a personal style blog by Lauren Pfieffer

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

How to Edit Your Instagram Photos to Look Vintage.


I think one of the most common questions I recieve is how I edit my instagram photos! I never want to be one of those bloggers who has this ~top secret~ way of editing photos, so I thought it might be helpful if I wrote up a little post on how I edit to create more vintage looking photographs for instagram.

I don't use a ton of super fancy apps that cost a lot of money: all I use is afterlight which is $.99 and well worth it. I know a lot of people use a similar app called vsco cam, but I just find after light easier to use!

FILTER
--First I select a photo from my camera roll in afterlight and usually apply a filter first. Filters are located on the third icon in the screen, and there you're given even more categories. There's tons of filters to sift through, but a few of my favorites are in:

guest ---> Russ, Idaho, Brightfire
original ---> Ash, Whim, Hollow

I hardly ever use the filter to it's full strength, and usually tone it down a bit with the adjustable bar.


ADJUSTMENTS
--Next I'll play with the finer tuned adjustments of the photo once I have my base filter set. This is the second button in the afterlight screen.I don't adjust all these things; just a few!

--I always sharpen the photos since they tend to loose quality going from my computer to phone
--Most times I'll brighten them as well because we react better to lighter, more white photos.
--Sometimes I'll up the contrast to add more depth to the photo and to combat the brightness adjustment
--Occasionally I'll add some grain if I want to

SPECIAL EFFECTS
--This is my favorite part of editing the photos and why afterlight is great. With the fourth button you can add various dusty overlays or light leaks that really can fill up negative space or add interest to a photo.

After I'm done editing in afterlight, I'll save the photo to my phone and upload it to instagram! I know that seems like a lot of steps up there, but once you get the hang of the look you like it takes about two minutes to do all the adjustments to get your desired style. 

I don't particularly utilize many of the editing features instagram has when you go in the app, but one I always do is to add a color filter. If you go into the paint bucket option, I consistently use the second to last which adds a turquoise tint over the photos. I find that it just adds a really nice color overlay since my photos tend to be really warm toned & I like to balance it with cool. 

That's it! Hope this helps you all and inspires you maybe to try out editing your photos a different way. Half the fun of posting on instagram in my opinion is editing it to make it your own :)

With much love, Lauren.
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4 comments

Sophie said...

Definitely bookmarking this post for future use. Thanks Lauren!
Sophie
x
A Story of a Girl

Mariah Alysz said...

I love your Insta photo aesthetic! And I totally have to sharpen mine from computer to phone, as well as brighten them. They always show up darker on my phone for some reason!

💕Mariah Alysz

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much! I 've been looking for this so long! You are great!!

Unknown said...

Finally I've found this app for "damaged" photo effect, thanks a lot :)

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