I've written about Instagram quite a few times before; how to be better at it and take better selfies...but they all come down to using some great apps that enhance the Insta-sperience. I wanted to share some apps that I love and are not only easy to use, extremely helpful and innovative, but FREE!

VSCO is the real starter app for the novice Instagrammer. Granted it's one step up from the Instagram filters (ok maybe like 3-4 steps up, like why are their filters so awful?), but I mostly like to use it in conjunction with the other apps below. My main use on VSCO is to download my photos and crop them, rotate them, and add a filter.

Probably my next stop when I'm editing a photo is to take my photo from VSCO and upload it to photoshop fix. This thing has everything, including anything you'd want to use from the well known face editing app, Facetune (which I don't have cause hello $3 for an app?!), such as blur, blemish removal, smooth, and can brighten or saturate spots rather than the whole photo.

I don't use darkroom as much as the other two, but it has some great preset filters you can use along with editing options. Although it's free, there is a cool option with the purchased version where you can tone out unwanted colors (like taking away yellow-ness from a photo you want to look more white).

Repost isn't all that exciting, but it's a good one to have in your phone photography repotoire. It lets you easily select a photo from Instagram to "repost" onto your account.

UNUM might be my absolute favorite app ever ever ever. This app lets you plan out your instagrams, along with captions and tags, as well as edit them. Although their editing features are far behind the others I've listed, it's easy to access as you're trying out the photo in your feed. I 99% of the time plan out my Instas on this app and post from there as well. It's perfect for when you just posted a selfie but already have another great one with a hilarious caption ready to go.

This app is weird in a great way. Fyuse lets you take '3D' photos that are viewed by tilting your phone side to side. It's new, but I think it could be very popular soon, and functions similarly to Instagram where you can follow people, hashtags and have a feed to view. The upside is this app is so different and when taken well looks beyond trippy. The downside is it's very hard to take selfies on this and takes some practice to learn what type of photos look best, and what just start to look like videos-- you can also save the photos as videos and post to Instagram.

Although this is for video editing, it's super cool. I don't often post videos to instagram, but this app lets you add music, create cool artsy effects and make a very unique video. Sucks that you need the full version to add videos you've already taken, but with some practice it is really cool to use in the spur of the moment!

What's your favorite app to edit photos? Is there something I missed? If I personally could only ever have one app in my life, I think I'd have to pick Photoshop Fix!

Ah insta, we all scroll through it about 3 times every hour (whoops) but do you ever feel like everyone else has these perfect posts and yours just looks....average? Having good posts on instagram can lead to more followers, likes, and is a representation of who you are and what you like. Follow these tips to take the perfect Instagram photo and get on your way to social media fame.



Mix your photos
Don't make every post a selfie! To make your posts stand out they have to be different from one another and show a variety of your tastes.



Have someone else take the photo
On that note of selfies...stop taking them! In general, you look much better with a full body shot, and having someone else (with a steady hand) take your photo will look more professional. If there's a great hair day and no one around to see it, plug in headphones with the microphone that you can click to hang up a call, when you click this button on the headphones it will take a picture.