Now You Can Edit the Brightness, Contrast, and Filter Intensity of Your Instagram Photos Within the App
(Instagram)
Instagram has announced that it will now offer tools to let you manually adjust your photos’ brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, and more. Per the image-sharing social network’s blog post:
“You take a photo to capture a moment, but often what you see in the photograph doesn’t feel the same as what you remember. From brightening up a photo of your dinner party to better capturing the warmth of a sunset portrait, these new creative tools help you bring out and share the beauty of the moment as you remember it—right inside the same simple Instagram you already know.”
Translation: Instagram knows you’re no Ansel Adams, so it’s found a way to make that photo of your lunch much less … meh. The company is likely quite aware that its customers have been (or at least should have been) using these sort of detailed editing tools outside the Instagram app long before this tool was announced.
This is clearly a move by Instagram to keep you inside the app. The less you have to move around between apps, the more likely you’ll post more immediately and more often.
In any case, it’s definitely helpful to have some editing tools baked right into the sharing platform. You’ll be able to access the new feature after you take a photo and go to select a filter. You’ll see a new wrench icon below your photo on the right side. Tap it, and options titled Brightness, Contrast, Warmth, Saturation, Highlights, Shadows, Vignette, and Sharpen will appear below. You now also have the option to adjust the density of any filter you apply to a photo. Just double-tap the filter icon to make it lighter or darker.
The update is available on both Android and iOS.
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