6 Secret Steps to Nail Instagram Quality! - Photoshop Tutorial

[Music] if you're looking for a quick fix this video is not for you but if you really want to learn how to not only get the best quality possible but also how to make your images look amazing on instagram on a small screen which is so much more smaller than your monitor using a couple of photoshop tricks keep watching the goal is always to avoid compression by instagram and why is that because the engineers at instagram are fools not at all it is because instagram applies a general algorithm of compression to millions of photos which are uploaded there which is great for instagram what we want to do we want to customize the compression to make our image look the best today we can apply a series of effects and settings in photoshop if you have your images open up in lightroom you can simply right click on the image and choose edit in adobe photoshop cc 2019 or whatever version there is and then once we have our images open in photoshop we are ready to roll so without any further ado let's get started [Music] so here we are in the mystical world of photoshop and if you want to go ahead and download this photo and follow along check the links in the description the first thing we need to do is to make sure that the color space is srgb 8 bit and you can just simply click on this arrow right over there and select document profile it's also called color profile you can see it's not srgb it's pro photo rgb and if you save your images in profoto rgb and upload it to instagram the colors will change we don't want that to happen so first of all we need to convert it to srgb you can go to edit and then convert to profile right now as you can see it's pro photo rgb showing right here change it to srgb so you need to select srgb you can just scroll in it will be inside of this group select srgb and just hit ok this will be the first step that we have to do because we don't want to do this after we create a lot of adjustment layers because if you want to retain the colors it will have to flatten we don't want to flatten anything do it first hit ok the second thing that we have to do is to make sure it's 8 bit and for that we can go to image mode rgb is right make sure it's 8 bit done the first step finished before we move on to the second step i need to ask you one very simple question what is the background of instagram so when you are scrolling your images what is the color other than the image what is the ui color it's white right so right now we are looking at our image with a dark gray background when we change the background to white our images will totally look different for example let's have a look at it if we change the background to let's say black our images are looking pretty bright pretty vibrant amazing but instagram the background is white so if we change it to white make sure your select custom color is set to white and then when you choose custom color it will always be white so once you change this to white have a look image is looking a little dull so we need to keep the background in mind always whether you're submitting your images for an art gallery look at the color of the wall or whether it's online look at the color of the website in this case it's instagram instagram is white so right now we need to make some brightness adjustments to make it pop in instagram so create a curves adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer icon and then simply choose curves maybe we'll take this slider a little bit to the left like that okay and maybe this one a little bit to the right have a look here's the before here's the after just a little bit of pop you can take this to the left a little bit looks amazing always zoom out and look because your phone is very small other thing that you can do i cannot find my phone all right there it is so once you have your phone you can keep your phone right next to your image make your image that small and compare that's a great way to look at it now once you compare there are a couple of adjustments you can do to make it pop this brings us to our third step which is making little adjustments especially just for instagram to make your image pop in this case we're going to create a lookup table you can create anything you like just make it pop let's click on the adjustment layer icon and then let's choose color lookup i'm going to load my personal lookup table click on that click on load 3d lut i have something in folder instagram and it's in 3d lut 3dl format select that load looks amazing to me so i'm going to make it available for download if you want to check the links in the description if you want to download it this specific faded warm all right let's have a look at it we zoom out here's the before here's the after it's absolutely personal preference what you like now i'm going to place it below the curve and maybe decrease the opacity a little bit maybe increase it just a bit to add a little warmth see it's making the image pop this is just for instagram to make the colors more vibrant we can do one more thing let's create a selective color adjustment clip click on the adjustment layer icon and then choose selective color where did that go at the bottom there you go and put it at the top now we are in the reds we will play with cyan so decreasing the cyan would be increasing the reds let's zoom in quite a little bit let's decrease the sign as you can see it's becoming red but it needs to be a little dark so we will increase the black make sure it's relative just a little bit maybe 20 here 20 there so minus 20 on the cyan minus 22 and plus 21 on the blacks here's the before here's the after it adds a lot more punch especially to the red you can move to the yellow and do the same with the yellow over there okay and maybe let's try increasing it just a bit let's play with the blacks see more pop before after let's do it for the greens i think our eyes are a little green so we're going to choose green and what is the opposite of green magenta right so decreasing the magenta would add more greens to it let's zoom in over here see it's adding more if you increase the magenta see what happens maybe we will decrease the magenta and increase the blacks a little bit have a look here's the before here's the after you can also play with yellows maybe science decreasing the science help all right there we go we have made it a lot more vibrant so let's have a look at the before and after so this is the after and this is what we started with now our next step is cropping and resizing let's have a look at what instagram has