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Instagram has finally responded with an official new format for the pictures that can be uploaded on the platform.
Square had long lost its appeal among users as the preferred photography shape, and Instagram has decided to cut out all the middle-man apps like InstaSize that were offering users the chance of uploading their pictures in the original format, may that be landscape or portrait.
Facebook-owned Instagram isn’t going extreme – don’t imagine odd shapes are now okay on the platform – but a collective sigh of relief can be heard from users all around the world as the mandatory square crop is finally being removed. As interesting a feature this may have been, users quickly got bored of the uniformity and found loopholes to posting their pictures in the original form.
The official post on the Instagram blog specified that the square format is not going anywhere, as it “has been and always will be part of who we are.” With that being said, Instagram went on an explained their decision is the result of taking under consideration the way users want to tell their visual story, and the new formats are designed to make it easier to share pictures.
As far as the absurdity of forcing the square format on their users goes, Instagram added that “we know that it hasn’t been easy to share this type of content on Instagram,” and they couldn’t be more right. How many times did your friends get cut out of group pictures? And isn’t it frustrating that you just couldn’t capture Golden Gate Bridge from one end to another?
With the update, however, all that is history. When choosing to edit a photo or a video, Instagram will allow users to choose the right format for them, may that be portrait or landscape. The change will most assuredly be welcomed with open arms by users, especially considering how many times the cropping meant sacrificing parts of a picture.
One mystery might never be resolved, however. Why did this additional support take so long to become available? The great majority of apps on the market have already offered support for uploading of pictures in portrait or landscape, and the reason why is pretty straightforward: they are the default two ways of taking a picture.
We can only assume that Instagram’s fast dominance of the picture-sharing market had made it lazy in improving and updating the app, but the new version is allegedly available for both iOS and Android.
Image Source: Popularity Photography
