Instagram is rolling out Layout, a free, standalone app that merges multiple images into one. It’s available on iOS now (on the App Store), and an Android version is expected in the next few months.
Users pick up to nine photos from their phone’s Camera Roll — whether they were snapped via Instagram doesn’t matter. The app organizes them in three sections: recent photos snapped, photos with people’s faces in them, and an area with all your shots. There’s also a “Photo Booth” feature, which employs the smartphone’s front-facing camera to snap four shots in quick succession.
Layout suggests up to 10 collage templates to choose from, depending on the number of selected photos, and lets folks tweak their work any number of ways, like dragging and dropping photos in the collage, pinch-to-zoom, and a sci-fi-like “mirror” effect that duplicates part of a shot. Afterwards, they can share their creations from inside the app to platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Flipboard, Slack and others. (Twitter integration is noticeably absent.)
Why collages? Look at the numbers. According to Instagram, one in five active users — at least 60 million people — already use third-party mobile apps like Diptic, Moldiv and Stitch to make collages.
Layout is the second companion app from Instagram. Last fall, the company rolled out an app called Hyperlapse that lets users create image-stabilized, time lapse videos. Are you a Hyperlapse user? Looking forward to using Layout for your next photo-sharing collage? Tell us below!
