Best Instagram Filters To Give Your Posts Some Extra Charm

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Karen Lin

Instagram Tips | Sep 25, 2023

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Filters are one of the most exciting features on Instagram. There are tons of different types of filters to help spruce up your content. There are photo filters to enhance the look of pictures and AR filters to make selfies ten times more fun. In the platform, you can find tons of filters to play around with. Today, we’ll take a look at the best Instagram filters you can use.

Using Instagram filters is a fun, creative way to boost your content’s visual appeal. They’re also great for elevating your aesthetic with a consistent feel and mood for your photos throughout your page. These built-in pre-set filters are perfect for those who don’t know how to edit pictures but want high-quality content.

Today, our mission is to help you find the perfect filter, whether it’s for your photo collection or Instagram Stories. Let’s look at some of the best ones on the platform to spruce up your photos and videos.

Having the same filter across all your photos will make your Instagram feed look more cohesive.

Popular Photo Filters for Feed Posts

Let’s start with photo filters—those pre-set filters you can choose from when you post a feed photo. Instagram currently has dozens of unique and awesome photo filters available on the interface. Each one brings its pizzazz and personality to your photos.

Here are some of the most popular photo filters you’ll see on the app:

·   Clarendon: This is many people’s favorite filter. It adds a cool, blue tint to your photo while boosting its contrast. It’s perfect for snowy landscapes and winter content.

·   Gingham: This filter makes your post look warmer and more vintage for that nostalgic feel. It also adds a light, white vignette around the photo for a faded look.

·   Moon: This filter is the app’s classic black-and-white filter. It will be your go-to if you’re trying to make your feed look as monochromatic and minimalist as possible.

·   Juno: If you want to add warm tones like pink and orange to your photo, this is the filter for you. It also increases the contrast, making it more dramatic.

·   Slumber: This subtle filter softens your image and gives it a faded, dreamy look. It also brings out the lighter and more pastel shades of your content.

·   Lo-Fi: This filter boosts color saturation and contrast, making your photos and videos pop. It’s fantastic if you want to build a vibrant Instagram feed.

·   X-Pro II: Add a strong vignette to your photos using this filter to get that retro photograph vibe. It also boosts your photo’s contrast, making it striking and intense.

You can find these filters in the filter gallery when you create and edit a new feed post. For all you know, using one of these filters will get you your most liked photo on Instagram.

Choose from the different filters when you upload a feed post.

Best Instagram Story Filters for a More Aesthetic Look

Instagram Stories are the perfect type of content for daily updates and interactions with your followers. There’s not much pressure to curate your Stories and make them aesthetically pleasing since they expire after 24 hours. However, some people still enjoy making the Stories look as pretty as possible.

One way to make your Instagram Stories look polished and put together is by using one of the editor’s built-in filters. Here are just some of the best Instagram Story filters that will spruce up your posts:

·   Paris: This subtle filter adds a soft blur to your photo, making it perfect for enhancing skin tones in your selfies. It also adds a lighter tone to your content.

·   Oslo: This photo filter boosts your photo’s exposure to make it brighter. It also adds warm tones to give your Stories a comfy, homey, rustic vibe.

·   Tokyo: If you want dramatic, monochromatic photos, this is the filter for you. It turns your photos black and white while increasing its contrast to boost the appearance of shadows.

·   Jaipur: As this Indian city is often referred to as the “Pink City,” this filter has strong pink, warm tones. It also brightens up your photos for a lively and vibrant ambiance.

·   New York: This filter adds a darker tone to your photos, as well as a moody vignette. It is amazing for skyscrapers and urban views.

You can see these photo filters and many other options in the Story Editor on Instagram. Just swipe to the left and right to see what the filters look like on your photos. When you’re happy with the filter you picked, publish the photo or video on your Story.

You can find Story filters on the Story Editor, where you can also add text, music and stickers to your post.

Best Instagram Filters for Guys Who Want a Moody, Minimalist Vibe

Most filters on Instagram brighten up your photos and boost color saturation for a vibrant look. And while aesthetics aren’t gender-specific, it’s women who usually gravitate towards these photo styles. So, what are the best Instagram filters for guys who want something either more minimalistic or edgier?

For Instagram Stories, the best ones for guys include New York, Oslo and Lagos. If you’re looking for a more dramatic filter to make photos look moody and grungy, go for New York. If you want warm tones that will make your images pop, try Oslo. Lagos, on the other hand, is perfect for those clean, minimalist Instagram feeds.

Meanwhile, for feed posts, guys might enjoy Moon and Clarendon. Moon is the ultimate black-and-white filter that will look good for men who want to make their photo collection monochromatic. Clarendon will add that boyish blue hue to your photos for added charm and coolness.

That said, you don’t have to limit yourself to these filters if you’re a guy. Any in-house Instagram filter will work beautifully with your photos. You just have to know which ones will work best with your ultra-specific aesthetic.

