HOW I EDIT MY PHOTOS FOR INSTAGRAM

[Please not this post is not sponsored by any of the apps which I am about to discuss]

Welcome to my first post in what I want to call Crochet Corner, a little section of my blog where I’m not chatting patterns or current works in progress, but other things crochet-related that interest me, and hopefully will interest you too!

I have been posting to Instagram for a couple of years now, and one area which I found I really needed to improve during my Insta journey, was learning to edit my photos.

Even now all my photos are still taken on my iPhone, but let’s face it, they are so good these days you really don’t need to invest hundreds of pounds on a fancy camera. So whether you have been editing photos for a while and are interested in how I do things, or you are a complete beginner and would love some tips on how to post great looking pictures then keep reading.

Now what you can see in the picture above are the stages that my pictures go through when I edit.

Funnily enough, it was a complete coincidence that these pictures just happened to land like this on my phone so I quickly screenshot it as I thought it would be great to show you as an example.

Now this item was photographed last year when I was in a different room, these days especially for my amigurumis I tend to work with a background, however the principle still applies; try and take your pictures on a plain and preferably white background. This wall isn’t white, it is a really pale grey but I can still get away with that (and always take them as square shots to save cropping later).

As you can see from the top line of photos it is quite dark, and there is even a bit of shadowing. It probably wasn’t taken on a day when the weather was that good, but that’s why it is a great example because it just shows you what some editing can achieve.

So with the photos from this top line I will take them into the Photoshop Fix app.

In this app all I tend to use in the healing feature. It is great for removing any blemishes in the background, or where a backboard might meet the table if there is a join it will take that out too to make it look more seamless. For this example, I would have used it to try and take away some of the darker shadowing. To be honest, this probably isn’t the best photo to demonstrate this app but it is a great app to start with.

After I take out any joins or blemishes, the next app I take it into is Preview, and the alterations in this app can be seen in the second line.

You will find Preview has a lot of presets when you first go into the editing features, but I prefer to edit mine all manually. I find all my pictures are slightly different in appearance because of this but sometimes I don’t take them in the same place or at the same time, the light is always different, and so they all require their own settings, in my opinion.

As you can see in the top line of photos again, it is quite dark and I do prefer to take them in natural light rather than artificial light, and I never use a flash!

Flashes can make colours look terrible, and artificial lighting can cast shadows if you’re not careful so I believe natural light is best. Having said that, you are subject to nature, some days it is way too bright with full sunlight beaming in, and some days, like the day I took these pictures, it was just a bit too dark, but the apps work wonders as you can see!

In Preview I will go to ‘adjust’ in the Photo Editor, and adjust the brightness first. I like mine to be fairly bright in appearance but I never tend to push it too far because I think you have to take into account any filters you might add on top in Instagram.

Secondly, I will sometimes alter the exposure settings, especially on dark photos like this. If it wasn’t too dark you might not need to alter this, you don’t want to over expose it however, as this can wash out colours and detail.

You can play about with the contrast if you like but I tend to leave this alone.

Warmth is one I will use, especially if it is an item with warmer colours like yellows, oranges and reds, as I like my photos quite white, these colours can make it look warmer. So bringing the warmth down to a cooler tone helps the finished result.

Sometimes, I use saturation and vibrancy, again have a play with them and see what looks right to you, sometimes if I’ve used really bright colours it helps to make them pop, but be careful not to overdo it as it can look funny. And these are all the features I use to ‘adjust’ my photos.

Back into the editor, when I’m working with amigurumi, I tend to put the sharpness up to around 30, I like to bring up the stitching and it really picks out the detail.

Blur can be a good feature if you have taken it on a busy background, but try to avoid that to start with.

My favourite feature in Preview is whiten. This is great to really pull out that bright white background. It is manually applied so you have to decide how is best to apply it to your photo.

Sometimes you can get away with washing over the entire picture, and this is the easiest method, but I find for some reason it seems to really wash out the yellows. I will often, as painstaking as it is, literally go around the item. Use the smaller size balls to get into tighter spaces, and I find zooming in helps a lot. But be aware, if you go over something you don’t want to, it doesn’t have an undo feature so you literally have to cancel out and go back in to, yes, start all over again! (Preview sort this out!)

And that is it, I will save out of Preview and although you can link it to you Instagram account and work directly through Preview, I personally prefer to come out and go into Instagram separately.

Now the final stage and how I achieve the final row of photos is to simply upload to Instagram and use their filters. Always use the app if you can, for some reason the website is just not optimized for enough editing features, you can’t even add more than one photo at a time from what I have experienced, so use the app.

To get this final effect I always go with Clarendon. It is bright and sharp and really gives it that pow that I am looking for. I would give you a tip however, which these photos demonstrate brilliantly; you don’t always have to use the filter in full! The photos on the bottom line are bright and white and just the look I was going for at the time, but in hindsight they are a bit too bright. I probably used Clarendon straight up, but I have since learned I don’t usually need to use it at its full force. If you select it, then tap on it again, you can reduce its intensity. I find these days that if I’ve taken the picture in good light, and I have the brightness right when using Preview, I can often get away with using Clarendon at just 50%.

Well that concludes how I edit my photos for Instagram. The process I use isn’t the only one and there are loads of apps on the market which I may not have even heard of, but this is just how I do it. If you are into you Instagram photography and have any apps you would recommend I’d love to hear about them down in the comments! I am always up for learning new tricks.

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Thanks so much and I’ll catch you in my next post!

#crochetblog #instagram #instagramphotography #editingphotos #photoshopfix #previewapp

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