Take advantage of Instagram filters without posting a photo

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Sometimes you don’t want to tinker around with a photo and just put a filter on it to add that bit of drama. And sure there are many photo editing apps out there but sometimes you just want to slap on the Gingham filter on your photo for that nostalgic, retro feel. How do you get the effect without having to post on Instagram? How to Geek suggests turning your phone into airplane mode just when you’re about to post.

Go through the process of editing your photo and once you’re ready to hit share, make sure your phone is in airplane mode. This will prompt Instagram to try and upload photo but it won’t be able to. At the same time, the image will be saved to your camera roll. And then you can just cancel the upload before you turn your phone’s cellular capabilities back on.

Source: Lifehacker

Instagram will soon let you post stories and save photos from your mobile web browser

Instagram looks to be adding more capabilities to its mobile web browser experience. The Instagram.com site will soon let you share stories right from it. But the experience will be a bit more limited than when you use the app. You can only add a photo and add text to said photos. All the other stickers and doodles will only be accessible to via the Instagram app. Similar to the app, you can access this feature on the top left corner.

On top of this, Instagram will also let you save posts you’d like to revisit at a later time. You just need to tap on the bookmark icon on the top right corner of the page. Instagram is bringing these features to all users in the coming weeks.

Instagram tests out stop-motion camera in Stories

After taking tons of cues (or basically copying Snapchat, we should say), Instagram is turning to its more creative tools to keep its users engaged within its Stories feature. Joining the recently launched Superzoom tool, Instagram is trying out what it calls Stop Motion. This lets the Instagram Story camera take a long series of photos that the app stitches into a GIF you can post on the service. It won’t let you edit individual images but once its done recording, you can add things like text and stickers as you would your other stories. At the moment though, this isn’t available to all users and we can’t say if Instagram will roll this outside of testing. If you do have access to it, let us know what you think.

Source: Digital Trends

You can now add a friend to Instagram Live Stories

If you think your Instagram Lives have been getting a bit lonely and dull, the app will now let you add a friend to join your live stream. The catch is your friend has to be watching your Live Story to join in. So make sure to let that person know you want them to live stream with you ahead of time. It’s pretty simple to setup. You just need to tap on the two smiley faces seen at the bottom of the screen (beside the comments text box). From there, your screen will be split horizontally and you just need to select the username of the person you want to stream with. If you want to take them out of the stream, you just need to tap on the X button on their screen. Just like a regular Live Story, you can add filters and the like as well as opt to not make the video available for 24 hours.

Source: CNET