20 Instagram Apps to Enhance Your Photos and Videos

Does your business use Instagram?

Are you looking for apps to help you create unique images and video for your Instagram feed?

In this article, you’ll find 20 apps that make it easy to create and edit outstanding images and videos for Instagram.

Why Instagram Apps?

Instagram recently passed 150 million active users.

To create lasting engagement with those users, you need to share beautiful and targeted content that resonates with your audience.

If you’re not a professional photographer, this can present some difficulties. That’s where image and video apps come in.

Finding the Apps

Most of these apps are available for both iOS and Android. When they aren’t, a link to a similar Android app is listed as a substitute.

#1: Photo Editor by Aviary

Have you ever felt limited by Instagram’s settings? If so, download Photo Editor byAviary for a complete range of effects and color correctors. Its smart “one-tap auto enhance” will help you render a gorgeous photo.

Aviary Photo Editor provides a number of useful tools to edit your photos.

Aviary makes it easy to crop images.

Aviary helps you easily crop images—a feature that Instagram does not currently have.

iPhone | Android

#2: Image Editing With Afterlight

Remember light leaks? Thanks to the Afterlight app’s vintage filters, you can easilyrecreate those old-timey effects on photos taken with your mobile device.

Afterlight adds light leaks to your photos.

With filters that complete the package, it’s definitely an app worth buying.

With Afterlight, you can combine light leaks with original frames.

iPhone | Android (XN Light)

#3: Create Artistic Images With Snapseed

Whether you’re already a mobile photo pro or completely new to it, Snapseedprobably sounds familiar. That’s because from redeye reduction and tilt shift to textured filters and straightening, its ranges of tools have long been the best addition to Instagram’s built-in filters.

Snapseed is a favorite of many professional photographers.

Here's a photo of the @Colettestore logo, heightened with Snapseed

Snapseed is a must when you need to make elements of a photo pop, especially when showcasing products or logos in a real-life setting.

iPhone | Android

#4: Slow Camera Shutter Plus

Have you ever wanted to create one of those amazing photos where glowing letters and shapes float in the air at night?

Grab a couple of glow sticks and use the Slow Shutter Cam app to take long-exposure images with your mobile device.

Get around the limitations of your smartphone lens with Slow Camera Shutter.

The app takes a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it, you can produce amazing images.

Here’s an example from Mission Bicycle.

A long-exposure mobile image from Mission Bicycle.

iPhone | Android (LE Cam)

#5: Bokehful

Bokeh is a classic photo effect defined as “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light” and Bokehful imitates the effect with your smartphone.

Add a bokeh effect to your photo in two taps.

Photo by @burberry with a heart-shaped bokeh effect.

While a smartphone lens can’t create a bokeh effect, Bokehful will do the trick. It also comes with more whimsical patterns, like the heart-shaped ones used by Burberryabove.

iPhone | Android (Delicious Bokeh)

#6: Tiny Planet Photos App

Tiny Planet has an out-of-nowhere, extreme fisheye–looking effect that turns any mobile image into, well, a tiny planet. The rounded images provide an appreciable dose of originality to your business’ Instagram feed.

Tiny Planet creates round images of a landscape.

The Doha Harbor capture by @baffaa.

With Tiny Planet, you can capture landscapes in their entirety, as Baffaa did in the above image of Doha Harbor.

iPhone | Android (Planet Camera)

#7: Add Typography to Your Instagram Photos With Overgram

Do you sometimes wish you could add text to your Instagram photos? Overgram‘s text overlay feature comes with a variety of fonts that match or complement your business image.

Add text to any photo with Overgram.

Photo by @trynitrogram with a text overlay.

Use Overgram to annotate your photos and provide useful information to your followers.

iPhone | Android (PicLab)

#8: Shoot, Tune and Share With Facetune

Does your business show shots of employees and customers in its Instagram feed? Use the Facetune toolbox to correct portraits like a pro photographer and make sure to show everyone in their best light!

Retouch skin imperfections and details with Facetune.

Blemish removal using Facetune.

Facetune helps correct tiny skin imperfections in two swaps and taps.

iPhone | Android (Perfect365)

#9: Combine Multiple Photos With PicFrame

Sometimes the context one image provides for another is important and you’d like to post them next to each other. PicFrame lets you select multiple photos and organize them into a patchwork that posts as a single collage image on Instagram.

