Instagram has released their newest update just in time for the barrage of holiday food pictures and winter selfies. These newest filters promise to be more subtle in order to appeal to today’s discriminating selfie connoisseur. In all seriousness though, it will be a welcome change as the well worn Instagram filters were initially designed to be purposefully heavy handed in order to compensate for the lower picture quality back in 2010 when Instagram was first launched. Now, four years later, with the better cameras on smartphones the higher resolution snaps demand a more nuanced approach to filters. Enter, the five newest options to enhance your smartphone photography skills:
- Aden – Gives a pastel feel to images making it perfect for portraits.
- Crema – A creamy look (get it?) that’s meant to warm and cool (uh, okay) the image.
- Ludwig – A light enhancing filter with a bit of desaturation. Why the name Ludwig though? Instagram explains, “We named it Ludwig because of the famous minimalist mantra “less is more,” coined by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It works especially great with portraits, architecture, and geometric shapes.”
- Pertpetua – With Oregon’s Cape Perpetua as this filter’s muse, it adds a blue/green natrual hue to your pictures.
- Slumber – Emphasizes blacks and blues while adding a haze and desaturating the image for a bedtime, dreamy feel.
Can’t wait to test these out on your new pics? Well, Instagram decided to give their fanatical user base a little extra holiday cheer by including some new features along with the filters. You can (finally) rearrange, add, and remove filters from your filter tray at the bottom. Instagram has also included a neat new perspective tool so that you can play around with the horizontal and vertical lines of an image. Want to let your inner film student out to play? Instagram will now let you upload slow motion video so that you can showcase your arty film side. With this newest version of Instagram, you’ll also be able to enjoy real time commenting on photos so you don’t have to constantly refresh to get feedback from your followers. It seems that Instagram is feeling quite generous after revealing that 300 million users now use their app at least once a month. Want to know where to snag this shiny and new version of Instagram? Keep your eyes peeled for the iOS version 6.4 and the Android version 6.12 that are out now.