There are many great apps, that are generally free or have a small fee, that are excellent for all things art and graphics related. I’ve been playing with VSCO and Snapseed for photography, Boomerang and Pixaloop for movement and short videos, and Canva for a quick way to make social media graphics using type and imagery. All of these apps are useful for creating a consistent social media presence, but there are many more worth trying that I haven’t discovered yet.

I tend to shoot photography slightly darker, probably because I’m not using the right lighting. I wouldn’t call myself a professional photographer, but I do love to snap pictures. VSCO helps me pull the brightness and whites out of my photo. It also offers so many different filters to get the effect you want from a photo. A photo tells a story, what story is it that you want to share?

Snapseed is a great free option for photography. It has only a few filters, but a great quick option to adjust a photo’s smoothness/roughness/texture, color pop, or desaturation.

Boomerang is just plain fun. I’ve grouped it into short video movement, but what it really is, is a burst of photos that are stitched together into a high quality mini video that plays forward and backward.

Pixaloop allows you to animate your photos. A photo element is brought to life whether it’s clouds in the sky, a waterfall, strands of hair, etc. It allows you precise animation control so you can pull what you want the focus to be on in your animated photo.

Lastly, Canva is a graphic designer’s and marketer’s best tool. It allows you the flexibility of piecing together simple social media images through font, photography, and other graphic elements. You can create graphics on the go from any apple device to share on any of your social media platforms, creating the best visual marketing.

Continue to play with different apps to see what best suits your needs and is the app-etizer to your social media meal.

My VSCO account is jaybirdlove. Connect with me through photography.