The Power of Instagram for Business

Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app is making it easier for you to experiment with your photos using Layout. This is Instagram’s complimentary app for photo editing and comes up against other Apps in the market that Instagrammers have already been using. These include Fuzel, InstaFrame, and Collage. Layout, just like the other photo formatting apps, lets you easily combine multiple photos into a single image. It’s fun, it’s simple and it gives you a new way to flex your creativity. But will it shine above all other apps of this kind already in the market?

Here’s what you need to know to get started:

1. It lets you get experimental with custom layouts and mirroring.

   Layout users can select up to nine photos to collage. Depending on how many you choose, the app will present you with your options for layouts (10 at the max).

   From there, you can resize, zoom, mirror (which I instantly love – pictured on left), rearrange, and flip images within the grids. You can also easily replace photos with different ones by pulling up your camera roll and swapping with a tap.

2. It helps you find faces.

   To help Instagram users share more photos of their friends (and selfies, of course), Layout provides a “Faces” button. This button then shows you all of the photos in your camera roll that feature people and discards cityscapes and other photos clogging up your camera roll. Genius!

3. Photo Booth.

   For capturing spontaneous moments, the Photo Booth feature takes four photos in quick succession (really quick succession!), just like the Photo Booth app on Apple computers.

   Tap the button to start the countdown, get yourself in front of the front-side camera, pose for your photos, and then find them instantly saved in your layout previews.

   The feature is limited to the front-facing camera, so this one’s just for selfies. Personally, I found this very stressful and the pictures were taken much too fast… In saying that though I often avoid the photo booth at weddings so I’m not much to go on!

4. It provides new opportunities for storytelling for brands.

   Instagram wants to provide users with the tools they need to tell more visual stories—be it collages, comic-style narratives, or fantastical re-imaginings of everyday products and images.

   As Instagram’s post reads: “From imagining mirrored landscapes to sharing multiple moments from an entire adventure, we’ve seen these kinds of visual storytelling happening on Instagram and we’re inspired by it. With Layout, it’s easier than ever to unlock your creativity — and we can’t wait to see what you’ll make next.”
   (Source: Instagram Blog).

Without a doubt, Layout’s simplicity – both in its ease of use and the small number of available editing options – will make this app popular among selfie aficionados and brands alike.

Time will tell whether Layout will remain a standalone app, rather than having its features integrated into the main Instagram app.