What you should know about VSCO editor?

People who like mobile photography should be familiar with VSCO editor (called VSCO Cam in the early days). When it was just released, VSCO only included a few filters. Today, it has included hundreds of filters and powerful post-production functions, making it the first choice for countless mobile phone photographers.

If you are new to VSCO editor and are unfamiliar with the basic functions, or do not know what to choose with a large number of filters. Don't worry, this article will help you to get started with VSCO in the shortest time. 

Brief Introduction of VSCO Editor:

When you use VSCO for the first time, you will find that the App is mainly composed of three parts: filters, editing tools, and posting community.

• Filters are the basics of VSCO. Because of its high-quality film simulation effects, it has captured the hearts of many photography enthusiasts.

• Editing tools include a series of functions, cropping, deformation, contrast, brightness, etc. It can be regarded as an extension of the VSCO filter. When you use a certain filter, it still feels a little bit different than the effect you want, you can use the editing tools to manually adjust it.

• Posting Community, officially called VSCO Feed. You can share your edited photos, which is also convenient for everyone to communicate together.

• Here is an tutorial video made by Jamdaybook on how to take and edit photos with VSCO.

Filters:

The reason that VSCO is suitable for everyone is that it provides hundreds of filter presets, so that everyone can get good-looking pictures  that matches their preference.  Find more detailed information about preset collection, visit the VSCO website. You could also view and try out the available presets recipes on the VSCO collection page.

Filter selection method 1: "Favourites"

• Because there are too many filters, it is very time-consuming to try every filter.  If we feel that particular effect looks good during the retouching process, we can add the filter to our favourite collection. We can jump to our favourite preset for the future editing process for a consistent style.

Filter selection method 2: "For this photo"

• When a photo is imported into VSCO, the software will analyze the image and give recommended filters. Sometimes the effect is good and can be used as an alternative, and it is a great way to discover new styles.

Editing Tools

Tone adjustment:

Those functions include exposure, contrast, and tone. Those functions are all about adjusting the brightness and darkness as well as the highlights and shadows in the picture to restore the details of the brightest and darkest areas in the picture.

Tips: 

• Increasing the contrast will make the bright areas of the picture brighter, and the dark areas darker. The highlights and shadows are two magic tools to help you restore the details of the highlights and shadows.
• Increasing the contrast will not only affect the tone but also increase the saturation of the picture.
• The exposure adjustment not only affects the tone of the picture but also affects the brightness and saturation of the colour of the picture.

Hue Adjustment:

Those functions include white balance, saturation, split tone and HSL adjustment. White balance can be understood as a colour balance. The adjustment of the white balance is equivalent to applying coloured light to the photo, which can change the warm and cold feeling and the colour tendency of the picture. As for saturation, it is about colour density. 

The split tone is a function of colouring the highlights and dark areas. The so-called cold-warm contrast is also used here.  In addition, HSL is the fine adjustment of colour. Through the adjustment of the colour to achieve the colour balance of the picture.

Tips: 

• No one filter is perfect and suitable for all pictures. Appropriate adjustments are necessary.
• Tone and hue affect each other and may need to be adjusted repeatedly. 
• If you choose a black and white filter, adjusting the colour temperature could also change the contrast of the picture.
• Since different mobile phones  might display colours  contrasts differently, you might need to take this in to consideration when adjusting. 

Other Practical Tips:

After understanding the basic operations and functions of VSCO, in the process of using VSCO, some operational tips can further help you improve the efficiency of retouching.

1. Before and After Comparison

•  After you edit the picture, you can press and hold the image to compare it with the original picture.

2. Organize Filters and Tools

• After clicking the setting, select "PREFERENCES".
• Select "TOOLKIT ORDER" to customize the tool order, and drag it manually to adjust it.
• Select "PRESET ORDER" to adjust the order of the filters, you can choose to arrange them in alphabetical order or manually drag them to customize them.

3. Manage and Add the Recipe

• Recipes are a very useful feature of the VSCO editor that allows people to save a set of adjustments to the picture and apply them to other images in the future in just one click. 
• The recipes tab also contains the history tool where people can see all the edits currently applied, and adjust manually if desired.