8 Best Instagram Photo Editing Apps (Android & iPhone)

Let’s imagine this…

You’re traveling with your friends, and you’ve snapped a great photo with your travel buddies. When you’re about to post the photo on Instagram, you notice that a passerby is photobombing in the background! 

Your picture-perfect moment is ruined! 

Now, you can’t share this photo with your thousands of Insta followers!

Now you have only two options: delete it or edit it. 

And we’re pretty confident you’re going to pick the second option. After all, why delete a good photo when you can save it! 

With the help of Instagram photo editing apps, you can easily remove unwanted elements and enhance your overall photo to make it instagramable. 

However, there are thousands of Instagram photo-editing apps available in the market. So, it’s confusing to find the perfect one. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the 8 best Instagram photo editing apps for Android and iPhone so that you can pick the best for your Insta feed. 

Why Use an Instagram Photo Editing App?

With more than 500 million daily active users globally, Instagram is one of the most popular social networking sites after Facebook. So, the answer to why use an Instagram photo-editing app is simple- 

To stand out among the millions of users. 

If you want to grab your audience attention in the ocean of similar posts, your photos should be top-notch. 

And a photo-editing app can enhance the quality of your photos. Here are some more reasons why you should use a photo editing app for Instagram:

• Resize your pictures to fit Instagram’s square size.
• Enhance photo quality by cropping, adding filters, texts, removing background, and much more.
• If you want to transform boring pictures into videos, gifs, infographics, and flipbooks.

Now that you know why editing apps are perfect for impressing your audience, let’s find out more about these apps. 

8 Best Instagram Photo Editing Apps For Android & iPhone

Snapseed

Want to make your decent photos appear professional? Snapseed is the tool you’re looking for. 

Snapseed is one of the best Instagram photo editing apps that offers a wide range of features for you to try. Snapseed (now owned by Google) is a great option if you don’t have the budget to use an app like Adobe Lightroom. 

This user-friendly, simple, free app comes with a variety of filters and effects. Unlike most photo editors, the best part is that it allows you to edit and create your own filters from scratch. 

Another great feature of Snapseed is that it lets you see the changes you’ve made to a photo. This way, you can compare with the original photo to decide which one is instagramable. 

This photo-editing Instagram app isn’t just for casual users; even serious photographers can use it for top-notch edits. 

With Snapseed, you can work on both RAW and JPG files. Apart from filters, this app also offers 29 tools and features to enhance your Instagram photos. 

It offers tools like cropping, frames, text, straightening, auto-adjustment, tune image, rotate, vignettes, sharpening, etc. 

Snapseed also offers two interesting functions- Brush & Selective. With the Brush feature, you can select a specific part of your photo and make adjustments to whatever you want using your finger as the “brush”. 

And, with the Selective feature, you can select a certain part of your photo by adding dots and change the brightness, saturation, contrast, or structure. 

The perspective feature is another helpful tool you can access with Snapseed. With this feature, you can adjust the perspective of your photos. For instance, if you’re standing off-center in a picture, this feature can fix it in a minute. 

What’s more, Snapseed also allows you to manipulate white balance, HDR scape, expand the image’s borders, create lens blur, double exposure shot, and much more! 

Available on both iOS and Android | Free for basic features

Vsco

Just like Snapseed, Vsco is another popular photo editing app for Instagram. This user-friendly app comes with a clear interface so that you can navigate it easily. 

Vsco also provides a wide variety of attractive filters and editing tools. This editing app is perfect for your outdoor photography ventures, as they offer bright and moody tones. Also, Vsco has subtle filters which add a soft touch to your photos. So with this app, you can make your photos appear classy. 

Like any good photo editing tool, Vsco has cropping, auto adjustments, vignettes, borders, etc. You can also manipulate your images with the help of elements like contrast, exposure, brightness, saturation, skin tone, etc. 

The best part about the Vsco Instagram photo editing app is its community. Just like Instagram, Vsco’s community is another popular social network. This app is so popular among Instagram photographers that its hashtags #vsco #vscocam ranks under the most used hashtags of the all-time category. 

What’s more, with its built-in sharing function, you can share your photos on Whatsapp and SMS. 

Available for both iOS and Android | Free for basic features

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Adobe’s apps are known for editing beautiful photos. Ans, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a perfect example of that. 

Adobe Lightroom allows you to capture and edit raw photos on the go. With its various filters, you can add an attractive touch to all your Insta photos. In fact, the editing tools are equally suitable for professional photographers. 

