Wednesday
Oct062010
New iPhone Photo App: Instagram
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 10:17PM | Glyn Evans 
App Store Description: Instagram is an amazingly fun & simple life-sharing app for your iPhone. Snap photos wherever you go to show the world what’s going on in your life. Follow your friends’ photo updates as they move through the world. Select from photo filters that transform regular ol’ photos into works of art you’ll want to keep around forever.
Features include:
- Apply over a dozen fun & beautiful filters to your photos
- Post as many photos as you want, for free
- Find and follow friends who are using the app
- Attach (optional) location information to any of your posts
- Share your posts to Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, & Facebook
- Check in to Foursquare when you post a photo with a location
- Let your friends know what you think by liking & commenting on their photos
- View the most popular photos around the world from Instagram users
- Supports 3G, 3GS and iPhone 4 phones
- Full iPhone 4 camera support
App Store Link: Instagram; Price: FREE
Editors comments: This app may be free, but just how many more photo sharing services do we need?
I did install the app, but after I realised I had to sign up to yet another service, and discovered the saved file size was a poor 600 x 600, I did what the developers will probably not want to hear, and that was, I deleted the app.
tagged Instagram in New iPhone Photo Apps
Instagram in New iPhone Photo Apps
Reader Comments (21)
what other photo sharing sites are there? Flickr and? This app/service is supposed to be more of a social network for photo sharing.
This looks like a pretty decent app. Downloading now and looking forward to trying it out.
It would be great if you support posing to WordPress blogs.
I like the photo sharing concept and don't think it's a market that has been well tapped. Flickr is for sharing photos, yes, but Instagram is for sharing photos *right now* wherever you happen to be at the moment. It's portable, fast, and open to networking.
What I don't like is that it saves to a pitiful low resolution and that the developers seem to be ignoring anything that is not glowing praise.
@ Ed
I agree with you the low resolution is killer. Hopefully this will improve in the future.
deleting it as well. some of the filters looked ok but its just not there yet.
I can't say I agree with the comment that photo share is untapped. Almost every app has Twitter and FB intergration. I don't need another website to have photos uploaded to. Also how is flikr not a site for sharing photos "right now"?
The UX of this app is nice and well thoughtout. But having to sign up for their site and the fact that the resolution is not full is what will make this app drop off my radar.
Rubbish
Hey there,
Sorry to hear you didn't have a great first experience with the app. Higher-res is definitely something we're looking at, we went for a lower resolution to optimize the uploading & viewing but we're hearing loud & clear that higher-res is something people want, so we'll figure out a way of making it happen.
Let me know what other thoughts we had--we're absolutely all ears regarding feedback, especially critical ones. Send them our way at contact@instagr.am . Thanks!
I do like the effects. Just did some playing around and other than the resolution being so small it is a well developed app. Looking forward to the resolution bump so I can include the photos in my own iphoneography gallery.
thanks for the heads up. I downloaded this app previously and hadn't yet gotten arouind to testing the resolution. Now I don't have to
I downloaded this app early this morning. I love it. I've tried tumblr and I didn't like the app. This app is on point, so long as they continue to update it. I saw we start a list of peoples usernames from this site to follow. I've seen some good photos on there. Mine is mrmayface
I'm curious about what the challenges are for developers of camera apps. Knowing nothing about how apps are made I would have thought that allowing high res would be the default, that it would actually take some coding to dumb down the camera input to something less than full res.
I understand of course that the higher the resolution the higher the processing time, but again I would have thought it would be simple to give the end user the choice on whether to compromise speed or resolution.
@JonnyGerman Larger photos mean more process which translates into more issues (a.k.a. bad reviews). The initial release for any development, iphone or not, you want it to be as smooth (less bugs) as possible. There is also the buzz factor. Nothing like limiting the features so you can release a new version and get reviewed on sites like this one every few months.
But that can backfire as well. For example the resolution size with this app can be a big issue to some, mainly, serious iphoneographers.
Just downloaded it because @robinrhys plugged it on her AppAdvice show. I like the whole Hipstamatic effect, but to be honest, I'm sick of photos looking like someone dipped them in an oil painting. It's fun for a while, but seriously, I prefer actual photos that are well taken, rather than digitally enhanced to death. I think the whole point of all these photo-sharing apps or tools are to catalog your life. For that reason, I much prefer Treehouse Photo Sharing. It's true there's nothing fancy or new, but well, I don't really need a million other tools. I get a headache when I see that many options, to be honest. I really like the people on the app, too. My 2 cents.
I seem to be in the minority, but I like this app ;) I'm user Jennyland!
I downloaded instagram, try for a few minutes and then deleted the app. At the same time I was googling about this app and I read that it was like the twitter concept but using photos instead of words...so I gave it a second chance and now I really like the app. But I have to say that this is not an app for pure photography, it´s just a way to tell your dayly life through simple photos taken in any moment...not just artistic photos.
my id is edumtb, so follow me
I really like the idea of this app. Although others have tried the same idea, this app as a whole seems to do it a bit better then others.
But because of the limited customizability (for instance, if you want a certain look, you are stuck with a certain border) and the low-resolution of the saved photos, I will not be using it just yet.
But I will keep it on my phone so I know when it gets updated.
I look forward to the update that at least brings higher resolutions.
Glyn: have you feelings on this app evolved any since your initial response?
@Jennyland, I'm now using Instagram, although the jury is still out.