No more cropping: Instagram now lets you post landscapes and portraits

By Les Shu August 27, 2015

just press harder instagram experimenting with 3d touch ads and apple pay landscape portrait — Instagram now supports landscape and portrait orientations, in addition to the square format. Images will appear as such in feeds. Instagram

Thanks to Instagram, squared photos are synonymous with smartphone photography – so much so that even Apple made the square an option in the iPhone’s camera app. As popular as Instagram is, the square photo is frustrating – forcing you to either crop or reframe the shot. Recognizing that “one in five photos or videos people post aren’t in the square format,” Instagram now supports landscape and portrait orientations.

A video posted by Instagram (@instagram) on Aug 27, 2015 at 10:01am PDT

Instagram isn’t doing away with the square photo – it “has been and always will be part of who we are,” Instagram says in its blog post announcing the new feature. But letting users go outside the square box means they can upload photos in the manner the photographer initially envisioned. Because oftentimes not everything will fit inside a square.

“Now, when choosing a photo or video, you can tap the format icon to adjust the orientation to portrait or landscape instead of square,” Instagram says. “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.” The portrait or landscape formats also appear on the Web.

Tapping the format icon on the lower left changes the orientation from square (left) to landscape (right) or portrait orientations. — Tapping the format icon on the lower left changes the orientation from square (left) to landscape (right) or portrait orientations. Les Shu / Digital Trends

The feature is extended to videos as well. You can now post those 16:9 widescreen shots for that cinematic feel. For fans of filters, they are now universal for both photos and videos.

The updated version of the app is available for iOS and Android today.

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