Instagram review
Instagram (iPhone|Android) is a popular photo- and video-sharing app that requires only a couple of touches to produce retro-looking projects and then share them with friends and other Instagram members. The latest version of the app adds three additional filters, and new ways to spice up your photos including a fade feature and color overlay options. It also has a new Post Notifications feature to make it easier to see what your friends post. Finally, you can now add emojis to hashtags, to share your photos within the Instagram community.
But what's continues to be special about the Instagram phenomenon is how users have used the app to create a story about their everyday lives through stylized photos and videos.
The app comes with several free, custom-designed filters that can give your image various retro effects, a grainy black-and-white look, or even adjustable tilt-shift options. A recent update added three new filters for both iOS and Android; Lark, Reyes and Juno. Lark emphasizes green and blue colors in your photos, Reyes give you another vintage effect (like many of Instagram's filters do) and Juno brings out warm tones and plays up any white colors.
With Instagram, you can shoot videos and add filters much like you would with photos. In the camera mode, there's button to switch from photo to video. Just like Twitter's Vine app, when shooting a video, you touch to shoot and let go to stop shooting. Where Vine has 6 seconds of shooting time, Instagram lets you shoot for 15 seconds. You also can delete sections of your video as you're making it, letting you quickly fix a section of your video without having to start over from scratch. You can then pick from 13 new filters, and you can preview each of them live as your video is playing -- no need to wait for a render. To make your videos more stable, Instagram also has what the company calls Cinema, which help make your video much more smooth if you shoot while moving.