Augmented Reality: Best Instagram Face Filters Customized by Others

Photo filters aren’t the only filters you can use on Instagram. One of the biggest Instagram trends today is augmented reality (AR) filters on Stories. These filters augment what you see behind the camera and add loads of fun and surprising elements to your content.

AR filters augment how your face looks and even allow you to play games onscreen. Creators and designers usually build these filters and then upload them on the app for everyone to use.

These filters usually reflect current beauty standards, makeup trends and cool aesthetic styles. They allow you to make your selfies, photos and videos look interesting and eye-catching without the need for filter apps.

You can see all the AR filters on Instagram in the effects gallery. You’ll find this gallery at the bottom of your in-app camera screen. Simply browse through this gallery to see the latest filters that are making waves online. The filters are broken down into categories like Games, Humor and Trending effects.

Want to find the best Instagram face filters that use augmented reality? Here are some of our top recommendations, depending on your needs.

The Instagram effects gallery shows you all the different filters you can use on Stories and Reels.

See Yourself in a Different Light: Best Instagram Filters for Selfies

First, let’s look at the best Instagram filters for selfies. Filters can make your regular selfies a lot more interactive and interesting by adding beautiful or wacky elements to them. This makes your content more entertaining, thus driving engagement through likes and replies to your Stories. It also adds a storytelling element to your content, which can drive more video views.

If you love cute, girly elements in your selfies, check out this Glitter and Blue Devil filter by rahmamqf. It covers your face in sparkly glitters while enhancing your skin tone. You also get little blue devil horns on the top of your head.

AR filters can also change the way your face works in your Stories. One filter that can do that is the Cartoon Princess filter by paigepiskin. This photo filter shows you exactly how you would look if you were a baby Disney princess. It makes your face look smaller, and your eyes look wider for that classic Disney look. You can also change your eye colors from blue to green to brown and so on.

Pair your photos with fun captions for selfies, and you’re ready to engage your followers with these quirky Instagram Stories!

A kid using a fun Avatar filter while taking a selfie on Instagram Stories.

Instagram Filters That Double as Fun Games

Another type of popular Instagram filter on Stories is game filters. These allow you to play games in real-time as your camera records you. These are awesome for engagement, especially if your followers want to try the game themselves after seeing your Story.

One viral Instagram game filter is Guess the Country by lestermanalo. This filter shows you a random combination of emojis, from which you must try to encode a country.

Another interesting one is Word Scramble by gu_christopher. The filter shows you a bunch of scrambled letters. You then have eight seconds to figure out what word the letters spell out.

Dad and daughter laughing and bonding over Instagram game filters.

Best Beauty Filters on Instagram To Make You Look Snatched

When people take selfies, they want to look as flattering as possible. They want their skin tones and textures to be enhanced and improved. Some people even go above and beyond by downloading filter apps to make their faces look prettier on camera. But did you know that there are filters on Instagram that can already do this for you?

The best beauty filters on Instagram make your face look snatched and perfectly made up. They alter your eyes, face shape, lashes and even the contours of your bones in mere seconds.

These photo filters come in handy whenever you want to post a quick Story but haven’t gotten out of bed. Just select the beauty filter you want, and you’ll automatically look like you did your makeup for the day.

One that comes highly recommended is Makeup Touchup by paigepiskin. It gives you that trendy, clean makeup look with smooth skin, long and feathery lashes, and a touch of blush.

If you’re looking for a bolder makeup look, try the 3D Makeup filter by the same designer. This gives you a more striking and dramatic face, complete with winged liner, contour, deep eyeshadow and luscious lipstick.

Do you love how your face looks with these filters? Feel free to use them as your profile picture afterward to make a fabulous first impression!

Beauty filters can boost your confidence when taking selfies on Instagram.

Best Instagram Filters for Reels To Elevate Your IG Aesthetic

You can also use AR filters for Instagram Reels to make them stand out. You can use face filters like those mentioned above. But some filters can elevate your Instagram aesthetic and make it look trendier and more polished. Here are the best Instagram filters for Reels if you want to style your videos in a specific aesthetic:

·   Vertical Palette by the.spacegal: The filter creates a color palette from the hues in your video or photo and places it against the screen.

·   Cute Camera Roll by corinthsuarez: Shows a grid of nine different frames, each a new angle of where your camera is facing. It arranges these frames into what looks like a camera roll.

·   Moody Sparkles by corinthsuarez: Adds sparkles all over the screen while lowering the exposure and color saturation of your photos and videos.

Experiment With Filters To Make Your Content Intriguing and Interesting!

Slapping a filter on your feed photos or Instagram Stories and Reels is an easy way to elevate its look. Photo filters are excellent for making your pictures and video clips more beautiful. Meanwhile, AR filters make your Stories and Reels way more exciting and interactive, helping to boost engagement.

Some people may think using filters is just a “shortcut” to getting stunning photos. But that’s not a bad thing. By using your favorite filter over your photos and videos, you can make aesthetically appealing content while engaging your followers. Without a doubt, it’s one of the best tools on Instagram for creative self-expression.

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