Getting Started with VSCO

By Zach Hodges

Hi, I’m Zach Hodges, and I’m going to get you started using the VSCO app.

VSCO is a wonderful photo editor, but it’s also an amazing place for community, inspiration, discovery, and so much more, so let’s get into it.

Using the VSCO Photo Editor App

When you first open the VSCO mobile app, you'll see five tabs. Starting from the far left:

• Home is your feed of images from people you follow in the VSCO community
• Discover is where you’ll find inspiring content, creative prompts, and the search function
• The Studio is your private workspace to gather and edit the images you want to work on 
• Profile is where the VSCO community can learn about you and see your work 
• Spaces is where you can join or create groups built around a particular focus or theme

Additionally, there is this side menu where you’ll see activity on the content that you’ve published, messages from other users, images you’ve favorited, people you can follow or that follow you, and various settings for the app.

Editing Photos with VSCO 

The photo editor tools in the VSCO app offer a variety of ways to achieve your desired aesthetic.

Importing an Image into VSCO Studio

To get started, let’s import a photo. First, open the studio tab in the middle, and then tap the import button to create your first draft. Select an image from the camera roll that you want to edit (you can select as many as you’d like, and videos too). Once you’re done with your selections, tap ‘Add’ and these images get added to your VSCO Studio.

This is your private workspace, nothing here is public or published yet. And, these images are still in your camera roll too. These drafts are just references, so don’t delete them in the camera roll or they’ll disappear from VSCO as well.

Editing with VSCO Presets

Once you’ve created a draft, select it and you can see there’s several options here like creating a collage or montage with this image, syncing to the desktop, and sharing this photo.

In the photo editor, we start off in the Presets tab, and this is the best place to start for most people. These VSCO Presets are pre-made looks for a wide range of styles and applications that you can apply to your image very quickly while still getting great results. You can tap on the preset icon to get more ways to view them in a grid, and these categories up top here are really helpful in finding your way around this list.


For This Photo & Strength

‘For This Photo’ actually uses AI to recommend a preset for your photo, and this is many people’s favorite place to start with editing on VSCO. From the recommendations you can choose to apply it to your photo, and even tap it again to adjust the strength of the look to your taste.

Types of Preset Photo Filters

There are 3 types of presets - the standard type with a strength slider, as well as Film presets that are inspired by various analog film stocks, and VSCO Pro Presets that add additional controls to many of our most popular looks.

You don’t have to remember all of this— if you just tap on the name of a preset while you’re in this view, you’ll get a nice little page here with a write up about this preset and examples from the community of how others have used it so definitely explore that if you’d like.

Tools in the VSCO Photo Editor

Once you have a preset that you like applied, head over to the tools tab to make further adjustments. There are a lot of tools here, starting with Adjust for things like crop and straighten, all the way to HSL to adjust specific colors.

These photo editing tools are great to correct problems in your image, but also to make artistic enhancements as well. For example, you can open the Exposure tool to brighten images.

Film FX & VSCO Recipes

Next up, there’s also the FX tab, with many overlays that can be added for film and light effects. These also work when editing videos, so be sure to check that out.

The Recipes tab enables you to save a set of edits for easy recall, which can really help speed things up. The organize tab also allows you to make the editor space your own by favoriting and arranging things how you’d like.

Sharing Photos on VSCO

When you're ready to share your photos, tap the top right share icon.

• ‘Share to…’ will let you share to other apps you have installed on your phone. 
• ‘Post to VSCO’ shares this image with the VSCO community.
• ‘Save to Camera Roll’ is pretty straightforward.
• ‘Share your recipe’ will give you a way to share your favorite edits with your community.
• ‘Sync to Cloud’ gives Pro Members a way to send this image to the web editor to keep editing on the desktop. 

Posting Images to VSCO

Let’s post this image to VSCO — which will also save to camera roll at the same time. This is where you can publish something for others on VSCO to see publicly. You can enter a brief description and allow discussions if you’d like to hear from your followers on this image.

