HOW I EDIT MY INSTAGRAM PHOTOS

Hey everyone! I’ve got a bit of a different post for you today and it’s all about my Instagram which if you haven’t already you can follow me @stephgracey. I’m going to show you how I edit my different kind of Instagram photos using 2 different apps.

I bloody love Instagram I love sharing photos and art across a platform like Instagram, I love it’s concept and I love it’s design, I’ve always preferred it over any other social media and I do think that will always be the case.

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So I’m going to start off with my Miscellaneous photos which involves the odd selfie, product shot, landscape etc. But all these photos will have been taken with my phone camera. I use VSCO to edit my pictures I’ll never use the Instagram filters because I find them too grainy and they lower the quality of images.

So on VSCO I always use the same filter because I’ve got to have a consistent theme and that is A5 it ups the exposure but also adds a cool toned filter on top which is why my Instagram looks very blue based. I usually take the amount down to between 7 and 8 so my face doesn’t look too white and washed out. From here I specify the amounts of Exposure, Contrast, Saturation, Sharpness etc.

And my current values go as follows:

Exposure: -2.0

Contrast: +1

Sharpen: +2.5

Temperature: -0.5

Shadows Tint: Pink +9

I will apply these values to all my photos especially pictures of myself and product shots but for any scenery photos I’ll usually take down the Pink shadow tint to around +3 since it is a lot more obvious on the darker areas of a landscape.

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The other app I use is Airbrush, so yes my skin isn’t flawless and smooth but for those up close shots of the eyes and lips I prefer to smoothen out some parts of my skin. Airbrush is like a quicker version of Photoshop it offers the same features in a lot simpler manner. I’m going to give you an example of what I would do on a close up shot of my eye makeup.

So here is the original image, you can see my skin isn’t the smoothest under my eyes and looks a little dull in areas and I also have one rogue hair coming down from my brow and a few specks of mascara on my lid. So to begin I’ll use ‘My Beauty Magic’ tool which will do a general overlay of smoothing, brightening, acne clearance and contrast. I always use this tool first as it’s the most natural you can get before you get hands on yourself to get rid of some things it may miss, but I don’t always use this tool as it can look too much but it’s to undo and the orange circle with the B/A in it shows you a before and after shot which I think is brilliant.

From here i’ll use the Acne tool, all you need to do is pinch and zoom in on the area you want to remove specks or spots from and tap on the spot and it will match to colour nearest to the spot and fill it in. For instance on my eye I had the mascara spots if I tap on the spot it will fill in pink to match the eyeshadow and sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t it can make the skin look really funky and add shadows that weren’t there originally so it’s only for use on certain areas. After I got rid of the mascara it left a bumpy texture so this is where you’ll use the smoothen tool, but first see how that hair from my brow has magically disappeared I used the Acne tool for that slowly tapping away the hair until I met the bottom of the brow.

Onto smoothening, this is very hard to control because you had to rub back and forth on the area but it can become too blurred very quickly. Again pinch and zoom in on the area and lightly smoothen I do this by rubbing one way only in the concentrated area and Ta Da! my eyelids are smooth again.

So if I zoom out this is the before and after, my skin on a whole looks smoother but you can still see texture, my colours are more vibrant on my eye and the little miss haps with the mascara have no vanished. It’s a very handy little app you can also do other features on there like whitening your teeth or smoothing out wrinkles, it does take a little bit of time to get used to so practice makes perfect with this app but it’s worked a treat for me.

If I do ever post an up close shot of my makeup I will always use Airbrush first and then edit with VSCO so it will fit my theme a lot better.

Here are some of my favourite photos on my Instagram!

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And like I said if you haven’t already do follow me @stephgracey

I only use one account for both occasional blog post related images and my personal posts, I like the idea of mixing work and play, it may not be the most effective way to gain followers on your blog but it makes me feel a lot more comfortable with my blog and sharing it with people I already know.

So that’s all for my Instagram editing and I hope you enjoyed reading as always!

See you soon! xo