Instagram offers a good choices of filters and editing tools to make your photos exceptional and take them to the next level, or even rescue bad ones from the trash.
For example, you can overlay a filter on a poorly shot photo and transform it into something creative (but in Photography there’s really no bad photo if you say you meant to shoot it that way). This is true as I find all my photos as good as they get.
You can also liven a flat photo by adjusting the perspective, changing the brightness and contrast, add warmth or saturation, manipulate the colors, put a tilt-shift look on it, and more.
You can spend a long time tinkering, and you should experiment as I am doing the same thing.
There are also plenty of photo-editing apps like Snapseed, VSCOcam, Aviary and Adobe Photoshop although you’ll have to use these apps outside of Instagram.
Within those apps you can find the best filter that works for you, so you can really make your photos stand out.
I am using Aviary for what I need as far as filter and it never disappoint.