It seems like this has been the week of Instagram! The theme for our Tuesdays Together this week was all about IG, and then next wee the Rising Tide Society is hosting a five-day Insta challenge. With as quickly as IG is rising to the top of the social media pyramid, it makes sense why so many people are talking about it. Instagram offers more quality content than Facebook, without that obnoxious algorithm that keeps popping up unwanted information in your newsfeed.

As a photographer, there are a few apps I’ve found that make planning my Instagram strategy so much easier! I’ll bet you thought the IG app itself was enough, didn’t you? It can be, but I’m all about simplifying systems and making them faster, and here are the top five apps that help me do that:

1) PASS. It’s what I use to deliver the final galleries to my clients (via my laptop or desktop computer), and the added bonus is that they also have an app! Within the app is every. single. gallery I’ve ever uploaded to PASS. Every anniversary session, wedding, even our personal photos- because each PASS event is online for 10 years, I don’t have to worry about my events getting deleted after a year.

It’s PERFECT for when I’m on the go and want to share a professional image from a past event-for example, I was out yesterday and realized that Jake & Abby’s wedding was published on Style Me Pretty that morning (YAY!), and I wanted to share about it on IG. So all I had to do was search the app for their wedding, pick the image I wanted, and download it. Easy as pie!

2) VSCO- it’s what I use for all of my iPhone shots! I use the same editing process every time to ensure consistency in my feed. And I like that I can upload straight from the app into Instagram.

3) DropBox- I use DB when I want to share a preview from something I haven’t finished yet. I’ll export a preview from LightRoom straight into a folder marked “Previews” in DB. Because I also have the DB folder on my phone, all I have to do after that is save the image from DB to my phone’s photo album. I’ve heard AirDrop is also good for that kind of thing, assuming you have a Mac- I’ve just never used it.

4) Squaready- I don’t always love that Insta wants to crop my photos into a square, so whenever I want to preserve the dimensions of a rectangular image, I upload it first to Squaready. It pops my photo onto a white square background first, and then sends that to Instagram!

5) Latergramme- this is one I use sparingly (because I typically forget to post ahead of time), but it’s great for when you need to prep a few images before it’s time to post them on IG! Because IG’s user agreement states that you’re not allowed to schedule posts (nor are you allowed to use a third party to do so), Latergramme is a great solution- you choose your photo, write your text, and then tell the app what time you want to post that particular image + text. Then, whenever it’s time for the post to go live, you get a notification on your phone from Latergramme- all you have to do is swipe to the side, and it’ll upload to IG for you. Perfect solution for if you’re going to be away on vacation and don’t want to be bothered to come up with material while you’re laying on the beach.

What about you guys? Do you have a favorite app that makes using Insta just a bit more streamlined or enjoyable?