Tried and Tested : Instagram’s New Collage Making App ‘Layout’

Instagram, the photo sharing app has been growing rapidly. It has overtaken Twitter in terms of the number of subscribers on its service. Its success has lead to a number of third party apps which let users add elements like collage, stickers and other add-on’s on their “grams”. The company has now introduced a new standalone app called Layout which lets users create collages from their camera rolls.

We checked it out, so you didn’t have to:

With Layout, Instagram seems to want to take on the multiple apps that its subscribers use for their photos on the service. Instagram users have been found to proactively use apps like Pic Stitch, Pic Collage, InstaCollage, PhotoGrid, and others. By having its own collage making app, Instagram can keep those users in its own ecosystem.

The first thing you see when you get into the app is the camera roll. Here you can select the pictures you want to include in your collage. Once you select the images you want to use, Layout gives you custom layouts that you can choose from. At once, a user can select up to 9 images. Each selection is instantly visualized in the photo grid.

Instagram wanted to give a better user interface to the users in comparison to the conventional collage makers in the app store. Layout packs in unique features like faces, photo booth and easy to use editing options.

With Faces, you can filter out the unwanted snaps in your camera roll and keep only the ones with people’s faces in them. Instagram found that 90% of all the collages on its service consist of faces, so it makes it easy for users to skip through the random WhatsApp images and only have pictures with people in it.

The Photobooth feature was essential for an app like Instagram and its one of the most fun things to do at a party. The photobooth button on Layout starts a countdown timer and then takes a bunch of images which are laid out on the grid.

Layout makes editing the collage real easy. It offers intuitive options which most users will find easy to use. It lets you pinch and zoom the images to define the size and also enables you to pan the snaps. A replace option allows you to go back to the photo roll to change an undesired image. Layout also allows you to mirror the images and add some creative elements to your collages.

Once your images are done, you can save them on your device or share them on your preferred social networks including Instagram. At present Layout is only available for iOS users but it will be available for Android soon.