5 Apps to enhance your Instagram Stories

When making Instagram stories, various tools are put at your disposal to help you deliver your story in a fun and engaging way: you can add hashtags, time and location, GIFs, you can write and draw, you can ask your viewers to vote in polls etc.

But if you believe your creativity is not satisfied with the tools that Instagram provides, you can look to third-party apps.

Here are 5 apps that help you enhance your Instagram Stories:

Legend – Put your words in motion!

Do you use text to engage with your Story viewers but feel your imagination is limited by Instagram writing tools?

Check out Legend, the app that allows you to animate text on your image, video or GIF:

How it works:

1. Write your text;
2. Select a text animation style, and color/background combination;
3. Send to Messenger, or save as GIF or MP4 video.

Features:

• 20 amazing text animation styles;
• Add a photo for background;
• Search for background images (via Flickr);
• Emoji support;
• Save video or animated GIF;
• Share video on your social channels;
• Text can be up to 100 characters;
• Legends are square, 6 seconds videos or animated GIF.

Legend is a fremium product: 6 animation styles come free, all 14 premium styles can be bought in a single purchase.

Here is a short video of how Legend animated text looks like:

Flixel Cinemagraph Pro – Give life to your photos!

Flixel is the application that allows you to give life to your photos by applying a fantastic motion picture effect, also known as the Cinemagraph effect.

What is Cinemagraph?

Cinemagraph is a product of still photo with minor elements moving on in a loop.

Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg are the creators of this technique; the cinemagraph was born in 2011 “out of the need to tell a story in a fast digital age”. 

How it works:

1. Set a start point and drag to where it should end;
2. Set fixing points using stabilisation tool;
3. Stop an image area where the image will not move using Mask tool;
4. Erase Fixing events and motions: select stabilisation points and movement arrows to be removed;
5. With Sequence Tool, make series of motions events with standardized-size arrows.

Here are the best Cinemagraphs curated by Flixel:

Designlab – Creative design

Designlab is a photo editor and graphic design app that helps you create beautiful designs and professional graphics.

Within the app, the user has millions of images, graphics, fonts and customisable templates to choose from to produce stunning visuals, perfect for social media.

Here is how you can use it for:

• Social media graphics
• Typography design
• Event promotion
• Birthday cards & invitations
• Special sales offers
• Screenshot markups
• Watermarked photos
• Real estate promotion
• Scrapbooking
• Pinterest posts
• Album covers
• Business cards
• Inspirational quotes
• Meme creation

InShot – Video Editor Music, Cut

InShot has many features that can take your Instagram Story to the next level:

• Video: trim video, cut/delete middle part of a video, merge, adjust video speed;
• For your Instagram posting, you can blur border for photo and video and make your images square ready;
• You can also color the image border or move video/photo inside the square;
• You can add music, effects & voice-overs and lots of fun sound effects;
• The app offers many filters for photos and unique filters for videos;
• Do you want to flip or rotate your photo? With InShot you can do it!

Unfold – Create stories

Unfold is a toolkit for storytellers that wish to create beautiful and engaging stories with minimal and elegant templates.

Features:

• Templates: 25 templates + 45 premium templates;
• Fonts: 5 fonts + advanced text tools;
• High Quality Export: export your stories in high resolution for seamless sharing to other platforms.

Watch this video to see how you can blend the Designlab, InShot and Unfold apps together to enhance your Instagram Stories:

Bonus

There are 300 million daily users of Instagram Stories. 

Even if you are one of the daily active users, you may not know how to use the app at its fullest.

So check this video and get inspired for your next Instagram Stories: