One of the charms – or drawbacks (depending on who you talk to) – of the popular photo and video sharing social network Instagram has been its adherence to the square format. Starting today, users will be able to share photos and videos in both portrait and landscape orientation on the service.
Instagram decided to make the change after finding that nearly 20% of photos and videos posted aren’t in square format and want to allow their users to be able to share moments the way they want to without having to worry about having to crop friends out of group shots, or limit the view when trying to take a landscape photo.
Now, when choosing a photo or video, you can tap the format icon to adjust the orientation to portrait or landscape instead of square. Once you share the photo, the full-sized version of it will appear to all of your followers in feed in a beautiful, natural way. To keep the clean feel of your profile grid, your post will appear there as a center-cropped square.
Given that videos are shot in landscape mode as well, it makes sense for Instagram to start allowing for these to be displayed in widescreen format. Another change to the service that was announced today was the combining of filters across media types. Before the filters for photos were separate than those for videos, but once you receive the updated apps all filters will work on photos and videos and the ability to adjust the intensity of filters on videos has also been added.
The updated Instagram for iOS version 7.5 is available today in Apple’s App Store, and Instagram for Android version 7.5 is available today on Google Play.
What do you think about the changes to Instagram format? Was the square format what made it appealing to you or are you glad to see portrait and landscape options? Let us know in the comments below, or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
[button link=”http://blog.instagram.com/post/127722429412/150827-portrait-and-landscape” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: Instagram[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
