Learn how to edit Instagram photos like a pro

Instagram is all about looking good: perfectly curated photos of charcuterie boards, studio-quality snaps of the fam, and vacation pics that could’ve come straight from the pages of a travel magazine.

Part of the reason Instagram pictures look so good is that the app makes it easy to edit photos. With a wealth of user-friendly editing features and one-swipe filters, even someone without experience can make a professional-looking post.

The biggest challenge you’ll face? Not getting overwhelmed by the options. After all, knowing which tools you need to create a polished post is a challenge. That’s why we’re here to familiarize you with the app's tools and how to use them to edit an Instagram photo to make it shine.

How to edit a photo on Instagram

Let’s start with a tour of Instagram's photo editing tools on iPhone and Android devices. Once you know what’s in your toolbox, editing becomes a far less daunting task.

After you begin to draft a post on the Instagram app, you can apply filters to photos. There are plenty of options you can preview on your image. If one of these ready-made filters is right for your image, you're good to go. Simply tap Next in the top right-hand corner of the screen to publish your new photo.

But maybe you want to fine-tune your pictures. In that case, tap on the Edit button in the screen's lower right-hand corner. There, you can explore the following tools and choose the best Instagram photo edit settings for your image:

• Adjust: Tilt, resize or flip a photo to position it perfectly within the frame. You can line up an image with precision by scrolling along the slider at the bottom of the screen.
• Brightness: Add a little light to a dark photo using the brightness slider. Just be aware that you may lose some of the sharpness.
• Contrast: Drive up the contrast between the shadows and highlights for a more dramatic look, or tone down the contrast for a more muted finish.
• Structure: Bring out the details and emphasize textures with the structure slider.
• Warmth: Some phone cameras tend toward “cooler” photos, bringing out blue and gray tones instead of warmer reds and yellows. You can perform a bit of color correction on an image by increasing the warm tones.
• Saturation: If a photo looks muted, you can make its hues richer using the saturation tool. Pro tip: over-saturating can make an image look dark and hazy, obscuring lighter regions.
• Color: For more extreme color correction or simply to play around with funky hues, use this tool to add tint to a photo.
• Fade: Get that hazy, vintage look by driving up the fade slider.
• Highlights: This tool focuses on an image's lightest hues. As you push the slider up, these tones become even brighter.
• Shadows: This tool focuses on the image’s darkest hues. As you push the slider down, these tones become even darker.
• Vignette: Burn out the edges of a photo for an old-school look with the vignette tool. It also helps when correcting images that look washed out at the edges because of a light source that interfered with the shot. Pro tip: a subtle vignette effect can even out the tones at the edges of landscape photos.
• Tilt-shift: Blur the edges of a photo for a softer look using the tilt-shift tool, which allows you to add a radial or linear blur to an image.
• Sharpen: Although it seems similar to the structure tool, the sharpen function will make an image look more crisp without accentuating potentially undesirable textures (such as that pimple you’d rather not emphasize). Pro tip: this filter is great for food. Use it to make sharp cheddar look even sharper.

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5 tips to make your photos look better than ever

Filters and editing tools can do a lot to improve the quality of a post, but you can take it to the next level with the following tips:

1. Make sure photos are well aligned: Editing can only do so much. Start by taking pictures that follow the rules of good composition. Center the essential elements of the image or use the rule of thirds to draw the viewer’s eye.
2. Coordinate your Instagram feed: Give your profile a polished look by maintaining a similar aesthetic in all your photos. Stick to a unified color scheme and use similar filters across the board.
3. Use the Carousel feature: Can’t decide which photo should make it onto your feed? No problem. Add various images using the Carousel feature, which allows you to curate an album of pictures into one post.
4. Use third-party editing apps: If you want to take your editing skills up a notch, use a third-party professional program such as Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. If you’re an entrepreneur, social media marketing and photography might not be your strong point. Help your photos stand out by getting help from a professional.
5. Write a good caption: A picture is worth a thousand words, but adding a few more will really make it pop. Add a caption that makes your viewers laugh or wax philosophical.

How to edit a photo on Instagram after posting

It’s a good idea to edit your photo before posting because there’s no easy way to change it afterward. The only remedy is to delete the photo from your feed and start the process over from the beginning. It’s worth spending a few extra minutes to get your image right before sending it out into the world.

Don’t just optimize your photos

Optimize your whole Instagram account. Start with a cohesive profile and high-quality images, and employ the same techniques when you edit your cover photo. Instagram users will know you’re worth following right away if you perfect your account with a witty bio and a link to your content across the web. If you own a business, link to your company's website or e-commerce site. If you’re an influencer, link to your YouTube channel full of makeup tutorials. Add multiple links with a Linktree, which can branch out to several places on the web.