How to Edit your Pictures with Airbrush

Don’t own a professional camera? Don’t have any clue what you’re doing when it comes to photography? No problem. I don’t own a professional camera either and less than a year ago, I had no idea what I was doing when it came to photography. I am by no means a professional now either, but I do like how my pictures turn out after editing them. I am someone who loves to travel and I take as many pictures as possible so that I have lasting memories of my trips. About two months into the pandemic, I was really bored during lockdown, so I decided to create a travel account on Instagram to share my pictures. All my pictures are taken with my iPhone and I honestly don’t feel the need to spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on a professional camera.

The first step to editing your pictures is to invest in a good app. Most people will choose Lightroom, but I prefer Airbrush. If you’ve never heard of Airbrush before, I highly recommend downloading the app so that you can try it out. I have the pro version, but there is a free version available as well. Here are the steps I take to edit all of my pictures. Start by opening the Airbrush app on your phone and selecting the picture that you want to edit. For a regular landscape picture, click on “Tools”, then “Enhance”. I love vivid colours, so I usually always increase the saturation of my pictures. I will also play around with both the contrast and temperature, until I’m satisfied with how my picture looks. If the original picture is dark, then I will also play around with the shadows and brightness. What is so great about this app is the eraser feature. So if I want to brighten some parts of the picture, but not all, I will use the eraser to remove the brightness from the unwanted areas. The eraser is especially important when it comes to editing a picture with a person in it. When increasing the saturation of an image with a person in it, their skin will turn orange, which does not look very natural at all. So you would then use the eraser to remove the saturation from the skin. Once I’m satisfied with my enhancements, I click on “Filter” and then choose the filter that looks best. Because I want my Instagram feed to look aesthetically pleasing, I often use the same filter. I click on the “Modern” filter set and then on the “Iceland” filter. I love the “Iceland” filter because it makes the blues in my pictures really pop. Here is a before and after picture, edited with Airbrush and using the “Iceland” filter:

This past fall, I did a series of posts on my Instagram where I used a different filter. Airbrush came out with a new filter pack, called “Fall”. Here are the steps I used to edit one of my favourite sunset pictures. First, I increased the saturation and because the original photo was so dark, I increased the brightness, then used the eraser tool to remove the added brightness to the entire sky area. From there, I clicked on “Filter”, went into the new “Fall” filter set and selected the “Autumn” filter. Here are the results of that simple edit:

As you can see, turning any picture that you take, even with just an iPhone, can yield amazing results with a few simple edits. It is all about having the right tools and learning how to use them. If you’re interested in seeing more of my travel pictures, you can find me on Instagram at @katietravelfit.