Bookstagram 101: Improving The Quality of Pictures

Have you ever felt frustrated because maybe your photos were darker in some areas? It's always too dark for pictures? Maybe your photos look too yellowish? Or maybe you don't like how the picture turned out? Then you've come to right place...

   Now I don't claim to be some expert or genius when it comes to taking bookish pictures. I'm merely learning as I go along. But I think it's already been a year from being nonchalant to actually caring how my Instagram feed looks. And I've made mistakes and have learned a lot.

   Don't give up if you feed doesn't become instantly gorgeous. It'll take time. After all, this is a learning process.

   Unless you're some kind of photographer robot. Or were born with extreme talent. Otherwise, sit back and prepare to take notes!

 Take Photos While The Sun Is Up/Natural Lighting Is Key

   If you live somewhere where the weather is always cloudy and gloomy, I suggest taking photos around 11AM to 5AM. Those are the times when it's the most brightest. I don't recommend taking photos during the night since photos start to lose quality and look gritty/grimy.

   Of course there are those professional lights but why waste so much money when you can just patiently wait to take photos during the day? :D 

Night

   Notice how the color of my bed sheet changes from when I take it during the night to when I take it during the day...

Day

   The books in the night picture don't look as clear unlike when I take it during the day in which they do. And my bed sheet's natural color is showing.

Take hundreds of shots until you find the right photo and then edit! 😅😵🙆📲 

   I do my usual editing with the editing tools that my iPhone 5s provides after taking the photo as you can see in the photo below. I stick with the same tools and the same exact measurement so my photos can match.

   Then I upload the photo onto Face-tune to smoothen and whiten certain areas.

Face-tune

   Now this is an iTunes app that allows you to whiten a photo up and gets rid of any yellowish spots. Unfortunately, it only works for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users. But if you own any of those, I highly recommend you try this app. Though the app is $3.99USD so it is a little bit of an investment but it's very worth it.

   It's an absolute lifesaver and it's definitely one of the reasons the quality of my photos have changed. I use it all the time now!

   There are also some other cool features along with the whiten tool. The ones I mostly use are Whiten, Smooth, Defocus, and Details features

   The Whiten feature can be tricky at times because the way this app works is you use your fingers to touch the areas of the photo you want to touch up. Using the Whiten tool can erase any color in the photo so be careful!

   Let me show you an example when I use the Whiten tool...

Before

After

   See doesn't it look so much better after I whiten the background up. I also purposely took the color away from my socks because I didn't have any white and black striped socks and wanted to match with my bookmark.

   If you loved this post, I also made one on how I personally take my posts, which you can find here. I'll also be making numerous Bookstagrammer recommendations because there's so many beautiful accounts out there!

   What do you think? Was this very helpful? Do you have any questions? Leave your thoughts/questions in the comments below and I'll try to answer as best as I can.