How to Make People Jealous with Your Photos from the Road

When documenting your travels, one of the most important things to remember is that none of it means anything unless you make it look as amazing as possible. The explosion of social media over the last few years has made it possible to let thousands of people know just how awesome our lives are, but how can you get the full effect if your photos aren’t up to scratch. Now, by up to scratch I don’t mean good, I mean so amazingly perfect and colourful that they don’t seem real. You want to give the impression that you’re living in a dream world, so I’ve put together some tips on how you can achieve this through manipulating your photos on Photoshop or GIMP (it’s a programme, trust me!).

Step 1: Bring out the GIMP

Sharpen (or unsharpen) the hell out of your photos using GIMP (or Photoshop / Lightroom).  The more unrealistic the better here – don’t be afraid to really crank up the sharpness and get that fake look, it’s what we are striving for!

Step 2: Colour

You really want the colour in your photos to pop, so you need to go to “hue/saturation” and crank up the saturation. Put it up to about +40 and the colours will be far more vibrant than they were when you saw them. This is the desired effect.

Step 3: Replace the grey sky with a blue one

I’m not sure how to do this on GIMP but it’s easy on Photoshop. I can’t be bothered going into the boring details of this – you’ll have to work it out for yourself. No one wants to see grey skies in photos these days, and no one will be able to prove that the sky wasn’t blue that day, so have free reign to completely edit these small details.

Step 4: Add a motivational quote

Pictures tell a thousand words, but is a thousand really enough? Why not throw a few more on? Choose a quote that makes it seem like what you are doing is the most amazing thing in the world, and that people are crazy for not wanting to travel. Choosing a great quote is the key to this whole process, make sure it elevates you above tourists and shows the whole world how awesome proper travel really is.

Step 5: Share it on social media

This is the easy part! I assume, if you are truly respected, that you’ll have a huge social media following. These are people that love you and are impressed by everything that you do, so they’ll pretty much lap up anything you throw at them. Don’t become complacent though, the moment you start posting realistic images and stories is when you lose that dash of mystique and unattainability, which will drag you down to the depths of mere mortals – not a good thing!

Before the over-the-top editing

Can you think of any more tips on how to make people jealous with your photos from the road? How heavily do you edit your photos? Let me know!

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Jon Algie

A travel blogger from New Zealand who hates talking about himself in the third person and has no imagination when it comes to naming websites.

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