Celebrities Secretly Use These Apps to Improve Their Instagram Game

Social media is all about presentation. The pressure is on to look your best and to live your best life, even if just on Instagram. If anyone knows how to do this, it’s the celebrities with millions of followers. Hack their tricks and get the best celebrity apps on iPhone and Android.

To make this happen, phone apps that turn lifeless photos into near-National Geographic style images have been sprouting up all over the internet. Here are some of our favorite ones.

Facetune

App Store | Google Play

Facetune counts many famous personalities as users and fans. Instagram models, big-name celebrities, and influencers all use the famed editing app. The app's most famous users are the Kardashian family, whose selfies go through the app and are exported with no blemish or pore in sight. Khloe Kardashian once proclaimed, “Facetune is the best thing to bring to the table. It’s life-changing.”

The editing, enhancing, and retouching application's features are some of the most user-friendly out there, and the app's beauty lies in the fact that it's hard to overdo; making sure that you have a natural edit each time. There is the unmatched Smooth feature, which blurs almost anything to nothingness while leaving a natural finish. The Reshape feature, on the other hand, can minimize, maximize, or stretch anything to your liking. In 2016, Facetune launched Facetune 2 with more precise controls that are available through in-app purchases.

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MakeupPlus

App Store | Google Play

Marketed as a virtual makeup try-on app, MakeupPlus has evolved into a retouching app that can give you a full face of makeup right from your phone's camera. The app has numerous color and style options under these categories: lipstick, contour, eyelashes, eyebrows, hair color, faux freckles, and glitter. Being a try-on app, MakeupPlus partners with many brands and retailers to present users with real-world products. Charlotte Tilbury, Lime Crime, GLAMGLOW, Stila, and Clarins are just some of the brands that have partnered with the app. It's prized feature is AR Glam, where you can wear your makeup look in real time with the use of augmented reality filters.

IMAGE NICOLE LIMOS

Cymera

App Store | Google Play

If you're in need of an all-in-one photo editor then Cymera is the app for you. The app boasts 200 million users worldwide and has a multitude of features to make sure that your photo is practically art gallery worthy. Cymera offers slimming and softening beauty tools, selfie filters and effects, and camera shooting modes.

Under retouching, the app uses automatic face recognition technology to detect your features and easily lets you modify them: it enlarges your eyes, gives you a bigger smile, slims down your cheeks, whitens your teeth and eyes, and conceals blemishes. The body shaping function allows you to trim your waist, lift your hips, and define your legs.

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Snapseed

App Store | Google Play

IMAGE JOHN PATRICK MENESES

Google's powerful photo editing app has been around since 2011, but gained popularity only in the last few years. If all you need to do is some spot (or snap) edits, then this versatile piece of software is for you. The app combines most of the most commonly used photo editing tools and preset filters into one robust package. The most recent update now includes a more intuitive perspective tool, which automatically adjusts or corrects skewed lines for that perfect geometry of horizons and buildings—perfect for those who love to take photos of land and urbanscapes. Snapseed is also one of the few apps that has a camera RAW format support. Photos in RAW format have more flexibility in terms of editing.

Another nifty, lesser-known feature of the app is called “Stacks” which basically makes a list of all the edits you've made. This works better than simply undoing an action, as you can select which of the edits you need to adjust. You can also copy-and-paste these “stacks,” and apply them to other photos so you won't have to redo the same edits from scratch.

VSCO

App Store | Google Play

Probably everyone's favorite free app next to Instagram, VSCO is one of the most recommended photo editing apps. It's considered a must-have on your smartphone if you're serious about curating your Instagram feed. What makes VSCO very popular is its wide selection of filters. The free version of the app already comes with a great set of pre-installed filters, but you can also purchase more high quality presets, either individually or per bundle, via its in-app store. If you want to take it a step higher, avail of the VSCO X annual membership which provides even more access to enhanced tools and community content. VSCO can also work as a replacement camera app, with manual controls for ISO, shutter speed, and manual focus. And if you need inspiration, you can also follow other people via the explore tab.

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Spring

App Store | Google Play

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Spring can help you when you've had a photo taken from a bad angle. The easy-to-use app specifically does three important things to remedy a badly angled portrait—whole body slimming, head resizing, and height stretching. Whole body slimming works even when you're in a group photo, as the app also does a good job of making it still look natural. Head resizing and height stretching, on the other hand, are very useful for when your portrait has been taken from an angle that makes your head look slightly bigger or smaller, or when you look shorter or taller than usual. Just keep in mind not to overdo the adjustments so it doesn't look fake.