By Trey Carter
Motlow Buzz Contributing Writer
SMYRNA -- We live in a digital age where nearly everybody is online. People are obsessed with popular apps such as Instagram and sharing photos. We like to share photos to show off something we accomplished, someone we may have seen recently, or even something we may have created.
There’s a saying used often by this generation: “Pics or it didn’t happen.” In a way it implies that if someone can’t find a photo on your timeline or page, then it never happened. Of course this isn’t true. You don’t have to share every detail of your life online if you don’t want to.
If you like sharing photos to your Instagram page or your Twitter feed, you would want them to look very nice and clean. Not everyone can afford an expensive camera, and sometimes our phones just fail to take the perfect photos.
Thankfully, there is a simple and easy-to-use free app called VSCO. VSCO stands for Visual Supply Company, and it was founded by Joel Flory and Greg Lutze in 2011. This app essentially gives the user a second camera on their phone, and it allows you to play around with more settings when taking photos. The app also provides a sharing network built into it where you can publish your photos and even look at other people’s work. The app is fairly simple once you use it for a while, it provides you with tons of tools to help make your photos look amazing.
You can find the website for VSCO by using this link: https://vsco.co/. However, I highly recommend checking it out on the app store.
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| Shadows, taken at Motlow State Community College, Smyrna, Tenn. |
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| Cherry blossom trees, taken in the Ross parking lot in Murfreesboro, Tenn. |
For starters, when you first open the app, you come across a tutorial basically showing you where everything is and such. I would strongly recommend clicking through it rather than skipping it. Afterward, you are free to start taking photos of anything you want.
The camera is similar yet different than your usual iPhone or Samsung camera. When you tap on the screen, a red circle will appear. From there you can tap anywhere to shift the focus. Once the red circle turns green and you like what you see, you snap the picture. After you capture a photo, you can move onto editing and adding filters.
Editing in this app is very simple. When you look at your photo below, you have a small option bar, and you will see a button beside the save button. It looks like a scroll bar almost. Once you click on this, it will pull up all of the filters the app has to offer.
I highly recommend trying out all of the filters just to see if one can give your photo the extra pop it needs. Also, you can play around with the intensity of the filter by tapping again on the one you chose. This pulls up another menu that allows you to choose how much of the filter you want to use.
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| Flower in bloom, taken in my backyard, Murfreesboro, Tenn. |
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| Spring time flowers, taken in my front yard, Murfreesboro, Tenn. |
While the app gives you many great choices, there are also various filter packs you can buy through their store. You simply click the shop logo and it takes you to their store. Most of the packs cost money. However, it is usually pretty cheap.
Aside from adding filters, you can also play with various settings such as the exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows and many more. This can get a bit overwhelming at times, but the app makes it very simple by integrating a slide bar for you to make the changes on. You simply move your finger along the bar, and you will see the photo begin to change based on what you are doing. There is also a number placed above this bar to give you an exact value for how much of an edit you are making.
This app isn’t just limited to the photos you take. You can also import photos from your phone and edit those using these filters and tools.
This app also incorporates a helpful history feature. Perhaps you started editing a photo then stopped and came back to it later. You can easily pull up this tab and see what you did last. This feature can be extremely helpful when editing on the go or if you change your mind on something.
After you have a photo edited and ready to post, you can go to the menu at the bottom of the page to look for the three dots icon. This pulls up a short that allows you to share the photo on VSCO as well as other platforms, save to your gallery, copy your edits, or delete the photo. If you are looking to post this photo to other sites, it is best to save it to your phone’s gallery. If you are on a Samsung phone, it will create a new folder for the app in your gallery.
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| Keyboard, taken at Motlow State Community College, Smyrna, Tenn. |
If you are looking for a more-in-depth guide featuring tips and tricks, check out this article by clicking here: https://www.shopmoment.com/momentist/5-tips-for-better-editing-in-vsco If you check out this next article, you will find examples and tips from other users by clicking here: https://www.shopmoment.com/momentist/11-vsco-editing-tips-part-ii
If you are posting these photos to Instagram, I highly recommend using the hashtags #VSCO and #VSCOcam. These hashtags are essentially a collection of photos from the VSCO app or edited using it. You can find out more information by clicking here: https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-hashtag-VSCO-mean
Now let’s focus on the social network aspect of this app. It is similar to Instagram. However, it has less features. This app is somewhat how Instagram was before it added in more features from other apps such as direct messaging and stories. Through this network, you can follow people and favorite their photos. However, there is no area to comment on them. Also, you don’t really have a feed. There is an area on the app that’s titled collection. It changes often with the photos people upload.
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| Athena, taken at Bicentennial park, Nashville, Tenn. |
I feel like the social network area of this app is severely lacking. You don’t really get the sense of community you do on another app like Instagram. I like that it is a straight forward network truly based on sharing photos, but I would love the ability to comment on other people’s photos. To combat this, many users put their Instagram or Twitter user names in their bios on their profiles so other users can find them there. I rarely ever use this app for the social aspect, and I think that was the intention of the creators.
Overall, this app is very useful for all kinds of people. This includes amateur photographers who simply are not ready to move up to a real camera. Perhaps you forget your camera at home and still want to take a good and clean picture. Anyone can find a good use for this app and create some amazing photos.
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