Some of the Best Tools for Instagram Reels

This is the last installment in our 5-Part Instagram Reels Series

While Instagram has its own editing tools for Reels within the app, at least partially creating Reels with external tools or apps can often save you time and frustration.

With other tools and apps, beyond saving time, you can also amp up your production value, gain more viewers, and have more creative freedom. This article will show you several apps that we love to use to edit and create Reels for Instagram. 

Our Favorite Tools to Create Instagram Reels:

Canva:

Canva is an awesome tool for all things content from photo editing, graphic creation, and video editing. There are thousands of templates that you can personalize for your brand. As well as millions of free images, illustrations, and music tracks to add to your videos. There is an opportunity for team collaboration as well. 

Pro Tip: While Canva is free, the paid version is inexpensive and has many more images, videos, and illustrations to choose from.

Life Lapse:

Life Lapse is an app that helps you create timelapse and stop-motion videos. It is a quick and easy way to bring life to your Reels. If you’ve spent any time at all watching reels you’ve definitely seen some of these and I can almost guarantee they’ve stopped you from scrolling because they’re so engaging! Check out one of our favorites that we’ve created using Life Lapse.

Pro Tip: Always use a tripod and ensure your lighting remains consistent when using Life Lapse.

InShot:

InShot is The Crafty Cask team’s favorite video editing app…we all use it and love it. It has a ton of features that are intuitive and easy to use. Perfect for users new to editing but robust enough for advanced editing as well. Given the plethora of features, we strongly recommend spending 15 minutes poking into each and every icon/feature the first time you open the app to familiarize yourself and ensure you don’t miss out on any helpful tools.

This app allows you to add transitions, titles, custom text, and more. It also allows you to trim your footage, splice it, rearrange it, speed up clips, add filters or background music, detach audio, and more. This is how you make your video footage representative of YOUR brand, unique, and engaging.

When it comes to creating easy, engaging reels that stop the scroll, apps like Motion Leap are your friend. This app uses artificial intelligence to essentially add animation to a static photo. So if there are clouds in the background, you can make the clouds move. Or if wine is being poured into a glass you can add motion to the pour so that one part of the photo comes to life. Pretty cool and a great way to “cheat” when making Instagram reels so you get the algorithim love while minimizing the pain of creation. 

Adobe Premiere Rush:

You may have heard of Adobe Premiere or maybe one of Adobe’s other programs but this one is a little different. Adobe Rush is a great video editing app that is simple to use. With this app, you can shoot, edit, and share your videos. This tool has almost every basic feature you need for creating simple and straightforward social videos, including Reels. It also has built-in templates for Instagram Reels that you can choose from. 

Instagram users are spending more and more time scrolling through Reels to see short and entertaining videos, so it is important that you leverage them for your brand.

Sometimes that means you need to go above and beyond to create Reels that stand out from the rest. With the Instagram Reels tools mentioned above, you now have new ways to improve your Reels and get the results you are looking for with confidence and ease. For more of our top tips and tricks for Reels make sure to check out our full Instagram Reels 5-Part Series.