Instagram releases an app called Layout that allows users to combine multiple photos into a single image. As a way to create a collage, according to the company, Layout is "simple and it gives you a new way to flex your creativity."
The app which is easy to use, can either snap photos on the spot using Layout's Photo Booth feature, or can select from the most recent photos. The app then automatically previews a series a custom layouts in which the user can choose.
Layout lets users to select up to 8 images for their collage.
Photos from the gallery are grouped in separate tabs: all, Faces (which only chooses photos with people in them), or recents (that shows photos recently used in an collage).
When most collage apps show a variety of grid in which the user should fill with photos, Layout's method to ask the user for photos first before selecting the grid, is to show the variety of grid based on how many photos the user picked.
While the app suggests the custom adaptive layouts for photo collage, the user can customize the photos by drag and drop to rearrange them, pinch to zoom or pull the sides of each photo to adjust its size and get the layout just right. Users can also flip and rotate photos.
"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," said Instagram in its blog post.
To Appeal More People With Different Brands
Instagram is known to be one of the most influential social media that booms photo sharing. With its native easy-to-use interface, it appeals to both casual users and hardcore photographers.
While Layout is able to get most of its job well done, it's lack in interface can make some users feel powerless. The interface is a bit clunky and the output quality is a bit left behind.
Layout is the third app made by Instagram (after the photo messaging app Bolt, and its time-lapse app Hyperlapse). So rather than building the functionality inside its core app, Instagram opted to introduce it as a separate app. Called the "Layout from Instagram", it is the company's way to ease users in compiling photos together and share them.
Instagram's way to separate new apps from its core fits with Facebook's strategy of releasing focused and single-purpose tools for various services. Beside than to prevent bloating its core app, separating apps has been proven to work well for Facebook in delivering different services with different brands, but working under one flag.
The Layouts app from Instagram is first arriving on the App Store for iOS, with the Android version arriving in May 2015.