Show several photos at once using PicFrame.

Here’s how the NBA used a patchwork collage.

Example of a patchwork image collage.

iPhone | Android

#10: CrossProcess

You can never have too many filters. CrossProcess filters let you mimic the color and burned effects of old-school Polaroid cameras.

Bring back effects from a bygone era with CrossProcess.

An image edited with CrossProcess.

iPhone | Android (Little Photo)

#11: Vintagio

In the same category as CrossProcess, Vintagio gives you a range of video filters to tinker with. If you are looking to add a simple sepia effect or 70′s glamour to your video, Vintagio is the answer.

Vintagio provides the simple sepia effect that Instagram does not.

iPhone | Android (Retro Photo Camera)

#12: 8mm Vintage Camera

A bundle of effects for shooting vintage videos, 8mm Vintage Camera lets you add dust, scratches, flickering frames, light leaks and more vintage effects to your films.

A welcome feature is the Instagram import feature. Use it to edit your video outside of the app, and when you’re satisfied with the result, upload it for your Instagram fans.

The 8mm Vintage Camera app adds video filters.

iPhone | Android (Vintage 8mm Video Camera)

#13: Everlapse

Ever wanted to repurpose your Instagrams? Make a cool video collection of your best Instagram photos and share it on your Instagram feed. Everlapse turns your best Instagram images into a cool video!

Create photo montages of your past Instagrams with Everlapse.

Check out how Nike uses Everlapse on Instagram.

Nike—Just do it.

iPhone | Android users: create yours from the website

#14: Average Camera Pro

Have you ever been frustrated to find that a photo taken in the dark isn’t usable? Next time you’re shooting in low light, try Average Camera Pro. This app takes several pictures at once and analyzes them to boost luminosity.

Do not hesitate to shoot photos in the dark with Average Camera Pro.

Here’s Keith Tharp on Instagram with a Mystic Martini.

Here is an Instagram photo made with Average Camera Pro.

Average Camera Pro is particularly well-suited for nightlife photography and shooting in dimly lit environments.

iPhone | Android (Pro HDR Camera)

#15: Tilt Shift Generator

If Instagram’s tilt shift isn’t enough for your taste, this app will come in handy. Tilt Shift Generator gives a “miniature” effect to your photos, which works especially well on landscapes.

Tilt Shift Generator is a nice addition to the Instagram tilt shift feature.

In the image below, James Conn captures a KFC restaurant.

Photo of a KFC restaurant by @jamesconn79.

Tilt Shift Generator is useful for sharing outside views—a shop’s entrance, for example.

iPhone | Android (Awesome Miniature – Tilt Shift)

#16: DXP Free

If you’re looking to give a dreamy, double-exposure vibe to your photos, DXP is the answer. Its 18 compositions and other effects make blending and mixing images a breeze.

Combine two photos into one with DXP Free.

Instagram by @freepeople combining two shots.

Like clothing brand Free People, give a mystical feeling to your photos using DXP.

iPhone | Android (Double Photo)

#17: Superimpose

Ever wish your smartphone could get around all the masking and color processing involved in swapping someone’s face onto another body? Wish granted!

Superimpose lets you easily change the background of an image, swap faces and blend images—your imagination is the limit.

Manage professional-looking edits with Superimpose.

Here is what you can do with Superimpose.

For businesses, this app is a good replacement for a green screen. It’ll let you apply a new background in a few touches.

iPhone | Android (Photo Editor)

#18: Tangent App

Does your Instagram feed need a break from the monotony of traditional images?Tangent lets you choose from 39 shapes and 43 fill patterns to create all kinds of overlays that make your photos more interesting.

Tangent transforms your iPhone snaps into trippy works of art – The Next Web.

Tangent allows you to create a variety of overlays.

Add geometrical shapes to your photos to please your creative-minded followers.

iPhone

#19: pxl

Break down your images, literally, with pxl. You can choose from 11 pixelation filters or just shake your phone to let the app choose a filter for you!

Pixelate your photos for an uncommon look.

An Instagram of a Coca-Cola bottle modified with pxl.

