An Extensive Guide on How to Make a Photo Editing App

It is an app that allows you to manipulate digital images to enhance their looks. These are further categorized into two types. Firstly, apps that enable you to apply simple effects. These are perfect for newbies.

Secondly, there are more sophisticated ones with advanced features that professionals use. Here is the list of top photo editing apps:

• Snapseed
• Adobe Photoshop Camera
• Pixlr
• Adobe Lightroom
• Google Photos

We have developed a user-friendly Photo Editor App for our client. This app allows users to add frames, overlay effects, and text into a photo.

There is not such a big difference between a regular photo editing app and a social photo editing app except for those features that allow you interaction within the app.

The social photo editing apps additionally allow you to share your photos in the app, view the photos of others, and like or comment on their photos also. Some of the top social photo editing apps available in the market include the following:

• Pic Collage.
• Studio.
• Aviary.
• WordSwag.
• Photo.
• Over.
• VSCO Cam.
• Fly.

After editing the images, users can store images in their desired formats. Applications allow saving photos in various formats like TIFF, JPEG, RAW, PNG, etc.

After saving their edited picture, users can share it on their social media accounts or directly on WhatsApp.

Here are some of the basic features that every photo editing app should have.

Upload Photo
The photo editing app should have complete access to the camera and photo gallery.

Basic Photo Editing
The app should have some basic features to improve the image and make it attractive. These features include adjusting several necessary elements, such as brightness, contrast, saturation, shadow, highlight, exposure, and warmth.

Crop, Resize, Rotate

The app should allow the user to rotate, resize and crop images to the size needed for social media apps.

It should enable users to crop images in various aspect ratios like 3:2, 4:3, 5:4, 7:5, 16:9, etc. These aspect ratios would allow users to crop the photo that fits for Facebook cover, the Instagram story, or Twitter post.

Apply Filters
The photo editing app should come with filters that allow users to edit the page with just one click. Users can further make changes to the image by manually changing the contrast, transparency, color saturation, exposure, and more.

Form a Collage
The app should have a collage maker with 10-15 layouts for free. To get additional layouts, users have to pay a premium.

Remove Unwanted Objects
It should have a healing or removal feature that would allow users to remove any unwanted things in the image. These include people, buildings, spots in the sky, shadows, wires, and so on.

Save and Share
The app should have a feature that allows users to save the edited image. Further, they can easily share it on email, messages, or social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook.

In addition to the basic features, some popular photo editing apps also come with some advanced features as follows.

Profile Creation
The photo editing app should allow users to create a profile. Creating a profile allows you to offer a multitude of targeted benefits to the users.

You can offer more personalized push notifications to retarget the users effectively. Here, you can send a tailor-made offer that is more relevant to a specific user for in-app purchases based on his/her activity.

The personal profile should have some essential fields that include the following:

• SignUp
• Login
• Upload photo
• Change username

Personalized Feed
The personalized feed is also called the home screen in many cases. The user can see famous and promoted posts on the discover screen.

Push Notifications
Push notification allows the app to retarget those users who have not used the app for a long duration. Furthermore, it can also be used to advertise new filters, effects, and other content for monetization purposes.

Social Interactions
Some of the top photo editing apps allow you to not only chat but also share and edit photos collaboratively with other users of the app online. You can interact with others by making comments on other people’s posts, giving likes as well as following your favorite users’ posts.

Integration of AI and AR
Using AI helps in improving the functionalities of the photo editing app significantly. The AI can give different options to the users for editing the app based on neural filters. This will make the photo editing faster and also improve the quality.

You have to do comprehensive research about similar apps available in the market. This study will assist you in determining which of your competitors’ apps have unique features and how you may incorporate them into your app.

Choose five popular photo editing apps and list their features to know what features you should include in your app and which ones you should discard.

After looking at the leading photo editing apps, choose the primary features you want to integrate into your photo editing app.

Besides this, integrate some unique features that are not present in the existing apps in the market.

The next step is to hire a team of professionals who create your photo editing app. You have two options: Hire an In-house team or outsource your project to a mobile app development company.

If you choose to hire in-house professionals, you need to invest a massive amount in hardware, software, etc. Moreover, it will consume a massive amount of time.

If you choose to outsource your project, you save time and money. Moreover, the mobile app development company you select has prior experience building mobile apps. Hence, they can easily convert your vision into reality. If you do not have much idea about outsourcing, check this blog on how to outsource app development.

There are various things involved in the technology stack of a mobile app. You need to choose a technology stack considering the requirements of your mobile app and your budget.

Let us look at some essential tools that you can consider for the tech stack of your Android or iOS app.

• If your purpose is to store users’ data in the cloud, you can utilize Azure, Amazon S3, or Google Cloud storage.
• If you want to speed up the signup process via social media, you can integrate popular APIs of Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
• To provide push notifications to the users, you can utilize popular services like OneSignal, Firebase Cloud Messaging, Amazon SNS, or Urban Airship.
• To get analytics, offer customer support or set up monetization, you can use the Facebook Mobile SDK.

Since the main aim is to earn a healthy profit by creating the application, you will need to figure out how to make money with your app.

Here we will give you three different monetization strategies. You can use it either individually or in combination to get optimal profit.

Paid apps
As the name suggests, you can pitch your photo editing app as a paid app.

This strategy would be successful only if your app has some unique features. Firstly, these features are not present in any of the competitor apps. Secondly, your target audience needs these features for editing their photos.

While starting your journey, you can also offer a free trial of your photo editing app to the users. It helps them understand how your app works and how it is better than other such apps. It will encourage them to buy the app when the trial period is over.

In-App Purchases
It is another popular business model wherein you offer the app for free but restrict some premium features which the users can access by paying some money.

Advertisements
In this monetization strategy, you offer the app to your end-users for free and run some ads in the app. If you want to employ this method, make sure the adverts are placed in such a manner that they do not bother the user.

Besides this, you can integrate various other monetization methods into your mobile app.

You should start with an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to test the demand for such an app in the market.

It allows you to check the financial viability of the app you are creating without investing a massive amount of money.

Based on the feedback from the users, you can update your MVP regularly and convert it to a full-fledged photo editing app.

Just developing the app is not enough. You have to sell it to your audience by pitching it as one of the best photo editing apps available in the market.

You must advertise your app on various platforms so that your target audience becomes aware of it. Let them know about its key features and how it differs from other photo editing apps.

After you have developed your app and done marketing, it is time to launch your photo editing app on the relevant app store.

Your work is not over after this. You should take feedback from the users and update it regularly. By doing this, you can make your photo-editing app successful.