MY FAVOURITE IPHONE APPS / FREE BLOGGING TOOLS

I am excited to be starting a new series here on Wandering / Wondering. For three weeks I will be sharing my favourite iPhone apps relating to blogging, travel, and completing a year abroad placement. I have uncovered a few gems which I use on a daily basis that improve the quality of my blogging, the itinerary of my trips and to help make life go a little smoother.

This week I will be sharing five essential, and completely free, iPhone apps that I use for blogging. I each of these apps at some point in the process of creating each and every blog post that I publish.

VSCO

The most important app that I use for blogging is VSCO. This photography app is essential for me to edit my iPhone pictures to a publishable quality. I have used this app for years, and it has always held up well against the countless other photo editing apps out there. 

VSCO has a plethora of beautiful presets which you can pick and choose from to perfectly suit the lighting, mood and atmosphere of your photos. My Luxembourg photos from Autumn needed a beautiful earthy jewel toned preset to bring out the ambers of the Autumn leaves, whereas the bright turquoise and clear skies of Geneva suited a lighter, fresher tone. They have a new feature which enables you to save your own presets too which is very helpful. However, if you don't feel like paying for this option (in an otherwise free app), take advantage of 'copying and pasting' edits from one photo to multiple others by selecting the '...' option on an image with the desired edit, and copying.

On the left, I have selected an image and copied the edit, and on the right, I have selected a different image and have the option to paste the edit

EasyBlog

The next app I'm going to talk about is EasyBlog, which enables you to write, edit and publish blog posts from your phone. Blogger used to have their own app but it was removed from the app store, and this is a very similar alternative and is completely free. I like using this app to write posts on the commute to work! It's not the most glamorous but it works really well.

PixlrExpress

I have been using PixlrExpress for years and I can definitely say it's stood the test of time. I really only use this photography app for very specific edits to photos before editing them with VSCO and publishing them on my blog. I use the 'heal' function to clear up any imperfections such as dirt on a table or window, glaring street lights or that spot you've been trying to cover for ages but it just won't go away. I also love the blur and smooth functions to accentuate the focus of an image and the red eye function works really well too. There is an option to edit your image with their filters, but I prefer to use VSCO's filters.

Grammarly

Grammarly is an autocorrecting extension that I believe is still finding its feet and hasn't reached the mass audience yet. This nifty app will sit on your Google Chrome browser and underline typos, and grammatical errors. While autocorrect can correct spelling errors, it won't correct them in context. Grammarly allows you to replace your mistakes with their suggestions and offers synonyms to improve the quality of your writing. The spelling and grammar check works in a similar way, in fact, better than, Microsoft Word. 

I use the Grammarly extension on my laptop, but they have a mobile app too which means you can enable their autocorrect on your keyboard very easily. If you click on the G logo it will proofread your entire piece of text I prefer how it works on my laptop, as I don't feel the need to check a basic text, but for typing out blog posts on my phone it helps a lot. You will find yourself relying on Grammarly very quickly for things like emails too!

Canva

Canva is a beautifully made and easy to use graphic design website which conveniently now has a corresponding app! I use Canva to create all of my title photos and banners which have words on top of pictures. They have literally thousands of design templates and inspiration to use and tweak to your own project and so many cool symbols, photos and typefaces you can use as well. Once you've made your design you can save it as a .jpeg, .pdf or .png and the design you've created remains in your gallery so you can replicate it later, for example. This app is a really fun way to get more into graphic design. 

These are the best blogging apps that I have found to be effective, simple and produce beautiful results. I will be sharing my favourite apps to help you on your ESL Year Abroad next!