10 Apps That Will Upgrade Your Instagram Pics

Impress your friends and wow your enemies with these pic-enhancing apps. Check out Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs, king of apps, in Jobs, hitting theaters August 16.

1. Over

Emily Steele

Over is a great app for adding text and small doodles to your photos. With options for alignment, color, and opacity, and a curated selection of designer fonts, this app is one of the most full-featured user-friendly text apps.

Pros: All the original fonts are stylish. No Comic Sans.

Cons: New fonts and design packs aren't always free.

Price: $1.99

2. Slow Shutter Cam

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Slow Shutter Cam allows you to mimic a long exposure, creating motion blurs or light trails. The best examples of this involve resting the phone on a steady surface, as any movement of the phone will blur the background.

Pros: Intuitive and easy to use.

Cons: Requires a really steady hand, no iPhone 5 support.

Price: $.99

3. AfterLight

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Afterlight's best feature is its light leak overlays, which can add lens flares, light bursts, and various developing "errors" that give your digital shots a retro film feel. It also features multiple frame shapes (think circles, octagons, hearts) with adjustable opacity.

Pros: Original light leak effects

Cons: Locks some features behind a Facebook "like" wall

Price: $.99

4. Snapseed

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On Snapseed, you can adjust the contrast, brightness, and saturation on either the whole image or on selected image points. This ability to fine-tune and its intuitive swipe and pinch controls set Snapseed above other photo editors.

Pros: Advanced editing that is really easy to use.

Cons: Frames used to be customizable, updates removed this feature.

Price: Free

5. pxl.

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While pxl. doesn't have a ton of features or options, it is unmatched in crating graphic and abstract art out of your quick phone shots.

Pros: Multiple options for pixel size and design.

Cons: High-res pdf support is a paid add-on

Price: $.99

6. Superimpose

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Superimpose is an app that blends together two pictures. You can use superimpose to add subtle textures or artistic non-realistic effects (see above), or it can be used for light photomanipulation (think putting your dog's head on your best friend's body).

Pros: Really customizable options for blending photos

Cons The app layout can be a little confusing

Price: $.99

7. Split Lens

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Split Lens allows you to quickly and easily take and splice multiple photos of yourself for a clone effect.

Pros: Easy to use

Cons: Free version is limited and requires a paid upgrade

Price: Free (Pro version is $1.99)

8. Facetune

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Facetune is great for getting your best selfie ever. It offers features specifically geared to improving a portrait, like teeth whitening, eye brightening, and background blurring. One of the best features is the patch tool, which covers blemishes by cloning an area of clear skin (versus other apps that simply blur and color match).

Pros: The patch tool can be used for everything from tattoo removal to covering bald patches.

Cons: Going too far can create obvious and freakish results.

Price: $2.99

9. Pic Stitch

Emily Steele

While there are many collage apps on the market, Pic Stitch has a few features that make it unique. The first is the solo picture option--you don't have to be collaging to use Pic Stitch, and it allows you to choose the framing of non-square photos. The second is splash, the effect shown above. You can free paint original color back into a black & white image, or use "smart color," which selects the area you are trying to repaint with surprising accuracy.

Pros: Really full featured--lots of layout options for collages.

Cons: Lots of ads.

Price: Free

10. FoodShareFilter

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FoodShareFilter adds a quick border to your foodstagram shots, courtesy of NGO Manos Unidas. All proceeds from the app benefit the fight against world hunger.

Pros: Makes you feel like a good person.

Cons: Makes everyone that follows you feel like a bad person.

Price: $.99

Catch Ashton Kutcher as app-inventor Steve Jobs:

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