INSTAGRAM MASTERPIECES NEED MORE LIKES?

Love taking photos for shares and likes? There’s a host of apps for tweaking your best work – master these, and be the envy of your friends.

Portrait of Tammy Strobel

Love taking photos for shares and likes? There’s a host of apps for tweaking your best work – master these, and be the envy of your friends.

My Reading Room
My Reading Room
Snapseed (iOS/ Android, Free)

Snapseed is a must-have because it works like a dream. It’s powerful, yet it comes with none of the complexity found on professional photo-editing desktop programs. Besides core controls like exposure, shadows, highlights, and saturation, there’s literally an option called “Drama” that really brings out your latest indie café discovery. You can manipulate the details by selecting each aspect at a flick, while adjusting its intensity with a left or right slide. The best part about Snapseed is it’s now indefinitely free-of-charge.

My Reading Room
My Reading Room
PicsArt Photo Studio (iOS/Android, Free)

When PicsArt said they were all-in-one, they meant it. This app is great if you want to add and modify stuff beyond technicalities like sharpness and color. You can create photo collages, GIFs, and videos for a little storytelling on your Instagram profile. If you want to bring out your inner artist, PicsArt also provides a comprehensive drawing suite, too. With 250 million downloads for this app, we’d be surprised if you didn’t have this in your arsenal yet.

My Reading Room
My Reading Room
Photo Editor by Aviary (iOS/Android, Free)

Aviary is a good app by itself, but it is great for creating sidesplitting memes with your own shots. Edit the photos with a professional touch, or simply use the text add-on and drawing tools to create your next viral masterpiece. Out of all the apps here, Aviary is the only one that dares to say it offers a quick and easy experience. You can even beautify your friend before turning them into a laughing stock within the same app, since it offers cosmetic editing tools as well.

My Reading Room
My Reading Room
Pixlr (Android, Free)

While this is an all-in-one, Android only photo-editing app, Pixlr by Autodesk is actually the perfect selfie BFF. It has over two million possible combinations for effects, on top of blemish remover, red-eye reduction, and teeth-whitening. If you want your selfie to look even better than the next one on your feed, use the focal blur to add that professional bokeh effect. It comes with a “frequently used settings” menu, which really cuts down editing time. Of course, it’s as professional as the other editing apps listed here.

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