Just a quick callout here— only members can engage in discussions, but anyone can see them. And you can enable and disable discussions at any time if you change your mind about whether you want to have that, so you are in complete control with that feature.

On the VSCO Feed you can see the image you just posted. To get to the feed, if you exit the editor you’ll be asked if you want to save your changes to this draft. Tap on save changes and now you’re back to the Studio.

Deselect that image and tap on the home icon on the far left to get to your VSCO Feed. There you can see the image you just published at the top of the feed since this is a chronological feed. This is also where you’ll see images from people you follow.

VSCO Feed Actions

In the VSCO Feed, you’ll see a few icons under each image which will allow you to take several different actions to engage with your community.

VSCO Favorites

The star will favorite that image, and this will give that creator a private notification that you’ve done this. It’s a great way to tell someone you liked their work.

VSCO Reposts

The chasing arrows will repost that image to all of your followers, and add it to the Reposts tab of your Profile. This is great for an image you love so much that you think everyone ought to see it, and the creator will be notified of that as well. 

VSCO Discussions

The chat bubble is available if you enable discussions, and you can start or join a discussion with the creator from here if you are a Plus or Pro Member.

A great feed needs great creators, and there’s a lot to find here. The suggested carousel will have some new recommendations for you every session, and you can tap on them to see their profile. Here, you can see their work, the images they’ve reposted, and anything else they’ve shared about themselves. If you want to see their work in your feed, go ahead and follow them.

Profile on VSCO

Let’s talk about your VSCO Profile. This is where all the images you have published will be visible, as well as your Reposts and the About information you provide about yourself. To see your profile, click the Profile tab with the face icon.

Pro members can create galleries to showcase their work here as well, and any public Spaces you are a part of will also be here (more on Spaces below).

The About section is especially important for Pro members because this is where you can let the community know what kinds of activities you’re available for, like mentoring or giving feedback, as well as making yourself available for professional photography jobs, and letting potential clients know the kind of work you do.

Building your profile

To build your profile, tap on the pencil icon up top. You can fill in as much as you’d like to share about yourself, including your photography experience and availability.

As you scroll down you can see the additional options Pro members have to set up their profile. Much of this becomes visible in VSCO Hub, where potential businesses can see this information to learn more about you.

Check out our Photography Profile Guide for more tips on filling out your VSCO Profile.

Discover on VSCO

On VSCO you can find creators that you love to have a feed full of new inspiring work every day.

In the Discover section with the magnifying glass icon, you can find curated selects by VSCO. These are some of the best images that our curators are seeing each day, and this is a great place to start.

You can open these creator’s profiles from here and follow them if you like their work. If you open an image here or in the feed and scroll down, you can also see related images. This is another great AI feature that helps you find more work that is similar to this image. You can use this to follow an endless trail of images and find many more photographers to follow.

The Discover section also has editorials, collections, and more suggested images based on the things you have favorited. Creative prompts are here too, for example our leading lines prompt. This is a great way to learn, but it’s also a way to use this hashtag for a chance to be featured in the VSCO Discover page.

Learn more about prompts and what’s new with VSCO here.

VSCO Search

At the top right of the Discover tab is the search feature. With VSCO Search, you can look for people and images on VSCO. There’s lots to explore here in the Discover section, and the more people you follow, the more you’ll get out of your feed and the community.

VSCO Spaces

The final tab in the VSCO app is Spaces.

What are Spaces on VSCO?

‍VSCO Spaces are small communities that you can either join or create, and they can be about anything. They can be public with up to 150 people, or private with whoever you’d like.

These photography groups can be a great place to connect and have discussions with other like-minded creatives around a topic that you all share an interest in. So you could start by browsing spaces to find one you’re interested in and get connected with others that way.

VSCO for Photo Editing, Community, & Exposure

Alright, and there you have it, that’s everything you need to get started with VSCO. There’s a lot I didn’t cover, so be sure to check out our educational articles and support pages on our website to learn more. We’ll do future videos diving into more features in depth. 

Thank you, and I’ll see you on VSCO.

‍