to say when it comes to resolutions and cropping and aspect ratios let's have a look at this this is the article by instagram it says have a look photo aspect ratio is between 1.91 is to 1 and 4 is to 5. let's move on to photoshop just like so if you press c for the crop too it will support an aspect ratio from 1.91 is to 1 this wide to four point four by five so we change it to four and this one to five this no taller than that and no narrower than that which means is no narrower than one point nine is to one so if we have something like this we cannot go narrower than this let me just clear it up we cannot go narrower than this or we cannot go taller than four by five so we cannot go taller than this let me just clear it up we cannot go taller than this hope it makes sense so you can choose whatever aspect ratio you want in that range okay from this thing which was 1.91 is to 1 to this i'm not doing the exact measurement but you get the point now i want to use the maximum space available on the phone when you scroll and for that i'm going to use 4x5 because that's going to be the largest area it's going to take the largest area on the phone okay now i'm going to crop it to this hit enter or return once you're satisfied with it now it's time for us to resize don't worry about sharpening we're going to do that later next thing we need to do we need to go to image image size the width instagram says it is 1080 1080 make sure this one is clicked so that it maintains the aspect ratio one zero eight zero there we go resampling you can keep it automatic or you can keep it bicubic sharper reduction doesn't matter we can add sharpness later hit okay done this brings us to step number five which is sharpening let's just go ahead and create a merged layer or a stamp visible layer press ctrl alt shift e command option shift e everything you see on the canvas right now is created merged on a new lab now you can name this sharpen and then go to filter convert for smart filters this converts this into a smart object hit ok now once we do that we will go to filter other and then high pass now zoom out keep your mobile side by side zoom out and decrease the radius increase the radius to the point where you begin to see the details just begin to see the details for me it's going to be somewhere around 1.9 let's keep it 2 and hit change the blend mode to overlay okay now what we need to do is create a mask we don't want sharpening in the blurred out areas so we will take the brush foreground color black press x to toggle between the foreground and the background just paint away the areas where you don't want the sharpness you also don't want the sharpness over here too much all right this is looking pretty sharp pretty amazing now we want more sharpness in some certain other areas let's make a copy of the sharpen layer press ctrl or command j okay this time select the mask and turn it off hold the shift key click on it to turn it off momentarily double click on the high pass and this time increase its value to something like let's go 3.6 to 3.7 and this is just for the eyes and the other areas let's go for 4 or let's say 3.5 okay hit ok turn on the mask hold the shift key click on the mask to turn it on now if you want to turn the mask completely black press ctrl or command a to select all make sure the foreground color is black press alt backspace on windows option delete on a mac now this is completely black press ctrl or command d to deselect that take the brush with the foreground color white press x to toggle between the foreground and the background and then with a lower flow something around 20-ish just start painting on areas where you want to increase the sharpness so here you want a little bit of sharpness inside the eye here we need a little bit of sharpness if you zoom out it will be better because we're going to look at zoomed out small inside the phone not too much over there maybe a little over here little on the lips there we go have a look at the sharpening you can add as many layers of sharpening as you want and have a look at it it looks so tack sharp so amazing perfect for instagram so here's the before blurry not popping up and here is the after look at it now this brings us to the last step and that is exporting it's pretty easy to do you can go to file and then export and export as now instead of export as we want to avoid instagram compression right so first of all change the format to jpeg and we need to decrease the quality something in the 70 range is fine i usually go for 72.73 let's go for 73 hit enter now zoom into the image using the plus right over here if at 73 the image looks good fine if it doesn't you might want to increase the quality just a little bit so it's fine in this case make sure the width is 1080 scale is 100 and this should be checked convert to srgb we already converted it but just for safety in case you didn't do it just keep it checked no harm at it all right and once all of this is done just export all click on that and i'm going to save it on my desktop because i have a bonus tip for you example picks imperfect i'm gonna save it that way saved now time for the bonus tip so this is the pixel perfect instagram page and i'm gonna show you how to upload it to your instagram through your computer you don't have to put it on your phone and then upload it none of that all you got to do is this click on this points right over there more tools and then developer tools now inside of developer tools make sure you click on this button right over there toggle device toolbar it changes it into a phone now once you do that if you reload it have a look at instagram it is instagram on phone now you can click on the plus button right over there and then upload your photo from there so it was in desktop right there there was this image i'm just going to hit open and the crop is perfect you can just click on this button to make sure all of it is there and then just click on next and you can write your caption do whatever you want and click on share i'm not going to do it but you get the idea you can do it with your computer directly so that's pretty much it that's how to do it i hope this video helped you just keep in mind the six steps that you see on the screen right now you can pause it save a screenshot this is gonna help you i hope they do and if they do make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you don't miss any other feature tip trick or tutorial thank you so much for all your support thank you for watching i'll see you guys my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 2,064,767