You can use pxl to blur a product on a photo.

iPhone | Android (Pixelot)

#20: LensFlare

Do your images need a light adjustment? LensFlare comes with over 50 effects to let you create an image that looks like it was shot under the bright sun.

Add lens flare to your mobile photos.

Here is a selection of uses of the LensFlare app.

LensFlare lets you add a sometimes much-needed bloom effect to your photos.

iPhone | Android (PhotoJus Lens Flare)

Conclusion

This is only a small selection of the free and low-cost image and video apps that are available for Instagram users today. You may not be a professional photographer, but using one or two of them will help you post like one.

What do you think? Which of these apps do you find most interesting? Are you using an app that isn’t listed here? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Instagram, Twitter or Facebook Advertising – Which Is Best for Brands?

With last week’s announcement that Instagram advertising is coming in the near future (first through a limited test among U.S. users), brand marketers have taken notice. There will soon be a new way to reach the 150 million Instagram user audience. Ads will roll out with a small number of brands on both the Instagram website and mobile app with a focus on enhancing the user experience with ads.

An Instagram blog post explained the upcoming advertising launch to users as follows:

“Our aim is to make any advertisements you see feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands. We want these ads to be enjoyable and creative in much the same way you see engaging, high-quality ads when you flip through your favorite magazine.”

Instagram users will also be able to hide ads they don’t like and provide feedback on those ads.  Let’s hope that the Instagram team will take many of the lessons its parent, Facebook, has learned about advertising to deliver a strong offering to advertisers that its user audience accepts.

Not only is Instagram joining Facebook in building an advertising platform that will generate revenue, but the announcement comes at the same time news of Twitter’s initial public offering hit the streets. In the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing from Twitter, the company revealed that it has 218 million monthly active users. Yoree Koh and Suzanne Vranica of The Wall Street Journal explain that this is significantly less than the 1.5 billion active monthly users that Facebook boasts. That 218 million Twitter user audience represents 22% of U.S. Internet users according to Forrester Research, but that’s very small compared to the 72% of U.S. Internet users who check Facebook at least once per month.

Koh and Vranica also explained in their article that Twitter advertisers don’t believe an audience of 218 million users is big enough to invest in Twitter advertising. Today, Twitter usage peaks during big events, and the rest of the time, it’s dominated by a small group of power users. Many advertisers are waiting for Twitter to find better ways to increase engagement among wider audiences and to encourage them to log in more frequently.

These shortcomings make most consumer brands choose Facebook first. Of course, Facebook advertising has its own long list of problems, but today, it’s the social network that most brands prioritize. Is it truly the right place for those brands to invest ad dollars or do they just think they have to be there because the Facebook user audience is so big and the site is so popular? For brand marketers, the problem becomes trying to explain why they’re not advertising on Facebook to executives.

So which is best for brands—Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook? The answer is, there is no single answer. Every brand is different, but advertising on Facebook because that’s where 1 billion people are doesn’t mean the investment will drive a positive return. The Super Bowl gets massive viewership each year, but that doesn’t mean every brand should advertise during the big game. If you can create a highly relevant offer and release it at the right time and to the right audience on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, then invest. However, as with all marketing investments, if you can’t generate the needed ROI, it doesn’t matter if there are 1 billion users, 218 million users, or 100 users. 

Instagram Hits 100 Million Monthly Active Users

Facebook affiliate Instagram has announced that it now has over 100 million monthly active users, five weeks after it reported that it was registering 90 million MAUs.

The photo editing and sharing application, which was bought by Facebook almost ten months ago for roughly $1 billion dollars in cash and stock, had a long running feudwith Twitter in December after the picture sharing site stopped supporting Twitter Cards.

Associating itself with Facebook and alienating twitter seems to have benefitted Instagram, however, as has increasing the site’s web-presence on desktop devices: around the same time as the 90 million MAUs announcement, Instagram launched web profiles, which now display the Instagram feed.

