No filter is no fun. Centered on exploiting your Friday nights, your guilty pleasures, successful or attempted adventures, etc. in the form of photo and video, the smart phone application called Instagram has been deemed a social media superhero for the last two years.
For users of the ever popular Instagram, the hash tag “nofilter” is synonymous with the white flag of surrender. With 19 photo filters and 13 video filters to choose from, this smartphone app is comparable to an electronic form of Photography for Dummies. By now, we’ve all found safety in our favorite filters. As hard as it is to admit, there are some objects and some faces that just aren’t complimented with an Amaro or Valencia filter.
Approach photography at a new angle, and check out these four applications to better your Instagram photos—to widen your Instagrammar.
Camera+
The iPhone is a gadget unlike those of our past (I’m talking to you, you once glamorous GameBoy Color). From your iPhone you can manage nearly every daily task, have Siri pick up your groceries, or even use the iPhone as a door stop. Yet the phone is equipped with a camera that might as well be an elderly man’s shaky monocle. Camera+ as an app, reduces the blurriness and enhances color detection in your photos for a truer, more appealing photo.
Aside from acting as a more stable camera, this app offers simple and complex edits. Some of the more elementary editing capabilities include tampering with exposure to make a photo lighter or darker. Perhaps you’re looking to crop the tip of your finger or that relentless photo-bomber who snuck into the photo. Camera+ can handle it, and even do you one better by adding a border to your photo, too, if you’d like.
Past the basics, there are a variety of effects to discover in Camera+. At first glance, you might think that these effects are merely Instagram filter knock-offs. Alas, they are not. One of the best parts of this app is the fact that you can decide the intensity level of the filter. If you should want the “‘70s” filter to look a little less reminiscent of the bell bottom years then you can simply add or subtract intensity that is applied to the photo.
Whitagram
Taking inspiration from the grandfather photo, the Polaroid, Instagram photos are formatted to be square in shape. While it’s cute to scroll through a timeline of modern Polaroids scribbled on with emojis and slang, sometimes the square format crops the best pieces of your photo out. Next time your anxiety levels come dangerously close to “floor tantrum” because of the Instagram cropping, use Whitagram to capture your photo in its original stupor. In order to make the original sized photo fit, this app adds tasteful borders to the left and right, or top and bottom of the photo, depending on its orientation. Whitagram is especially useful for scenic, landscape photos that span side to side. Phototreats
One of the sought-after trends on Instagram is the effect that will add sunspots, snowflakes, and holiday looking lights to photos. Someone deemed light distortion worthy and, not to be accusatory, but there’s a sunspot trail that leads right to fashionistas and socialites. If you’ve been looking for an app to add a corner of soft, flickering light to your posts, Phototreats will do just that. Really more directed at the femme users, these filters should be used not for making a statement, but for uttering a whisper. CameraTimer
The last recommended app for your improved Instagrammar will likely become the most praised in your repertoire of new tricks. So wake up introverts and individual adventurers, because there’s not always a passerby to snap a photo of you, and selfies are almost worse than being an offender of the “no filter” hash tag.
CameraTimer is an app that acts as a self-timer—much like the ones on digital cameras. The app is poorly formatted, but will add to the photo possibilities you have right in the palm of your hand. As long as you can fashion a tripod out of a rock, park bench, or book, you’ll never have to pass up a photo-op again. This app has also proved useful when looking to photograph your entire cluster of friends. With a variety of options for countdown length and number of shots taken, you’ll never find yourself wishing for longer arms for photo taking ever again.
If Instagram were a member of the Full House cast, surely it would be the sleek and trendy Uncle Jesse. Twitter could pass as the comedic Uncle Joey, leaving Facebook with the dreaded and dull father-figure, Danny Tanner. The point here is that if given the option, the majority of us would only ever choose to hang out with Uncle Jesse. And now you can rise to the occasion, mustering content that is much more impressive than an indecipherable, “You got it, dude!”
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