With Adobe Lightroom, you can enhance your photos by adjusting brightness, exposure, saturation, and much more. You can even adjust the detail, colour, light, and distortion of your images. 

With its healing brush feature, you can get clean and sharp photos by removing unwanted elements. With Adobe clouds, you can automatically save all your edits, which means you don’t have to worry about losing your work anymore.

Wait, there’s more! 

Adobe Lightroom is popular among pro photographers because of its AI system. This AI system helps to auto-tag your photos based on their content so that you can quickly find the ideal shot. 

And, let’s not forget about Adobe Lightroom’s ever-growing tutorials. This app offers various learning tutorials to teach you how to edit your images and make your Instagram feed appear aesthetic like a pro! 

Available for both iOS and Android | Free for basic features

Pixlr

 If you’re a beginner photographer, Pixlr is one of the best photo editing apps for Instagram you can go for. 

You can use this app to create collages, do fine-tuning, and add filters. The user-friendly interface is definitely a plus point as you can easily play with your photos.

Pixlr is also known for its adjustment tools, special effects, filters, borders, frames, and overlays. As we mentioned earlier, this app is great for creating photo collages. Using pre-designed templates, you can edit some catchy Instagram photos to increase engagement. 

With Pixlr, you can sprinkle a few fun elements into your photos by using stickers. Also, you can use the stylish feature to sketch, create pencil or watercolor effects to customize images according to your preference. 

However, this app may appear a little shallow for professional photographers. If you’re a casual photographer, then Pixlr is definitely the best choice. 

Available for both iOS and Android | Free for basic features

PicsArt

PicsArt is one of our favorites Instagram picture editing app on this list. The reason? Well, it’s easy to use, the features are fun, and it provides all the essentials you need for professional photography. 

With PicsArt, you’ll get loads of editing tools and attractive filters. And that’s just the starters! 

PicsArt also allows you to add fun stickers, combine your best photos in customizable collages, add text, and more. From editing tools to adjustment functions, whatever features you need, PicsArt got it. 

This photo editing app also lets you collaboratively edit photos with your friends and other PicsArt users. And, if you get stuck while editing, in-app tutorials are there to save you. 

So, if you want to get high creative control while editing photos, go ahead with this app. 

Available for both iOS & Android | Free for basic features

Instasize

If you want to post some eyeballs-grabbing photos and skyrocket your Insta followers, Instasize is a great option. 

You can choose from Instasize’s premium tools and filters, adjustment functions, borders, etc. With this app, you can resize your photos to fit any social platform like Instagram. 

With more than 80+ filters, you can edit your raw photos and videos like a pro. Instasize also offers advanced beauty editor tools to level up your Instagram game. With its premium version, you can add glow to your face, brighten your smile, and get moisturized-looking skin. 

You can use this app for free. However, to get access to all the premium features, you can upgrade to premium plans. 

Available for both iOS and Android | Free for basic features

Boomerang from Instagram

Fan of posting Instagram Stories? Boomerang is the right app for you!

Instagram originally launched boomerang in 2015. This app can transform your boring selfies and videos into funny videos and gifs. For example, you can capture your friends jumping up and down or running back and forth with this boomerang app. 

What’s more, you can capture photos in a burst mood and combine them to create mini videos. 

Boomerang allows you to play with motion with four different modes. Slowmo, duo, echo, and trimming.

With slow-mo, you can slow down your videos. The dup function lets you rewind your mini videos. With trimming, you can decide where your video starts and ends. Lastly, with echo, you can add motion blurs to create a double vision effect. 

Available for both iOS and Android | Free

Square Sized

It might be frustrating, but if you want to post on Instagram, all your photos need to be square sized, and there’s no other way around. 

This is where Square Sized Instagram photo editing app comes into the picture. This app is particularly made for Instagram sharing. 

You can import different sizes of photos or videos with this wonderful app. With Square Sized, you can even transform your rectangular-shaped Facebook photos into square sized Instagrammable posts. 

Square Sized is not only known for resizing photos; it also allows you to add a background, layers, filters, borders, texts, shapes, and overlays to images. 

Available for iOS | Free for basic features

Which Instagram Photo Editing App You Should Choose?

We get it! After skimming through the list, you’ve become more confused now! You might be scratching your head and thinking, “Which Instagram photo editing app is the perfect one for me?

Well, to help you out, we’ll advise you to try out everything before making a final decision. All of these apps are free to download and offer some great features. Experiment with each of them and see what works best on your Instagram feed. 

And, once you’ve found your perfect match, go ahead and purchase the premium version to explore all the features accordingly.