out my camera. Its a process to try and snap photos with kids. They start running all over, try to grab the camera or get jelly smears on my lens. A lot of my photos are simply with my Android, but I edit them to look as best as I can. If you have an iphone, you’re in even better luck because theses phone actually take fantastic photos. Moving to the editing process.

Here is my Fool-Proof Editing Routine for Instagram (make pictures professional and pretty). 

1. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom App: This is my go-to for editing all my photos, free as an app on your phone, and where most of the work is done. I prefer it over Snapseed because I am more familiar with Photoshop and Adobe products. If you use Snapseed for your editing, you can still use the basic editing functions I’ll go through. Now get ready to go through some of the editing functions.
2. Auto Tone: I actually start with the Auto Tone function to see what the app will do with my photo. This function gets me started in a good direction. Then, I usually look at a few specific edits individually.
3. Brighten: I love a bright, crisp photo, and that’s the semi theme of my Instagram. Bright photos are known to catch readers. I almost always take the brighten up a bit on a photo even after I’ve auto-toned it.
4. White Balance: This is a big one if you are taking photos in the artificial, yellow light like the photo above. I snapped it quick late at night, with just a few lights on. All that dull yellow is yuck. But, I was able to brighten the photo up and take out the yellow by playing with the white balance function.
5. Contrast: When you brighten the photo, you don’t want the colors to get washed into the brightness, so I up the contrast a bit to keep the colors strong.
6. Vibrancy: I always up the Vibrancy of my photos a bit too. I like the colors to be strong and captivating. See the photo below. I brightened this one and made sure the colors popped.

Edits I use in Instagram Before Posting!

Yep, I continue to edit a bit when I put a photo on Instagram. I BARELY use filters, unless the photo really looks cool with it. Otherwise I finalize the image with the edit option in Instagram.

1. Brighten: Here I go again brightening, but sometimes the way Instagram brightens it just a smidgen more looks really good!
2. Sharpen: I like to make sure the images are sharp! Sometimes, with my portrait lens that I love, the focus is difficult to capture for a non-photographer. There’s a lot of blur, so I will fix that up a bit in the Instagram editor.
3. Filter: I use maybe two filters around 20 %. You can click twice on the filter and take it down to just a little bit, so your photo isn’t washed out, yet has just a touch extra

Please keep in mind that I am not a photographer. I don’t always have perfect focus, I am often carrier a child while snapping a photo of the other, so if I can make my pictures look pretty, so can you! Even if all you have is your android phone, you can create awesome, pretty photos that will capture your Instagram audience or find themselves on a canvas. Try these tips out, and let me know how you do!

What if you only have 200 followers? Well I’ve got a great ebook out that will help you get to 1k by improving the aesthetic and photo quality of your account. Many over look  that aspect of Instagram, thinking if you follow and engage, as your main focus you will encase your followers, but people are on Instagram to see pretty pictures. You shouldn’t ignore that’s the main point of Instagram. My book is full of all the tips you need to know about making a cohesive and aesthetic feed as well as pitch to brands and grow your following! Grab your copy!

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