By Michael Muchmore, Max Eddy With the release of version 6, Instagram adds new tools that make it a for-real photo editor instead of just a casual tool for fun photo embellishment. You can now not only adjust basics like brightness and contrast, but also shadows and highlights, sharpening, color temperature, and saturation. Of course the app won't replace Lightroom for serious photographers, but the tools bring Instagram into the ranks of true photo editing software. And don't forget: What made Instagram such a hit isn't so much its photo editing prowess but rather its social chops, which the app retains in spades. The combination of the old social network and the new tools results in a greatly improved Instagram experience. Instagram is our Editors' Choice for social photo editing and sharing on iPhone.
New Image Adjustments
Veteran Instagram users won't be jarred by any interface redesign this time: The new features fit comfortably within the old Instagram interface. You still snap a photo by tapping the big camera button at bottom center. The Lux lighting tool gets a nice improvement in the new release: Now it picks an automatic setting, rather than completely leaving its adjustment up to you. You can actually see the slider control zipping across to this best-guess setting. Of course, you can then slide it back and forth to taste. It's not a traditional brightness adjustment, however; it's a combination of contrast and color saturation. Previously, it was no help for dark photos that you actually wanted to brighten up. That's no longer a problem.
The real power tools come into view when you tap the new wrench icon. This reveals choices for honest-to-goodness image adjustments, including brightness, contrast, color temperature, saturation, highlights, shadows, and sharpening. Each tool's slider shows a number between -100 and 100, indicating how much of the effect you've used. Tilt shift and leveling, which formerly lived in Instagram's main editing screen are now subsumed among these wrench tools. We like this because folks who don't want to bother with that level of fussing never need to even see these tools.
Filter Adjustments
The same set of 19 familiar filters, like Mayfair, Sutro, and Hefe remains unchanged in the latest version of Instagram. In more photo app reviews than I can recall, I've mentioned that photo app X lets you adjust its filters, unlike Instagram (the latest of these was Mobli). Well, that changes with the new version: Finally, you can adjust filters' strength. This is a huge improvement.
You make the adjustments by tapping the filter icon a second time and moving a slider control back and forth. At first, the slider is set all the way to the right at 100 percent. Sliding it leftwards simply reverts the appearance closer to the original, unfiltered photo. To view the completely unfiltered image, you hold a finger down on the square image. The second tap also give you access to the filter's frame. The result is that these updates not only add many more capabilities, but they also actually leave the already sparse main interface even less cluttered.
Instagram's 19 effect filters range from simple B&W to retro film styles to techniques like cross processing. A great infographic about many of the filter's derivations can be seen at 1000memories.com. PCMag has also published an intriguing infographic called What Your Instagram Filters Say About You, which shows, surprisingly, that the most popular filter is no filter at all! We alternate between finding the artistic/retro filters appealing and pretentious. There are definitely cases where our more pedestrian images have gotten a boost in interest thanks to a filter.
Instagram Direct
Instagram Direct—the app's one-to-one photo sharing feature—plants a tray icon right at the top right corner of the app's home screen. Tapping this opens your inbox for directly shared Instagram photos and videos. Listed in the same place is media you've shared directly to others, but that's not really a cause for any confusion, since you'll see your username and picture for stuff you've shared out. You have the option to share any photo or video after you've finished editing it.
When using Direct, you can choose a contact—or any of Instagram's 200 million-odd users—who alone will get the photo or video. You lose the ability to tag people or add the shot to your Photo Map when you share directly. If the intended recipient is not one of your followers, he or she will have to agree to receive images from you. Once the recipient checks the box, that person won't have to authorize images from you again. Thankfully, you can easily block Direct images from specified users.
The feature is well-implemented, but we don't believe most people think of Instagram as a messaging app the way they do Snapchat or WhatsApp. After you've taken the time to gussy up a photo, sharing it with just a few people seems anticlimactic—after all, one of Instagram's biggest draws is seeing how many "hearts" each of your photos gets.
Once you have your image—and we must say, photos look pretty good on the Samsung Galaxy S5 we used in testing—you can apply Instagram's famous filters. These do everything from turning up the blues to bringing out the reds to discarding color entirely. The 19 filters may overwhelm you at first, but you'll quickly get a feel for their best uses. Take special note of the Rise filter, which can help bring out color in low-light shots.
