Every time I use the new Instagram, I feel like a cruel trick is being played on me
Ever since Instagram’s 2.0 update, I have had a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. While the viewing section has been left well alone, the picture-taking and processing section has been dickered with and — frankly — ruined.
The headline features for this new release are real-time filters, allowing you to see the effects applied as you shoot, and high-res images. What isn’t mentioned is the abortion that is the new UI, or the watering down of the filters themselves.
Owen Billcliffe over at My Glass Eye has done an exhaustive comparison of the updated filters, and it’s easy to see that along with the rewrite to make them faster and full-res, the heart has been ripped out of them. The Lord Kelvin filter, now just Kelvin, is utterly different, whereas my favorite — XPro II — has become wishy washy. And many filters, including most of the new ones (of which there are four) look almost exactly the same as each other.
Worse. Some filters are gone completely, replaced by these new one. Gotham, the hight contrast, gritty B&W filter, is dead. Billcliffe also points out that the tilt-shift effect no longer allows control of the speed of the transition of the blur, or feathering. Thankfully, v2.1 will put this back in.
Those of you interested should go read Billcliffe’s post right now. It really is comprehensive, and shows you just how bad things are.
If the filters are bad, then the new UI is even worse. First, to apply the real-time filters, the live-view seems to have been downsized to a low-res feed. This is especially bad on the iPad, with its already awful camera. This view is kept as you apply filters. Only when you hit “done” do you see the proper results — up until then all diagonal lines have aliased jaggies, for example.
Application of filters is now frustrating. Instead of a neat row of icons along the bottom, the new icons overlap the bottom edge of the photo (they can be sent away, but then you can’t use them). Worse, when you touch one icon to apply the filter, the whole strips moves. So if I want to apply XPro II (as I usually do) I have to scroll around to find it instead of just hitting the second icon from the right as I used to.
This continuous scrolling means that the position of anything is never fixed. Worse is the scrolling itself, which combines two frustrations into one. First, you can’t just scroll. Dragging the strip of icons will apply whatever effect you touch, even if all you want to do is scroll. Previously you could scroll without affecting the image, which let you do quick before-and-after comparisons of filters at either end of the strip. This is contrary to almost every other iOS app.
Second, you touch a filter button and it not only jumps (bad enough) but jumps unpredictably. Touch a filter at the far edge of the screen and the strip jumps two spaces over. Touch one anywhere else and it only jumps one space. Terrible.
There is good news: You can revert to an old version by deleting the app and then reinstalling it from your computer. This assumes you didn’t sync your iPhone with your computer since installing the new version. It also means you’ll never again be able to hit “update all” on your iPhone, lest the better version is replaced again.
There’s another alternative: Try Instaplus, an app that lets you snap pictures, apply filters and send the results to Instagram. It’s great, and costs just $2.
Instagram 2.0 review: Insta-grumble [My Glass Eye]
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