How to make your photos stand out on Instagram.
It’s in the edit.
I think one of the first Aha! moments I had when I started using Instagram was realizing that most of the top performing accounts had their photos edited in one way or another. So don’t believe the #NoFilter hype. You’ll be surprised that most people on Instagram don’t actually know this.
A photo will always look better with even the slightest touch of edit. And by edit, I meant color correction or even something as simple as increasing the brightness of the photo. Let me start off by showing an example.
As you can see from the 2 images above, the one on the left was the image straight off the camera while the one on the right was after I did some color correction on Adobe Lightroom. If I had just posted the image on the left on Instagram, it would have been a wasted effort. People would have to strain their eyes just to make up what I just posted. Now that you’ve seen the difference, here are 3 tips on how you could make your images pop on Instagram.
1) Use a Photo Editing App, not IG Filters.
My personal favorite for editing photos on my phone is Adobe Lightroom CC because it’s the most complete Photo Editing app you would probably have on your mobile phone. If the tools are too intimidating for you, you could start off with VSCO or Snapseed.
2) Focus on the Blacks & Whites.
When you are editing, it’s good to focus on the Blacks & Whites of the image. The Blacks in an image are usually the shadows and also any other object that is black in color that happens to be captured within the frame. The Whites in an image could be the clouds, lamps or light.
Shown below, is an example of an edit I did on Adobe Lightroom to show how I moved the Blacks & Whites to match a True White & True Black. Just by doing this alone, the image will automatically pop because the contrast is more obvious.
3) Cooler edit > Warmer edit
One of the most common tools you would see on any Photo Editing app is color Temperature. You usually get to choose whether to edit an image towards a cooler/bluish edit or move it towards a warmer/yellowish edit. Research has shown that a cooler edit would perform better on Instagram https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/blue-instagram-photos-get-likes-anything-else-according-research/
Color Temperature is usually indicated as a Thermometer icon in apps.
That’s all I have today, do look out for more Photography Tips in my upcoming blogs. Until then, follow Bloomr.SG on Instagram for bite-sized content :)
