Since its launch, VSCO has grown steadily and is now one of the most popular mobile image editing applications in the world. Its popularity has ranged from a young audience to the most experienced photographers in the industry, but why does it attract so much attention in the world of social networks? Why is Instagram’s VSCO community one of the largest? We will explain to you why is VSCO so popular.
There are different aspects that directly affect the popularity of VSCO as an image editing application and a photo community. These aspects vary and come in many forms, so we’ll try to talk about what we consider the best features VSCO has to offer, a topic that can help explain its popularity:
Number of Filters
Let’s start with what everyone knows, the VSCO filters. This application has a large number of filters as standard, free use, and also has a virtual store where users can access many more filters, some free and others at a price per pack of filters. This is one of the main attractions, due to the variety of results you can get from the same application to edit photographs.
No other application helps that much to modify a photo that, at least first sight, is not your best shot, to turn it into something attractive enough to feed your social networks.
Editing options
Another plus point is that VSCO is not just an application with preloaded filters that you can’t modify, but a complete image editor. When selecting a filter, at the bottom of the screen there is a bar that when you slice it, you decide the opacity or intensity of the applied filter. This multiplies the editing options offered by VSCO.
Aside from the filters and the modification of their intensity, we have the basic settings of photography, such as contrast, brightness, shadows, etc. It is generally known that photos edited with VSCO look better than those edited in Instagram. This attracts many who are new to photography and editing, or photographers who use their cell phone as a means of capturing their images, or anyone else interested in photography.
Retro look
One of the most striking things about using VSCO is that its filters simulate film, giving your photos a look that makes it seem like taken in another era. This retro look is the favorite among older users of the application, but it’s also popular with teenagers.
You may find yourself with photographs edited in a way that would negatively affect it, but giving it an artistic look at the same time. A slightly overexposed photograph, a part of the photo burned, badly developed roll marks, all these types of options help you simulate any type of analog camera from the comfort of your digital camera.
Chronological Order
One of the most criticized changes of Instagram was when they decided to delete the chronological order of the Home and rely on an algorithm to view the publications. In many cases, the accounts that pay for advertising are the first you see, or the most popular for your friends, making you not see on your home page publications of your favorite accounts or photographers for several days in a row.
In VSCO there is no advertising for premium users and all users can see their home chronologically, so a post does not reach all its audience because of an algorithm. With this, you can guarantee that your photos are reaching all the accounts that follow you.
Content for art, not for likes
Another great feature of VSCO: there are no visible likes, number of followers or anything that indicates that one account is bigger than the other. This attracts a very large audience of people who want a place where they can admire and upload art and also know that no one will be competing for likes. People feel freer to upload a photo without measuring numbers, making their users not feel affected or in need to have liked in your art.
This makes the beads more original, without following the trends that earn more likes on Instagram, making the community a paradise for all those artists who are emerging through social networks.
No ads for $20/yr
For $20 a year, you can have a Premium account in VSCO. Premium accounts don’t have any ads, so you’ll never see anything more than the pictures of the people you follow. This is another point in favor of VSCO’s popularity, with statistics showing that more than 75% of social network users have premium accounts.
Repostable content
An important aspect that directly affects the popularity of VSCO: you can repost from the same application. You can show your followers the content of other accounts without any problem, quickly and efficiently. It’s as if you joined a part of Instagram and a part of Twitter when they decided to create VSCO.
One of the most popular communities
VSCO gained a lot of popularity when people with many followers on Instagram started uploading their photos with the #VSCO hashtag. This attracted a large number of people who stayed using VSCO because of its filters or features. Since its birth, the community has grown every day more, with registered numbers of more than 1 million active Premium accounts.
VSCO’s new aesthetics and visuals are minimalist and pleasing to the eye, and this is one of the features that many like best. If we mix an application that is focused more on showing everyone’s art than that of great influence, a minimalist and sophisticated look, a feed-in which there is no competition and the number of filters and modification options available, we have VSCO, thus explaining the reason for its popularity.
Conclusion
With all these features already mentioned, many people are joining VSCO to enjoy the application. Some even use it to edit photos that you want to upload to different social networks. In Instagram, there are daily hundreds of thousands of users using the #VSCO hashtag in their photos as a sign that they used one of their filters to improve the photo they just uploaded.