August 27, 2015
Visual storytelling comes in all shapes and sizes. When Instagram hit the scene as a mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service in 2010, it's signature display format was the square photo, which has remained the case through its acquisition by Facebook in 2012.
While Instagram's photo filters have been more than enough to keep users entertained for a while, the company announced today that it's been thinking outside the box and will now offer support for landscape and portrait formats for photos and videos, according to the company's blog.
It turns out that nearly one in five photos or videos people post aren’t in the square format, and we know that it hasn’t been easy to share this type of content on Instagram: friends get cut out of group shots, the subject of your video feels cramped and you can’t capture the Golden Gate Bridge from end to end.
The company is especially excited about the cinematic quality the new formats will bring to its video uploads, particularly in widescreen. Fans of distortion need not worry, either. All current filters will still be available for both photos and videos in the new formats.
Instagram for iOS 7.5 is available in Apple's App Store, while the upgrade for Android version 7.5 is now available on Google Play.
Instructions on how to use the new formats can be found here.
The improvements added by the new formats are unmistakable, as seen in the video below.