Rating: 4.9339099 out of 5

Keywords: best photoshop export settings for instagram, instagram export settings, make images pop, best resolution for instagram, compress images, sharpening, post sharp photos on instagram, upload high quality pictures on instagram, color space, srgb, instagram resolution 2018, special effects, color lookup, lut, scaling, high pass, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: 4icVUO_nRQM

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 04 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/almathden]

Yearly reminder: If you aren't a filthy pirate and have a CC sub, you can just pull the images from a synced collection in LR Mobile ;)

edit since some people are unclear: Here is my now very old LRM video.

Basically, you can sync collections with LR Web (lightroom.adobe.com) and access them from LRW or LRM.

From there, open the image -> save to device -> 2048px -> done

[u/HaightnAshbury]

No chances of my account getting banned?

I remember a time when it was frowned upon to use third party apps to post to Instagram.

Or, perhaps that's never been the case.

This totally legit and supported by Insta?

[u/Yelov]

Most of my photos are shot in landscape, sometimes pretty wide crop and instagram doesn't like that. It absolutely destroys the resolution. Instagram is the worst platform for actually browsing photos, the quality is utter garbage.

[u/MthrFcknDanish]

I love his videos, they are very well planned, informative and of a high quality... But that monobrow man.. It's so distracting xD

[u/IIIBlackhartIII]

I've been able to do this, but I've never been able to get multi-image posts to work. I can select and upload a single photo, and that's it. Unfortunately, most of the uploads to Instagram I make are collections of photos- either collections from a single location, a collection of behind the scenes photo from a single film shoot, a collection of photos of a film prop I worked on... I don't really do single photo uploads, so this technique just doesn't work for me. I still have to go through the annoying process of transferring to a phone before I can upload, and then going back to my computer to do my sharing.

[u/thetuxracer]

I wish IG would allow me to check my inbox using this method too. Seems the user-agent spoofing only allows limited functionality of the platform.

[u/jubbing]

For those on windows 10 there is an Instagram app, I've never tried to see if there's a quality difference between transferring an image to your phone then via app or direct om win10 app. Anyone had any experiences to compare?

[u/haggur]

That looks like a lot of fiddling about (just tried it and I was getting break points when I reloaded the page).

We use the User-Agent Switcher for Chrome extension to pretend to be an iPad. Works fine, you're there in a couple of clicks, and you still get to use all of the browser window, not a mobile phone sized vertical letterbox.

[u/fryingpan18]

I started watching this video to get insight on something that might be a little beneficial but was surprised to finally have found a good tutorial on avoiding Instagram compression. Thank you!