Instagram users have long requested for this one feature and today it has finally come. The popular photo sharing service announced that they will now support photos taken in both landscape and portrait orientation.
An official post on the company's blog titled 'Thinking outside the Square: Support for Landscape and Portrait Formats on Instagram' details the reasoning behind the big change:
"It turns out that nearly one in five photos or videos people post aren't in the square format, and 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. Now, when choosing a photo or video, you can tap the format icon to adjust the orientation to portrait or landscape instead of square. "
This new change doesn't mean the end of perfectly arranged grids however. The post mentions that the grid view will still retain the clean, uniform look that the app is known for:
"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."
In the past, users have had to resort to third party applications in order to circumvent Instagram's strict, square only policy. This new change puts the service in line with other photo sharing apps and will no doubt open the door for even more creative uses of the platform.
These new changes will also come to Instagram video as well so users can now upload clips in cinematic widescreen. You can check out the new features in this video released by the company.
