My Top Five Visual Apps 2018 (Free + Paid)

Over the years, I’ve downloaded a vast quantity of ‘visual’ apps (we’re talking Android here, sorry iOS crowd!) for image editing, video editing, social media etc. And I’ve vigorously tried and tested many, but this year’s selection is possibly the most stable it has ever been – I’ve been using most of these apps almost daily.

And so, in no particular order, here are my top six visual apps:

Lightroom CC

Free / £9.98 monthly with Adobe’s Photography plan

For a while, I wasn’t too keen on Lightroom but I wouldn’t be without it now. Whilst it may take some adjusting to, the app itself is powerful, with the most in-depth (yet user-friendly) editing tools and ever-useful cloud storage so your images – edits and originals – are safe and accessible anywhere. Want to apply the same edit to five hundred images? You can copy the same edit settings from image to image, and for future use, you can even add it is as a preset. Dislike the edit you threw on an image last month? That’s okay, just retrieve the original. There’s also a huge selection of default presets if you want a quick and simple fix.

The app is worth the subscription alone, but it also includes the full Lightroom desktop, Lightroom on browser, Photoshop CC and a few other things. Would recommend!

Preview

Free (not pictured, sorry!)

An extremely handy tool for Instagram, Preview allows you to add images to the 1:1 grid and ‘plan’ out your IG feed. You can also add a caption to the images, edit them with the in-built image editor, and add hashtags so you’re ready to go. You can even set up a schedule so you’re reminded when it’s time to post.

I did try the Pro version which looked promising (and I love supporting designers/developers), however it was extremely slow/laggy and kept freezing. The free version worked without any issues for me. It also doesn’t add much value for money if using it for yourself, with the only perk being that the #preview hashtag was no longer added automatically to your post. You also can’t remove IG accounts from the app unless you uninstall it (and thereby lose all of your images and progress).

That being said, this is hands-down one of the best free apps out there, and the Preview app team have done an amazing job.

Snapseed

Free

In the days before I downloaded (and fell in love with) Lightroom, Snapseed was my go-to. And it still is arguably the best free image editing app on the market; it’s reliable, fast and equipped with endless powerful editing possibilities plus it has an excellent user-friendly interface to boot. I’d recommend trying Snapseed before any other free image editing app – you won’t be disappointed.

InShot

Free

An old classic, I’ve had InShot on all of my phones over the past few years; it’s a great essential app when you need to adjust images or videos including size/ratio/blur background, add/edit/remove audio from your videos or tweak something else from its brilliant (and fast) arsenal of tools. There are some ads in the free version and a watermark on videos (which I’ve paid the one-off cost to remove), but it’s still excellent and reliable so this doesn’t bother me too much.

Unfold

Free

I’ll be honest, this one is still quite new to me. I’ve always had a hard time with Instagram Stories; having to style ad edit images for IG Stories always feels tedious, like an extra task and too much space to fill. I’ve tried loads of different apps – collage apps, text-over-image apps etc. – but I never cared much for them, they just seemed like another long process and the results weren’t great. Enter Unfold. I discovered Unfold just over a week ago, and so far it’s brilliant; different effects and layouts, however it’s limited to a well-curated selection of fonts, colours and styling options. This really helps prevent it from being overwhelming. It also allows you to save individual pages, stories (more than one page) and lets you save these to re-edit – or re-use as templates – later on. Genius.

See my current image-edited goodness on my Instagram, including my artwork and other updates.

Which apps have changed your (image-editing) life? Share the wisdom in the comments below, or give me a shout on Twitter or Instagram.