Instagram Now Offers Landscape And Portrait Photo Options

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In an effort to give Instagram users more options, the photo-sharing app now offers two more format options: portrait and landscape. Instagram announced the exciting change in a blog post. To use the editing feature, you need to select the image in the app, then tap the format button to switch between aspect ratios. Although the photo will appear as a square on the profile grid, it displays true form when viewed individually. Instagram includes the feature in a new update for iOS and Android.

Instagram explained the reason behind the format change

Instagram elaborated in a blog post, “It turns out that nearly one in five photos or videos people post aren’t in the square format. 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.”

Instagram didn’t modify parts of the app like the three-across grid photo view and built-in camera interface. Ashley Yuki (Instagram’s product manager) admitted they had doubts about the change, but the end result still turned out to look elegant.

There is already a market of apps specializing in cropping photos. The numerous list includes InstaSize, No Crop, and Cropic. These apps helped the user get around Instagram’s former lack of crop feature.

Demand for vertical videos and photos grows

Vertical photos and videos appear to be a trend with smartphone users. Snapchat (another popular photo-sharing app) and two of it’s newest publishing partners (Mashable and Tastemade) plan on making vertical videos a key part of their channels. Google’s based YouTube updated its Android and iOS apps to support vertical video. The update allows users to view vertical video on the full screen, which makes sense as its the format most people use when filming videos.

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