In the announcement post on the Instagram blog, co-founder Kevin Systrom reminisces about the moment he realised Instagram could be really successful:

Instagram’s first office had few redeeming qualities—and insulation was not one of them. There were only two of us, so we rented desks in a co-working space on a pier over San Francisco Bay. At night, it was common to find us working in winter jackets huddled over our laptops where the air was so cold we could see our breath. It was October 2010 when we launched Instagram, and San Francisco had dealt us a particularly unforgiving and chilly fall.
One night soon after launch, about a half-mile away, the Giants’ stadium was full of fans cheering on their team in a race for the NLCS against the Philadelphia Phillies. You see, having so little insulation in the office had an unintended consequence of being able to hear the crowd roar every time someone hit a long ball out towards McCovey Cove. Back in the office, we’d lift our heads up from code with every eruption of the fans, wondering who was at bat, what had happened, and whether the ball had made it or not. We never knew, but that wasn’t the point.
While we may only have had a few thousand people around the world using Instagram that night, we had a sense that maybe through Instagram we could tune in to what was happening just a few steps away. With a few quick commands at his terminal, my co-founder Mike’s screen filled with images of the game: the bullpen, dugout, concession stands, cheering fans and a panoramic view from somewhere up high. In a matter of hours, the people in that stadium had recorded moments in time through Instagram and allowed us to tune into an event while we sat a half a mile away, working—winter coats and all.

Systrom then acknowledges and congratulates Instagram’s 100 million MAUS for their efforts in making the company a global phenomenon:

Now, nearly two and a half years later, over 100 million people use Instagram every month. It’s easy to see this as an accomplishment for a company, but I think the truth is that it’s an accomplishment for our community. Now, more than ever, people are capturing the world in real-time using Instagram—sharing images from the farthest corners of the globe. What we see as a result is a world more connected and understood through photographs.

After picking out some of the examples and inspirational stories from Instagram users around the world, Systrom thanks all of Instagram’s users in a concluding paragraph:

Images have the ability to connect people from all backgrounds, languages and cultures. They connect us to aid workers halfway across the world in Sudan, to entrepreneurs in San Francisco and even to events in our own backyards. Instagram, as a tool to inspire and connect, is only as powerful as the community it is made of. For this reason, we feel extremely lucky to have the chance to build this with all of you. So from our team to the hundred million people who call Instagram home, we say thank you. Thank you for sharing your world and inspiring us all to do the same.

Here are some other Instagram’s statistics, published on their Press Centre page:


40 million Photos Per Day
8500 Likes Per Second
1000 Comments Per Second.

Are you one of Instagram’s 100 million MAUs? What do you think the company should do next to improve the service?

Instagram Accessible To The Blind

A YouTube video has shown how a blind man can enjoy using Instagram to take photos, edit them, caption, and share the results.

Tommy Edison is blind but has been using the photo sharing app to capture images. Although he cannot see what they look like, he gets plenty of interesting comments on what he’s posted and how they look.

With the help of the “accessibility” feature on the iPhone, Edison can make Siri read out to him every button that he touches. The app itself, filters to select, and where to share the photo are all read aloud amongst other things.

The pictures can then be captioned by using speech recognition to complete the process. Instagram app availability for the visually impaired is just one example of how social media is expanding to be accessible for everyone.

Tommy Edison also has a YouTube channel where he discusses “the fun parts of being blind” as well as performing other general day to day actions.

This is one of many apps that are accessible to blind people with one app using data from Foursquare to help those who are visually impaired the find their way around the streets.

Tommy Edison’s Instagram profile can be found at blindfilmcritic.



What do you think of apps and social media being accessible for the visually impaired?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below

Instagram Rolls Out Profile Badges

Photo sharing site Instagram have just launched “Instagram Badges” as an easy way to help users promote their profiles across the internet.
The badges are similar to the buttons and badges shown on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and will link people from other sites to your Instagram profile page.

The badges aim to help brands and users to endorse their official profiles with fans and followers across the web. Now that users can follow other people’s profiles online, this update may increase social traffic.
Instagram has been popular with celebrities and brands even before the site was attained by Facebook. Since then, Facebook have taken a more focused look into how brands can use Instagram as part of a broader social strategy.

To get your own Instagram badges, go to instagram.com/accounts/badges and follow the instructions by clicking on the icon you want, copying the JavaScript and pasting it onto your website or blog.



What do you make of Instagram badges? Will you be installing one on your website?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below