Instagram announced on its Tumblr blog yesterday that users can now share photos in both portrait and landscape orientation.
“Square format has been and always will be part of who we are,” the site stated in a blog post making the announcement. “That said, the visual story you’re trying to tell should always come first, and we want to make it simple and fun for you to share moments just the way you want to.”
So it took them all these years to recognize that only one in five photos and videos that users upload originally was in a square format, and that Instagram has forced people to make tough decisions about which friend on which end of the horizontal photo to cut out.
“Now, when choosing a photo or video, you can tap the format icon to adjust the orientation to portrait or landscape instead of square,” the post states. “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….[and] to keep the clean feel of your profile grid, your post will appear there as a center-cropped square.”
And now a video to explain that further for you visual learners out there:
