How to get the decreased lux effect from Instagram on my pictures without using instagram?

I'm an an amateur photographer I guess. I take beautiful pictures with my canon dslr.

But when I'm posting pictures on Instagram from my iPhone, I just adore the effect that comes with sliding that lux bar down to the empty sun. (Decreasing the lux) it's very easy its so easy it's ridiculous.
I can't put that beautiful effect on my big hd pictures taken with my dslr. When ya zoom in on those you can see the wonderful hairy details. I don't want to loose the quality doing that effect through Instagram, and even if I did it that way I'd have to post all my pictures I don't even wanna post and that's just stupid.

Isn't there a program I can obtain that will provide that faded, retro, non destructive effect I my photos while maintaining the quality?

I have a macbook. I have acorn 4 for photo editing, (that's all I can afford) still getting the hang of it. Can acorn do this? Any App Store suggestions? For my computer?

I admire anyone who can take pictures with a canon. I can barely even lift one, and the aiming mechanism is slow. And what a noise.

Anyway. I don't have an iPhone, but it sounds like you're talking about saturation and contrast for the most part. This latest kiddie fad for retro / vintage won't last long, I assure you, but if you want to get it, you need a program which allows you to adjust saturation, contrast, and the individual colour channels. If your "canon" came with a CD, it should have a program to allow you to do this. If not, this acorn program looks to have the same settings.

However, I'm under the impression that you can only upload to Instagram from a phone, so if you take a shot with your "canon" (and don't destroy an enemy castle in the process) you will need to send it to your phone before uploading it.

Thank you for your input but i know how to adjust the contrast and saturation, i learned how to use adobe photoshop cs6 i took i class on it, and i still don't know how to give off this exact effect. It doesn't give off the faded effect i'd like it to like that one lux slider does on instagram. I don't really like the instagram filters and i think this trend is kind of annoying but i just want to tone down my pictures alittle bit i feel like the only person in the world who doesn't want to bring up the contrast and sat.