Why i Love Instagram
and the New Update!
In August 27, 2015 i felt happy to update my Instagram for the new outside the square features. Now when you upload photos, you can pinch or tap a format button on the bottom left to post their landscape or portrait photos / videos. Squares can still be used, though.
Is it a big deal?
The option could open new types of artistic expression on Instagram. Traditionally shot wide angle landscapes photos won’t use the whitespace up and down and videos won’t lose their cinematic feel, square video are bad awkward anyways. Fashion photographers hated squares cause they were forced to crop out their full stories. And for casual everyday users, the update means easier posting to Instagram without cropping out friends faces and other body parts.
Before I proceed this article will be highlighting the portrait orientation as I think that’s Best part of this update.
I’m using the same image to show the difference visually, from far left you can see we’ve always had to either use a third party application for filling whitespace use it fully but with less details and quality or crop it in square and lose the composition you kept perfecting in-camera and while processing. then Finally the new update where you don’t have to crop it square anymore and it’s more enjoyable visually now with so much details. So the difference in details and size wise between the original 3:2 image is now less.
BUT…
It’s not really that perfect, now you can upload your portrait oriented images as they were originally taken But not 100%. It’s not uploading the full image yet. if you look above you can see the far right image is not fully uploaded on 2nd left to it. It’s much closer yes and a huge update, but the aspect ratio seems to be 5:4 instead of 3:2 or at least 4:3. The good news is Landscape oriented images will stay at full original aspect ratio.
Free template for all :
Since Instagram latest release where they changed the resolution bumping it from 640px x 640px to 1080px x 1080px, i found that for best results in Vertical orientation you’ll need to export them from Lightroom / Photoshop with the 5:4 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1080px x 1350px. Now for photographers who like to prepare their photos ahead for Instagram like me, it’s important to know the exact crop of the new vertical orientation and So for making things easier I made a FREE vertical template ( .psd) for you to use and enjoy :
https://amrtahtawi.squarespace.com/s/Instagram-Vertical-template-high-res-1080x1350psd.zip
About Amr Tahtawi :
An Art director With a passion for Travel & landscape photography, Digital image developing enthusiast and a photo educator. Founder of
Amr Tahtawi photography,
Co-founder ofOlé, the budget travel brand dedicated to all middle eastern travellers.
Photo credit : @bassihamidphoto
