Instagram makes it look like everyone is a brilliant photographer and you’re the only one who doesn’t know how to use your camera, but that’s not true. A lot of the time all the bloggers that you follow either hire professional photographers to take pictures for them, learn the rules of photography and practice all day every day, or most of the magic is actually in the edit. Thankfully there’s Miles. MilesofColor is an Instagram account of a digital artist whose mission is to educate, inspire and instill confidence. He often shares photos before and after the edit to show how much can be changed in the process of editing. It was a really eye-opening experience for us, so we thought we’d share his account and some of his works with you so that you can become more confident in your abilities and learn how to make your Instagram game stronger.
1. If you take a picture that’s underexposed it’s very easy to fix that and play with exposure when you edit. Here we can also see how you can draw attention to a certain part of the image.
2. While the first photo is not bad at all, you can see here how you can transform it into a work of art just by playing with color, contrast and exposure.
3. A classic moment of transforming an average portrait photo into a really good one you’d definitely double tap on Instagram.
4. Not everything has to look realistic, sometimes it’s fun to change up the colors of things to achieve a more striking effect.
5. Again, underexposed photos are super easy to transform. As long as the quality of the photo is good, you can bring up the exposure and really make those colors pop.
6. Not only is this before and after the edit, but we also like how this photo was transformed from a cool toned one to a very warm one.
7. From too dark to see any details to a one that’s worth a magazine cover. And all you need is a bit of time and a photo editing app.
8. Not only can you play with brightness and exposure, but you can even digitally add funky makeup to your photos. Yup, we also thought that makeup had to be there first and you can only accentuate it by editing, but Miles shows you how that’s a myth.
9. What’s cool about this photo edit is that in the first picture it’s unclear what season it is. It could be an early autumn photoshoot but thanks to some editing the result looks very summery.
10. Add more detail and make your subjects stand out more and become the centerpoint of your photography with a bit of contrast.
11. Turns out there’s a way to edit pictures in a way that adds flames yet still looks professional and not like a Photoshop trainwreck.
12. From a regular day in the garden picking roses to a French dream. All in the edit.
13. Another case of barely visible detail in the original to a high contrast futuristic blue lighting that looks like something out of a Sci-Fi movie.
14. A touch up here, a bit more exposure there, some added saturation and you’ve got yourself a masterpiece.
15. This photo’s already pretty awesome before you even edit it, but Miles found a way to take it to a whole new level.
