Instagram Now Allows Photos and Videos to Be Shared in Landscape and Portrait [u]

Instagram has announced you can now share images and videos in landscape and portrait formats, a big change from its original mantra of only sharing media in square format. The company says nearly 1 in 5 photos or videos shared aren’t in square format, hence this change:

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.

Below are examples of how portrait and landscape formats will look on Instagram, bringing a new look and feel to the social network:

Screenshot 2015 08 27 10 10 09

Instagram says this change will enable video in widescreen to “be more cinematic than ever.” Also, all filters can be applied to photos and videos, instead of having separate filters. Video filters now can have their intensity adjusted as well.

What do you think about this change for Instagram? For all those third party apps that helped crop your portrait and landscape photos for Instagram, you can kiss those good-bye.

Update: Many users aren’t seeing this, as the feature is going to be rolled out “in the next day or so”, according to Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger on Product Hunt:

instagram rollout

Click here to download Instagram for iOS in the App Store.

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