You may have noticed that in all our articles about Facebook™ ads we keep repeating that visuals are the most important part of a successful ad. While copy has its role to get people to click on the ad, the photos or videos you use will stop them from scrolling and get their attention.
So, a big part of creating a successful Facebook™ ad campaign is the photo/video. There are two ways to go about if you want professional-looking photos and videos: hire a professional to take them or do a little DIY work to enhance your own visuals with editing tools.
Photo Editing – Now a Tap Away
Powerful smartphones inspired software developers to create complex photo editing mobile apps. They are not as rich in features as computer software, but at the same time, they do not need expert knowledge to use them. This means that anyone can edit the photos taken with their phone camera and turn them from meh to wow in just a few taps.
To help you make the best choice, we analysed some of the most popular mobile apps for photo editing. Finally, we selected these as our recommendations to help you create beautiful images for your Facebook™ ads:
Have you tried any of the following mobile apps below?
1. Afterlight
This mobile app is available for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. A more recent version, Afterlight 2, is available only for iOS at this moment. Even if you opt for the older version, you still get tons of useful tools and features to edit your photos.
You can alter colour saturation, brightness, contrast, and warmth. You can straighten a badly framed photo and you can apply one of the +120 pre-defined frames. Afterlight also offers many filters to change the mood of your photo and create a vintage or futuristic look.
The app is free to install but offers in-app purchases if you want to use advanced items and features.
2. Adobe Lightroom
The computer software version is used by professional photographers to edit their images. The mobile app for iOS and Android offers lots of optimisation and enhancement tools in a user-friendly interface.
What can you do in Adobe Lightroom? First of all, you can control your phone camera, by adjusting exposure, focus and other presets. Lightroom is capable of processing RAW photo files (taken with a professional DSLR camera) and making various edits, from simple colour corrections to complex overlays. This is the best tool for beginner photographers who want to improve their images and create crisp visuals for Facebook™ ads and other marketing materials.
Adobe Lightroom is free to use, but you have to subscribe to the premium plan (US $10 per month) if you want to sync your images across all devices and access advanced editing tools. The premium plan also offers you access to Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Classic.
3. PicsArt
PicsArt is your best friend when you are running out of time and inspiration. This mobile app helps you create beautiful images using their rich library of images which you can personalise by drawing over them, creating collages and memes.
The official website of the app contains hundreds of user-generated images that you can browse to find inspiration. PicsArt is free to install, but contains ads and offers in-app purchases. It is available for iOS, Android and Windows phones.
4. VSCO Cam
This mobile app is the ideal choice if you like to personalise images for Facebook™ ad campaigns with filters. There are lots of preset filters available in the free version to help you edit images varying from super crisp colours to a retro touch.
Using VSCO Cam is the easiest thing – just upload or select the photo from your phone gallery, apply the desired filter and you’re ready to use the photos in the Ad Creator platform on Facebook™.
VSCO Cam is available for iOS and Android smartphones.
5. Snapseed
Although this photo editing mobile app is created by Google, it is available both for Android and iOS phones. It is a free app packed with many useful photo editing tools, such as: colour, contrast and blur corrections, adding various effects (1960-style film reel, vintage photo) and layers, like in Adobe Photoshop.
In addition, the mobile app has a very clean and user-friendly interface, so you will learn to master all its tools and functions quickly.