Visual social media like Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Tumblr are growing exponentially. We’re bombarded with mind-blowing photos on a daily basis. Even though your tour photos are really pretty, there’s still a need for a finishing touch. So, don’t be afraid to use good photo editing tools.
Marketing guru Seth Godin said that in a world of so many choices and an audience with so little time, ideas must be remarkable. As a tour operator, you need to create images that stand out and grab attention. By combining previous tips about taking best tour photos and improving them afterward, you’ll make sure that your photos are going to be shared and promote you and your company.
There are lots of photo editing apps, but in this article, we’ve selected some of the most-used free ones.
Lots of users consider VSCO best free mobile app for photo editing. It hasn’t dropped out of the top 15 in the App Store’s Photography and Video category since launch in April 2012. The great thing is that VSCO is not just a photo editing, but also a picture-taking app. The camera has a great range of advanced manual elements you can adjust while you’re taking a photo.
Unlike a mobile phone camera, with VSCO you can define different focus and exposure points for different appearance. Afterward, you can improve your photos by applying different filters or by editing exposure, contrast, and temperature. VSCO also has its artistic version of Instagram – Grid. You can follow other users to find inspiration. For example, you can enter keywords such as surfing, city, trip, travel, your country name and get inspired.
Why use? Use it for taking a photo and for fast editing on your phone. Try to take a selfie with VSCO, you’ll never switch back to your mobile camera again!
Canva is a simple-to-use tool you can use to design Facebook posts, covers, banners, posters, etc., using your photos. Upload your photo, add a filter and write text and title in different fonts.
You can also use free Canva photos or buy stock photos for just $1 USD each. Your unique photo designs will be more eye-catchy and produce a higher rate of clicking on your posts. A great thing is that making designs in Canva is so much fun. You don’t need to be an expert – everything is very intuitive. To get inspired and to learn how to create visuals more efficiently, explore Canva’s Design School.
Why use? To design visual posts for your social media.
With PicMonkey online editor, you can add filters, textures, overlays (hearts, stars, glitter, sun radiance, sparkle stars…) on your photo. You can also choose your own text font, turn your photo into an illustration, erase photo background, remove unwanted parts of your image or make collages…. There is also a PicMonkey extension for Chrome, so you can grab an image from any web page and open it in your editor in a new tab.
The cool thing is that you can combine two photos into one by using the overlay (or layer) eraser tool so images blend exactly the way you want them to. You can make a picture in a picture and wrap it up with genial effect using double exposure effect.
Make a title or text out of your photos – so called text mask, or add a watermark.
It’s also a great tool for retouching people’s faces. It’s a smart thing to do, to improve your photos and how your travels look at them, so they’ll push share button in a second on social networks.
Why use? We think that PicMonkey is great for combining multiple photos into one with its double exposure effect. You can make great combinations of 2 tour pictures or make collages of your tour. You can add different effects in every collage cell to make great visuals.
With online image editor Pixlr you can make bigger changes to your photos. It’s similar to Photoshop so you can work in layers, replace the background, remove objects, add one picture into another, adjust transparency or apply a quick fix. For example, you can replace the color of an object by using the Color picker tool and add any color you want.
The ones who know photoshop, will not have any problems using PIXLR and its airbrushes, custom brushes, shapes, scaling options and so on. You can also choose between over 100 effects, 340 overlays, and 200 borders.
Why use? Pixlr is a more traditional photo editor, so you should use it for traditional photo editing purposes. Cropping background or objects and pasting them to another layer. Layers are the most powerful tool in Pixlr. You can, for example, cut your travelers from one and paste to a different background and send them a reminder or an invite to another tour.
Overused filters (like Instagram ones) are getting boring. Because of that, it’s a good thing to explore some other apps in order to find more original solutions. Retouch your pictures with thousands of BeFunky effects to achieve, for example, a grunge-vintage look or a magical appearance. With BeFunky you can make a cartoon, an art paint or a sketch out of your photo. Or you can add different patterns, like dots, triangles, squares, numbers, alphabets…, that you can overlay onto your photo and blend it in, to make the pattern less present.
The Cool BeFunky tool is a Paint Mode with which you can apply some effects to only the areas that need them the most. BeFunky is also good for touching up faces.
Why use? BeFunky is great for adding thousands of effects and playing around different pattern overlays. As its name suggests, you should be funky and add cartoon graphic and stickers to your photo.
Snapseed is a free Google tool and mobile image-editing app for both iOS and Android. With Snapseed you can make selective adjustments, correct perspective problems, remove unwanted objects, apply vignettes, soft focus glow or blurry backgrounds.
These are the most interesting photo editing tools in Snapseed:
Tune Image: it lightens/darkens shadows and softens light areas.
Center Focus: creates a vignette, which darkens/brightens edges with the option to adjust the inner brightness.
Selective Adjust: makes targeted adjustments to specific parts of an image – selectively adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation. For example, if you tap on a blue sky area, the adjustments will only be made to other blue areas in the image.
Stacks feature: is similar but it allows to apply the effects to just certain areas of an image.
Drama filter: brings out details in an image and it’s especially good for editing sky.
Why use? For its great selective tool. Sharpen or color just a part of a picture that should be treated. It’s also great for correcting perspective problems and straighten up tall buildings.
Now that you’ve learned how to take great pictures of your tours and how to make them more visually appealing, read the following article to learn how to make the best tour videos for even better promotion.
ORIOLY
on June 24, 2016
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