5 FREE Photo Editing Apps you need to improve your Instagram game + Download FREE Presets for one-click editing

Recently, I shared a post on how to take better photos with your smartphone and I promised to show you the photo editing apps that I use to Edit photos for my blog and Instagram. You really don’t need to be techy to get professional looking photos and these free photo editing apps are available to both iPhone and Android users

Here’s a list of my current favourite FREE photo editing apps. I’ll also show you to use them. Although there are whole lot of apps out there, my intention is to make this as beginner friendly as possible. So I’m sharing the major ones I actually use every time. I’ll share the paid ones in another post, for now let’s focus on only free photo editing apps

Snapseed

If you are new to photo editing, Snapseed is a good place to start. It’s a free photo editing app by Google that has a plethora of functions that will make any novice appear like a pro. With Snapseed you can increase and reduce exposure, brightness, dodge & burn, smoothen skin, remove unwanted objects and many more. In this video , I show a detailed tutorial on how I use Snapseed to remove unwanted objects and brighten my portraits. Like this photo below, I used the healing tool in snapseed to remove the light switch. I also used the portrait function for smoothening my skin

VSCO

This used to be a favourite app for most bloggers but times have changed. VSCO is a free photo editing app that is capable of changing your photos in one click. Although some filters have to be paid for, VSCO still comes with a good number of free filters that can easily give your photos a vintage or sophisticated feel. It’s very easy to use, the more you play around with it, the more proficient you get with the filters and functions. You can easily create your own preset if you like a cohesive feed just like mine.

Focos

This is totally one of my best free photo editing apps, Focos gives your phone photos a refined feel like it was taken with a DSLR camera. I even use it for videos. More about that in another post but Focos is so cool guys. If you take a photo with your phone and would like to effortlessly blur the background without doing too much, then Focos is your guy.

See the effect of Focos on the above before and after pic? It’s super cool. I also show you a detailed video of how to use Focos for photo editing in this video.

Photo Editor

Most facial photo editing apps like Facetune are paid apps or only available for a subscription but this Photo editor is free. Although it comes with occasional ads it still does the basic work of face refining. It has functions like face & chin slimming, nose narrowing, eyes enlargement, skin smoothing and some other Facetune functions. This free app is a useful tool for anyone who does basic portrait photo edits.

Download here

Lightroom

You most likely must have heard of Lightroom but just in case you haven’t, it’s arguably one of the best free photo editing apps out there. Although it’s not the easiest to use and might be time consuming, many people buy or create their own presets so that at one click they can have a consistent professional-looking edit. With Adobe Lightroom, you can increase/reduce color contrast, gradient, exposure, sharpness, white balance and many more techy photo editing functions.

I use this moody preset as seen in the photo above for my Instagram photos and for the blog/online business I use a bright airy preset like this one below.

Bright white Lightroom preset

I have made these two presets available to you for FREE. After you download, you can apply to your photos and get the same results in one click!

Click here to download. The password is my Instagram handle, follow my Instagram and go download. you’ll get both presets for FREE. Feel free to tag me, I’ll love to see your edits.

For now these are the 5 major free photo editing apps I use and they produce really good results. These free photo editing apps are available on both iOS and Android. Find them on AppStore or Google Playstore.

Your turn now, tell me the names of your favorite free photo editing apps also. Do you use any of these?

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