FAQ: FAVOURITE PHOTO APPS

One of the questions I'm asked the most is what photo apps I use and how I get them to look so good. For those of you that don't know me, I'm incredibly lazy and guarantee a good 90% of the photos I share have been taken on my iPhone. It's convenient, quick and easy to use. I have a good DSLR at the ready, my trusty Canon 40D, but sometimes it's just not ideal to carry round. So, here is how I edit my photos!

First, I'll show you a before and after of a photo I took on my phone this week.

The difference isn't huge as I like my photos not to look overly edited but it's definitely there. The first image is much duller and the wood pieces don't stand out, whereas in the second, the colours show up brighter, the illustrations more vivid and the wood pieces stronger. In this one, the tokens look far more like how they look in real life than in the original shot.


1. A Beautiful Mess (ABM)
This little app is super handy for a number of reasons. First, adding pretty text! This was really the main reason I downloaded it in the first place - it has lots of pretty text and graphics and is much faster than adding overlays to images on your phone. Secondly, I really love the filter Poppy. I use this one quite often just to brighten up my image. When you take photos on a white background such as paper, often it can come up quite dark and grey, and this filter is perfect for really brightening up the background without affecting the main objects too much.

2. Afterlight
This app is one of my most used and well worth the small fee to download. I use this app probably the most to add filters, crop and adjust lighting levels. One of my favourite filters on this app is Glacier under the original filters section and, very occasionally, Nico and Dallas. I rarely put filters on to 100% as they can be a little harsh. Rather I may use one or two filters on the same photo but on a low level, just to enhance it.

3. Mextures
I occasionally use Mextures to add some unusual effects to my photos or to brighten them up. On here, Frosted under Landscape Enhance is definitely my most used but I do occasionally add other effects, like grain and coloured filters.

4. VSCOcam
I've used VSCOcam less and less recently and have relied more on ABM, Afterlight and Mextures, but every so often I do come back to this little beauty. VSCO does have a number of really really lovely filters, so although I use it less often than I did, I still can't bring myself to delete it off my phone.

Finally, just to bring this blog to a close, if you're looking to edit photos into shapes (occasionally I will crop mine into circular shapes), Krop Circle is the best app for the job. I prefer leaving my photos in the classic square format but if you're wanting to mix things up a little, this app is ideal!

If you have any apps you'd like to recommend to others, leave them below in the comments and let me know what you think!