Instagram announced a new feature today specifically involving the gallery option for posting multiple photos at once. When Instagram first introduced the gallery option, they introduced it in true old-school Instagram fashion, allowing users to post multiple images at once, but requiring all photos to be in a square aspect ratio. Now, however, Instagram added the ability to preserve your photos' original aspect ratio, even within galleries with multiple photos.
The feature, which is available to all users beginning today, allows you to choose multiple photos in either portrait or landscape orientation to include in a single post. There is one caveat, though: all the photos you choose for your gallery post must be in the same orientation. That is to say, if you choose both portrait and landscape photos to appear within your gallery, Instagram will automatically crop all the photos into the aspect ratio of the first photo selected to start the gallery.
Despite the limitation of the new gallery feature, photographers will no doubt be rejoicing that they no longer have to compromise their photos’ compositions thanks to Instagram forcing the images to a square aspect ratio.
In order to get the new gallery feature to work, you must first choose a photo as if you’ll be posting a single photo. Next, you’ll want to select the full aspect ratio button on the lower left of your photo (it looks similar to two expanding brackets), then select the multiple photo option and begin selecting the other photos you’d like to include in your gallery.
Although the process of making Instagram’s new gallery feature work is a bit muddled, the feature itself is a welcome change that allows for less restriction on how photographers can share their art. To stay up-to-date on Instagram news and features, be sure to check out the company's Twitter account.
You're just being picky.
You're absolutely right Bob! Apparently I didn't have enough caffeine as I was writing yesterday! ;) Thanks for the heads up and correction.
This was the very reason why I didn't use this feature: not being able to add multiple photos in there original aspect ratio as you could with single entries. #happy
I'm confused... so Instagram still crops them? Their site isn't any more help on how this works. Want to be helpful Instagram, let me upload the photos I want in their original orientation and aspect ratio and display them as such.
Hey Andrew! Instagram still crops them to whatever aspect ratio the first photo is that you've chosen for your gallery (i.e. landscape or portrait). So the big news is that there are more options other than the square aspect ratio that used to be the only option for a multiple photo post on IG. Though not perfect, at least we're getting more options. You can test the feature out, without actually posting, to get a good feel for how it works within the app!
That's what I thought, and yes, I should listen to my own advice and just be happy things are improving rather than complaining about what it doesn't have... ;)