My Favorite Photo Editing Apps for Travelers

Hauling expensive and heavy photo gear is not always practical so sometimes I’m left to rely on my iPhone camera to capture priceless travel moments. Luckily we live in an age where robust apps can up the quality of your photos and improve your photo game.

Snapseed

I consider Snapseed the best all-around app for editing photos.  The app allows you to adjust basics such as brightening, rotating, and enhancing the contrast of your photos. Snapseed also offers retouching tools such as healing to erase that photobomber that interrupted that otherwise pristine photo. There are various filters, which I don’t use because I prefer filters in other apps (below). However, the filters in Snapseed look like they are highly flexible and customizable.

Download on: iTunes / Google Play

VSCO

VSCO cam is popular with many professional mobile photographers and for good reason. Not only do you get an extensive catalogue of filters, if you use VSCO to shoot there are some heavy duty camera controls such as ISO, White balance, and shutter speed . You can also shoot in RAW.  All with a nice grid teaching you the rule of thirds.

Download on: iTunes / Google Play

Faded

Faded is quickly becoming my favorite editing app. And if it offered retouching similar to Snapseed I would coin it the best all around photo editing app.  While it’s in camera controls aren’t nearly as robust as VSCO’s it does include exposure and a timer. The timer can be voice activated to boot, perfect for a traveling couple or solo traveler when no one is around to take your photo. My favorite thing about Faded is a very specific set of filters and gradient effects that save me so much time trying to manually edit photos.  Bonus – you can also save presets that are more easily accessible than the presets in VSCO.

Download on: iTunes

Pro HDR X

Pro HDR X makes taking sunset and sunrise photos a breeze. Backlighting can be a huge headache during my favorite times of the day. Usually the background is totally blown out or the foreground is completely black.  Using a flash on your phone just makes things look crappier.  The app takes two photos, one exposed for the foreground and one for the background and blends them into one resulting in a beautiful shot.

Download on: iTunes / Google Play

Honorable Mention:

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQMn0tsDHHa While it’s safe to say that most people have heard of this app, many might not use its in app editing functions other than their filters (which I do not use).  Their editing tools allow for some light weight editing on the go, especially if you want to post the pic quickly.  Follow me on Instagram to see these apps in action!

Download On: iTunes / Google Play

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