Instagram Adds 10 New Photo Editing Features

Whether you’re an avid Instagram user or a novice, get ready to find some new photo-editing tools on Instagram that will make your photos even better.

Instagram released these 10 new photo-editing features yesterday for both iOS and Android devices that go beyond just photo filters. All users (including marketers) can take advantage of these tools to customize their images and enhance their branding efforts. “All of us [at Instagram] are kind of photo geeks, but we’re trying to bridge the gap between being a photo geek and the rest of the world,” says Peter Deng, director of product at Instagram.

The product developers made a six-month effort to test out these new tools. The vignette tool, an effect that adjusts the lighting around the image, required the team to meticulously study how light bends through different film camera lenses.

The full list of editing tools for Instagram v6.0 include adjust, brightness, contrast, warmth, saturation, highlights, shadows, vignette, sharpen, and filter strength. Even if users aren’t sure what these effects will look like, they can adjust the strength on a 100-point scale, which will quickly provide and understanding. Just double tap on the filter to access the filter strength scale.

The new update to a once simple, ‘instantaneous’ app might sound like a little too much, but we think it came just in time. Other apps that have built out their apps with more fancy features such as VSCO Cam, Afterlight, and newcomers like Litely specialize with more intricate, advanced tools and have seen high rankings in the app stores’ photo & video categories.

Overall the trend of visual communication and mobile photo editing tools continues to rise. For Instagram to stay as the leading photo tool, they needed to step it up in order to keep users from leaving the app.