Social media isn’t reality, we all know that. It’s for showing off your happiest, proudest and most enjoyable moments in the best light. Although the subject of an image can go so far in doing that, the way the image looks on-screen can really help to boost things up to another level. With some clever editing, you can maximise your social media posts to their full potential, creating cohesiveness and an overall more aesthetically pleasing selection of images for your friends and followers to appreciate.
Whether you want to be the next big social media influencer, you’re trying to impress your friends, or you simply want a social media profile you can enjoy scrolling through yourself, here are the top 6 photo editing tips for social media:
1. Download external phone apps
Your phone’s internal editing functions are okay, but limited. You might only be able to adjust the most basic aspects of the image, such as the brightness, saturation and contrast. While these can help to improve your images a little, you need a wider range of creative options to really produce something Insta-enviable.
Consider downloading LightRoom, an app that allows you to create your own presets and adjust every aspect of your images imaginable, or VSCO, an app that offers a broad range of filters to layer over your images to create tone. You’ll be surprised at how much better your edited images will look from using an app or two, rather than just sticking to your own phone’s limited resources.
2. Practice cohesiveness
If you want to achieve a flow from one social media image to the next, you need to make sure you’re editing them all in a similar fashion. Obviously, this isn’t always possible – night-time photos will likely need to be edited accordingly, for example – but on your clear, daytime shots, you can easily create cohesiveness through repetitive editing.
An easy way to ensure a similarity between images is to use the same filter or preset on all of your images, then touching them up separately if required. A filter will help pick up and highlight certain colours and tones in your images, creating a mutual link between them on your profile. This will make for a much more visually pleasing experience when you scroll through your posts, helping you to stand out on social media for all the right reasons.
3. Invest in a good quality camera
While this isn’t an editing tip as such, you will find that investing in a good quality camera to take your photos will give you a much more detailed image to work with. You don’t have to splash out on a DSLR if you don’t want to – in fact, many phones nowadays have incredibly high-quality cameras that will do almost as good a job. Spend your money wisely and you’ll have far more flexibility and fun when it comes to the editing process.
Taking photographs in good light also goes hand-in-hand with investing in a good camera. The more light that your camera picks up in an image, the more options you will have during editing, and the better the edit will look overall. Try to avoid direct sunlight, as this can throw the colours off, and if you’re indoors, aim to incorporate natural light where you can.
4. Eliminate your background
We’ve all been there: you’re in the perfect photo-taking location, be it a beach in the Bahamas, or the Big Ben in London, or in front of the Disneyland castle – but your background is taken up by more than one unwanted piece of scenery. You take the photo anyway, but you’re not happy with the stranger in the bikini standing behind you in the sea, or the family mid-conversation just over your shoulder.
The good news is, you no longer have to be an expert photographer or editor to cleverly eliminate these unwanted background features. Both SnapSeed and TouchRetouch are free apps that you can quickly download to your phone, upload your desired image, and get to work erasing out everything that doesn’t belong. If you need to learn more about graphic design before you get started you can always check out our Graphic Design basics guide. You’ll most likely have a good time doing it, too, as there’s something about the process that’s highly satisfactory.
5. Use social media resources
Facebook’s editing resources aren’t anything special, but you might want to consider playing around with Instagram’s to make some final touches before you go to post. While Instagram’s filters are a little overbearing, the basic editing features are pretty good. ‘Structure’ can help to add depth to your images, and ‘sharpness’ can give images a much clearer, crisper quality.
If you do choose to use Instagram’s own editing features, you would be best only doing so after you have edited your picture elsewhere first, as you will still not be able to achieve the desired quality of an edit from Instagram alone. However, the resources can come in useful when you’re making the finishing touches to an image you’re already pretty happy with.
6. Don’t splash the cash
There are far too many opportunities for parting with your money when it comes to editing images for social media. Oftentimes, you will find that you’re being expected to pay for apps you have never used before, or for presets that you can only see in use on a sample image. This means that you’re more than likely going to end up splashing the cash on something that turns out to be fairly useless to you.
If you are considering paying for an app, or a feature within an app, it’s worth seeing whether it’s actually going to be valuable to you first. Take a look at some popular blog posts and videos on social media editing, and see what is being advised to use on those. It may also be worth finding out what your favourite social media influencers are using to create beautiful feeds. Just make sure they’re not recommending a brand they’re in partnership with, as there could be some bias in their opinions.
