Behind the Scenes: Instagram Editing Exposed

Hi! I’ve been posting a lot of before & afters on my Instagram Stories, and it seems like you all have been enjoying the drastic transformations. I wanted to share here some more info on all the behind the scenes action that goes on for getting those pretty filtered photos on IG. I’m hoping to do this regularly, so you all have a better idea of all the fun craziness I go through.

CAMERA

I use a Sony Nex 6 with a 16-50mm and 35mm lens. The camera body is very light and portable, which makes it great for traveling! It’s also not super expensive, so I would definitely recommend it. I always shoot in ‘RAW’ so that photos are higher quality. And lastly, I figured I would also address this, I rarely use my iPhone for my Instagram feed (iPhone 6s lyfe).

EDITING

I primarily rely on Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop on my laptop for all of my editing.

On Lightroom, I mainly focus on adjusting the colors and tones. I use presets that I’ve created and others’ presets to help save time. [FYI presets are basically like ‘filters’] Some that I recommend checking out are VSCO film presets and LXC. Some well known Instagrammers will also publish their presets (like doyoutravel x gypsealust) which is a great way to get their look for the fraction of the amount of time it would take you to make your photo look like theirs.

Lastly, I’ll then making more drastic changes on Photoshop (when necessary, and when I have time). For example, I used Photoshop for the last two photos. One to do some serious cropping of a person in my space, and another to enhance some of the drinks that the IG BF was too eager to drink.

ONTO THE PHONE

After I’m done editing the photos, I’ll export them to a local file, and them use AirDrop to share them from my Mac to my iPhone. And Voilà, the process is complete.

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Can you spot all the differences? Let me know which was your favorite edit!