Instagram is the holy grail of photographers as it has increasingly become the best place to engage and connect with people and grow yourself as a photographer or filmmaker. However, it has limitations too.
Instagram as a platform is impressive but has strict measures around image resolutions and aspect ratios. If not accounted for, these aspect ratios can be quite frustrating to deal with. The crop is ruining it, especially when you’ve toned that picture to perfection.
In this article, we talk about how to upload taller portraits to Instagram without ruining the image.
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Uploading tall portraits
The first thing you will have to do is understand the aspect ratio Instagram uses for portraits. Instagram crops all vertical posts to 4:5 by default, and that’s our operation window.
Now there are several things you can do to nail those portraits; start taking pictures with a little bit more thought. Just knowing for what purpose you’re taking a photo goes a long way in determining how the final product looks.
Method 1: One technique I’ve seen photographers/filmmakers who shoot vertical content use is taping their screens. This kind of forces you to frame your shot a particular way so that when it goes on to the ‘gram’, you don’t have to make changes that’ll ruin the photo.
Method 2: Another method you can employ if your camera supports it you can change the aspect ratio of the shots. You can go for a 4:5 or 1:1. Nothing like a good old square photo.
However, if you’re stuck with a photo that’s 4:3 or 16:9, there are still ways to fix your photos.
If you can’t sacrifice screen estate and can’t crop the photo at all, your best bet is to use a resizing tool. Hundreds of apps on the Play Store can resize your photo to a 1:1 aspect ratio and fill in the gaps with either a solid photo or just the image itself in a slight blur.
You can use this as just another creative option for your feeds. It carries a unique look and can define how your feed looks. If used properly, this can even be a feed-wide look.
The last option is just a good old crop. You can do this in your editing software or on Instagram itself. Yes, you’ll have to cut something out, which might ruin your picture, but sometimes you can’t do anything about it.
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