Instagram Update: More than Squares

Some of you have probably already heard that Instagram recently made some significant updates. Instagram no longer requires you crop to a square format, if you don't want to.Personally I'm a huge fan of the square format, there's something about it that's just appealing to me. As well some find it challenging to compose for a square. And of course, some images work better in a portrait or landscape format. Then there's the panorama, can't make that a square!To use this new function, start as you normally would by loading the app, and tapping the photo button. Which allows you to either take a picture or import one from an album on your phone. I keep a number of albums on my phone including images from my recent trip to Hawaii. There were a couple in there that aren't square, so this was a great way to test this new feature out.Select a photo/video you'd like to share, once selected you'll see a new icon on the bottom left corner, over the image. Tap on this to "shrink" the image. Shrink may not be the right word, but you'll see that the image zooms out to the original width it was captured at.From here you do any edits you like, write up your caption, select your social media sharing channels and share!Once you've saved it, in your feed on IG it will show a square thumbnail, but when you tap on the image it will show the full width.It looks like you can still only shoot in the Square format. If you want to share photographs that are in the portrait or landscape format, you'd want to capture those with your native camera app, or digital camera, whatever you use to create photographs with, then get them on your device and share away.If you share to other sites like Flickr, it will add white borders on the top/bottom or left/right sides.Check out the Instagram Blog for more deets.Hope you like the new options! For me this just means I don't have to use Squaready any longer.~ kate