Social media is designed to allow people to connect, and that is no different for businesses. The vision is that people can follow their favorite brands, get to know them better, and generally feel more confident about ordering from them in future as a result.
The Stories feature is perfect for this – providing a quick and dirty way to share a bit of what’s going on with you right now, and that way to help your viewers to see behind the curtain a little. The problem is that you still want to make sure you come across as professional, and that your products look glossy and desirable too. And that’s where you might find yourself wanting to do a little editing.
Thankfully there is one tool available for those who want their pictures to look more professional that doesn't require any special knowledge and is completely free. Enter: Instagram which is essentially a piece of photo editing software that will enable you to quickly add a photo by using a number of ready made filters.
These ready-made filters are some of the best in the business, and lots of them are available from the Stories section. If you’ve taken a somewhat questionable photo of a product, then the right photo can make your poor creative choices look intentional and help to guide the viewers emotional response. This is KEY when it comes to selling.
If the filter you want isn’t available from Stories, you can always grab a picture that you prepare for your feed by taking a screenshot and cropping everything else out – if you have a modern phone, the resolution will still be high.
The other good news is that it is easy to cross-post from Instagram to Facebook as well.
Photo Editing Software
However what Instagram won't do for you is to turn you into Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. For that you'll need to do some genuine photo retouching using something like PhotoShop. Note however that if you can't afford PhotoShop or get hold of a cheap/free version somehow, then you can use other software such as Gimp to achieve a similar effect.
There are many features that you can use in these programs to edit your images and improve your looks or improve the scenery. Changing the color variations for instance can allow you to pick out reds or greens, while the color replacement tool can also be useful for changing the hue of an image to make it more vibrant/romantic/artistic. Again, you have options to change the contrast and brightness as well as to alter the shadows and highlights.
If you want to use this to change your physical appearance however, then you will probably be looking to remove blemishes. One way to accomplish this is by simply applying a blur filter, or alternatively you can also try using the smudge tool and the cloning tool to even out the skin tone. Decreasing mid-tone contrast meanwhile can also give you that porcelain look.
One other way to improve your looks is to increase the size of desirable features and to reduce the others – i.e. bigger eyes, lips and breasts and small nose, waist and feet. To accomplish this go into liquefy and then use the tool to increase and decrease the size of selections to gradually change your looks.
Note however that all these things are best used in moderation. Making some slight tweaks will make you glow, whereas going overboard will make you look inhuman. The former is preferable as you can imagine…
