Instagram At last, the much vaunted iPhone picture blogging app has arrived on Android and, judging by the one million downloads it saw on the day of release, it’s been eagerly awaited. For the uninitiated, Instagram is a Twitter-like affair but with a picture taking the place of the 140 characters. You take a snap, jazz it up with some …
I write photography apps for iOS, and as a result I follow a lot of the main iPhone photography sites and a lot of the top iPhone photographers. Don't believe the "it's just a phone camera, it'll be crap" line, take a look at http://www.iphoneart.com/gallery?query_str=&sub_tab=0&tab=popular instead
Instagram was great. Was. Lots of the top photographers + artists had their work on there. Until the Facebook purchase - I'd say 75% or more of them closed their accounts, with most moving to eyem. The rest were pretty much all in the "I'll see what happens" camp rather than the "I'm fine with this" camp.
I can only say that the quality has dropped a whole lot over the past few weeks. It's a pity, because instagram was really good, but then I've no love for Facebook and it's giving a huge boost to some fresh new apps, so I guess it's all good in the end :)
I used to like that band you like back when they only released their stuff on floppy vinyl and never appeared under their own name except on leap years but then they replaced the xylophone player with a drummer and got signed to a record label and lots of people started to like them and I don't listen to them any more but then I found another band that only play instruments that have been carved by people of unpronouncable ethnicity so I guess it's all good.
So, it lets you post 2/3rds of a photo? (Assuming my maths is correct in thinking 2/3 of a 6x4 photo would make it square).
So, you can apply a crap filter effect to your butchered photo... to make it more interesting.
Presumably installed by the same people who post their oh-so-hilarious photos of friends and family mangled by the aging and fat apps.
Um, what? Again, but in english please!
I didn't see any bad reaction at all to the android news. Why would there be, outside of the idiot fanboy camps? It's just more people on the network.
It was only when the Facebook news was out that things 'kicked off'. I dislike Facebook so it pissed me off, but I expected the reaction to be pretty muted - it wasn't. A lot of very good photographers closed their accounts that day, and the reaction on the main photography sites was *very* negative.
I suspect the average man on the street couldn't give a flying f*** if it's linked to his Facebook account and his privacy gets utterly raped, which is why the numbers are still going up fast. But it lost a lot of the most interesting photographers.
But yeah, "apple folk can pay it all" :D (I'll be laughing at that all day)
you could add 100 million Android users but unless you start adding them to your "follow" list you won't ever notice.
I know three professional photographers who use Instagram and not one has departed because of the Facebook purchase while four iPhone using friends (and me) think the Android app is a good thing because more of their actual flesh & blood friends are now on the network.
As for the quality of the content being uploaded dropping since the Android app came out or the service slowing, that is just a load of complete and utter cock.
As an iPhone owner this sort of self-important, self-serving mealy mouthed bollocks from the iOS Instagram "community" - 30m people is not a f***ing community btw, it's just a lot of people with the same mobile phone - is frankly embarrassing.
Facebook spending a billion dollars for functionality that could be created for less than a million. Totally crazy. I've worked on camera apps so can say unlikely Instagram own any valuable patents in the area that app has plenty pror art.
Not a bad app but talk about blowing bubbles.
But they weren't paying for the App. They were paying for the community/customer base. A billion dollars is still fruitloop sound-the-alarm-bells crazy whoop whoop bubble money ... but the App itself is largely irrelevant. They paid $200 million for a game where you scribble a penis and hope somebody works out a simple anagram.
There are much better apps out there for photo manipulation, e.g. Magic Hour, Pixlr-o-matic and Retro Camera, but for a pure hipster photo community it's hard to beat Instagram.
Personally I do most of the photo warping in other apps and just use Instagram as a place to put photos without fotospamming off my friends on Twitter or Facebook.
I installed pixlr-o-matic on my new cheapo Android handset. My biggest beef with it was that the added defects (sparkles, lines, fuzz etc) were all fixed overlays rather than procedurally-generated interference patterns -- or in plain speak, they're the same every time, limiting their usefulness if you take a lot of snaps. What I'm looking for is a simple program that doesn't give me the same result picture after picture. What is available out there?
..that really does not see the point of this app?
Really, I just don't get it? It's like having "sepia" or "monochrome" on a decent spec camera.
Nope I reallly, really, don't see the point.
Then again, I don't see the point fo telling everyone where I am every single minute of my life.
Huh, I wonder how well Instagram can work on Android if the user can't preview effects before uploading. Because even on iOS I find I must go back and forth between filters a lot before [perhaps] finding the one that works best for a shot. Then again, I suspect many achieve their desired effects through alternative means, and use Instagram mostly for the easy sharing.
One feature I have not read about so far amidst the recent hoopla is Instagram's heuristic search -- it can suggest others' feeds you might like to follow. I've found these recommendations so spot-on it's scary. Does Instagram own that IP?
And they haven't enable tilt-shift in the Android version? Thank goodness for that! If ever there was an over-used effect, it's that one.
If you have to use a 'photo-community' app then at least select one with a site that permits uploading of decent images by real photographers using conventional cameras instead of low quality images artified/rescued with lousy effects. I quite like Lightbox, although I bet they don't have 30 million+ users yet.
I installed it to see what the fuss was all about...
used the QR code to get me to the app on google play, for some reason it was not showing up in the search. and it told me it was not compatible with my phone. A HTC Desire.
I went to the google play website, found it there, and lo and behold, it installed fine. I only assume that the google play app on my phone is not playing nice on my CyanogenMod "upgrade" os on my phone...
Am I missing something?
I just dont get the whole photo effects thing, Ive had software over the years on PC's that offer photo effects, but I only ever used them as a play about with 1 or 2 images, and would always keep the original, as it was better.
Honestly, I would rather see the full colour image not a sepia or other effect image.
The most interesting thing about Instagram is that it is powered by ponies.
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