10 Tips To Improve Instagram Filters

Post Summary: Hi! My name is Mick. I’m a content creator who’s worked with several tourism campaigns on Instagram over the years. In this article, we will go over 10 tips you can use to improve your Instagram filters !

How Instagram Filters Can Improve Your Digital Brand

It may sound silly to some, but creative tools like Instagram filters can if done correctly, help take your Instagram game to the next level. Instagram filters can make a difference on an Instagram feed looking like an amateur or a professional, polished look.

Having a polished Instagram feed establishes your digital brand, which is so crucial for many influencers looking for Instagram sponsorships, digital nomads who use the platform as their online job for clients, or online entrepreneurs monetizing Instagram through selling their products. 

And even if you are using Instagram for personal use, knowing how to use Instagram filters correctly could potentially lead more followers if you have a consistent visual appeal on your Instagram feed. 

Additionally, having an online brand allows you to create a cohesive experience across your social profiles. It includes brand colors, voice, visual guidelines, and everything else that distinguishes your brand on social media.

And I can’t stress enough how having a visual style and brand helped me land several tourism campaigns over the years. Knowing how to use Instagram filters can help you do just that. 

The free Instagram filter tools are perfect for beginners in photography and have little experience with editing photos. It’s built right on Instagram and is a great resource to make small adjustments to help your content stand out from Instagram users scrolling their feed. 

Many prefer to emulate the Instagram feed of popular influencers by buying their Instagram presets. However, some of these presets can cost an arm and a leg. It is important to know that Instagram filters can still be a great alternative – you need to know how to use it most effectively!

Understanding the Different Types of Instagram Filters

The free Instagram filter gives you a good starting point for learning how certain adjustments affect a photo’s tones and colors. 

There are 20 over different free Instagram filters for you to test, with each filter having the ability to create a mood on your feed. 

To create a strong visual appeal on your Instagram feed, I highly recommend sticking with one or two Instagram filters consistently, and making the necessary adjustments if needed. 

Below are some of the best Instagram filters that can undoubtedly boost your feed, and ten tips on how to further improve them!

Instagram Filter #1 – Normal

Believe it or not, sometimes a picture doesn’t need to be messed around with a filter. 

More often than not, we are tempted to make unnecessary adjustments to a photo or video that is perfect by itself. There are certain tactics and tricks you can use to make slight adjustments on pictures without using the Instagram filter. 

How to Improve ‘Normal’ Filter:

If you feel like your image captures the right mood with the colors and hues, you can make slight adjustments such as adjusting the saturation, brightness, or adding effects like ‘Structure.’

Instagram Filter #2 – Clarendon 

The Clarendon filter enhances light to lighter areas and dark to darker areas. As a result, the filter brightens, highlights, and intensifies shadows, making colors from your photography or video stand out and pop. 

How to Improve ‘Clarendon’ Filter:

Whenever I use the Clarendon filter, I tend to make slight adjustments to the ‘Highlight’ to tweak the focus on the bright areas slightly. 

Instagram Filter #3 – Valencia

The Instagram filter, Valencia, gives your content a bit of old-school flair by injecting yellow tint, which adds a bit of warm tone to the overall look. 

How to Improve ‘Valencia’ Filter:

It’s seldom that I adjust the Valencia Instagram filter whenever I use it. If needed, I mostly play around with the ‘Structure’ or ‘Highlight’ effects to bring additional details out of the image. 

Instagram Filter #4 – Gingham

The Gingham Instagram filter creates a vintage vibe to your content by taking some color out of your photo or video, mostly reducing the highlights and saturation levels, and by adding a bit of warm haze to create the overall mood. 

How to Improve ‘Gingham’ Filter:

If you want to further the vintage look of your photo with the Gingham filter, I suggest playing with the ‘Highlight’ effect. As you can see from the screenshot above, I reduced quite a bit of the effect, adding a more vintage vibe to the photo. 

Instagram Filter #5 – Juno

The popular Juno Instagram filter is rather simple and doesn’t make a ton of dramatic adjustments to your image or video. This filter plays with the saturation of your image and intensifying the red and yellow hues. The Juno filter would work well for outdoor, scenic pictures. 

How to Improve Juno Instagram Filter Tip:

Adjust the ‘Vignette’ to add further depth to your image. From the picture above, you can see how the vignette darkens the edges and brings attention to the center of the image. 

Instagram Filter #6 – Mayfair

Mayfair Instagram filter is an excellent fix for pictures that are brightly lit or a bit underexposed. This popular filter gives instant warmth to any content, which will make your image pop if you use predominantly cool colors.

How to Improve ‘Mayfair’ Filter:

For the image above, I am content with the way the Mayfair filter improved the original photo. But if I wanted to make slight adjustments with the Mayfair filter, I find making minor adjustments to ‘Contrast’ and ‘Structure’ as quite useful. 

Instagram Filter #7 – Ludwig

Instagram users particularly like the Ludwig filter for the specific types of color tones it brings out, specifically decreasing contrasts and increasing specific colors to make it pop.

How to Improve ‘Ludwig’ Filter:

I find adjusting the “Warmth” of the Ludwig filter to be quite dramatic. The effect gives the foreground a cooler blue tone, which makes the color of the leaves pop even more. 

Instagram Filter #8 – Lark

The Lark filter is an excellent remedy for images that need instant brightness, or images that might be a little bit too saturated, and need to “tone-down” a bit. 

How to Improve ‘Lark’ Filter:

For the image above, I use the ‘Fade’ effect to give some aged illusion or more of a ‘Polaroid’ type of effect. 

Instagram Filter #9 – Hudson

Unfortunately, the Hudson filter usually gets a bad rep because it can make a perfectly ‘ok’ picture into something ‘flat.’ 

This filter uses a bit of overexposure to certain parts of the content, taking out the contrast between light and dark, ultimately taking some depth into the picture and giving a ‘flat’ illusion. 

If used correctly to the right image, can turn your ‘good’ picture into ‘great!’

How to Improve ‘Hudson’ Filter: 

To avoid the image looking ‘flat,’ I use the “Structure” effect to bring out some of the photo’s details and texture. This effect also brings out some of the shadows, which adds depth to the picture. 

Instagram Filter #10 – Aden

I like the Aden filter quite a lot because it keeps it simple, yet adds a bit of mood to the content. 

This Instagram filter slightly desaturates your images, giving it a softer and pastel look.

How to Improve ‘Aden’ Filter:

For the image above, I chose the ‘Warmth’ effect to enhance the warm colors without losing the image’s soft and pastel vibe. 

Now that you have a better idea about the best Instagram filters, don’t be afraid to make minor adjustments to improve your content!