Finally, Instagram Has Upped Their Image Resolution by Almost Double

Finally, Instagram Has Upped Their Image Resolution by Almost Double

Finally, it seems Instagram has pushed past its original 640x640 image resolution and made way in almost doubling that to 1080x1080 this week. First noticed a few days ago when posting over the July 4th weekend my iPhone 6 Plus had not left my images soft when hitting the 'share' button but rather closely maintained its original image quality. It took me a few days and some digging in the source code but I had noticed my photos breaking a much larger resolution by surprise.

It seems Instagram has yet to publicly announce the change, though if you are a heavy Instagram user, you may have already noticed the jump yourself. I almost missed it due to going dark over the holiday weekend and missing my once a day posting schedule per usual the last couple years. The image quality has been the number one concern I hear from professional photographers wanting to join the app to share their work, claiming fear the image quality is not up to par as a legit portfolio sharing tool. Even though we have photographers going full time as professional Instagrammers, doubters still flood the app wanting more in the way for the pro level shooters. I myself bring in 90% of my freelance through Instagram and work through the app now encompasses the majority of my freelance income each year, some of which is shot with nothing more than my iPhone. 

Check out the example of images below on your phone, the first two are before the update and the last two are after. I had noticed a drastic change in image quality when posting to the social network from my iPhone 6 Plus. Having to hack my way to a higher quality photo by adding a slight bit of sharpening and structure in-app to achieve the look I wanted. 

What do you think, can you tell a difference in these shots or photos of your own that have been posted recently? Will this bring more professional photographers to the mix now that the image resolution has been raised? With a change like doubling the resolution you would think they would make an announcement by now.

[via Instagram]

Andrew Griswold's picture

Andrew Griswold is a photographer and designer based in Indianapolis. Born and raised in Indy he has made a name for himself by staying very active in the creative community in both photography and design. He has also founded a community of photographers via Instagram connecting them with brands to work with and shoot locally.

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13 Comments

Any news about video resolution too?

Not that I have heard but I rarely do video, though that is because the resolution is so bad. Ha!

I wonder if they would upsize old photos from original files. It shouldn't be difficult tho would they care to do so? Then I guess there's not much reason to do it.

I was thinking that too, it would be crazy to think it would almost double their storage of old files to do that. I bet they stick with all new files. I have done a check on old posts and they are all still at 600px vs the new ones. I have noticed with both Facebook and Instagram that super old pics seem to have a super low res look to them. Maybe they downsize as time goes on or its just those photos were really bad to begin with. ha

They've just the 640x640 pictures on their server so I doubt that they would include a function to re-upload photos from the phone,

Iphone only for the moment I guess. I see your pictures are 1024, mine are stil 640x640, which look like 1x1 on 2015 standards lol https://instagram.com/ericparephoto/ Damn, my first computer in 1992 was 640x480 :::)

I use a android samsung galaxy s5, and had an upgrade of instagram yesterday

Interesting, I have a feeling they will just grab a single ratio and go with it for all mobile rather than come up with something for Android and something for iPhone and change per the size of the phone. I have yet to see an official announcement though on the change so I am assuming they are working on the backend quietly to see how it works and then go from there.

Still small compared to the competition (and especially viewed on the web) but it's at least a step into the right direction. Hopefully they'll also allow other aspect ratios so people don't have to use the workarounds.

Sponsored by Richard Prince to get better resolution prints !

Now if only we could get them to support multiple profiles.

Just waiting...

Almost doubling? My arithmetic says that the new resolution is about 2.85 times the old. Oh, I see - you think that "doubling" would be 1280x1280. No, that would be quadrupling.

Good to know! My best photos are in my lightroom library, so using the younity app, I get to post my highest-quality images directly to instagram on my iPhone. It's an awesome app I just discovered that has saved me TONS of time! http://www.getyounity.com/blog/post-photos-stored-on-your-computer-to-in...