A squadron of apps have emerged to help you conjoin your selfies. In fact, some of the most-downloaded photo apps in the iPhone App Store are those that simply let you put more than one picture in one Instagram post. A few photo-stitchers we've looked at include PicsArt, Pic Stitch, and BeFunky. But now Instagram wants to save you from having to install a third-party app, by offering Layout, its own collage app.
Starting Up
The Layout app, which runs on iOS 7 or later, is a reasonable 5MB download. It's compatible with iPad, but optimized for iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 . When you first launch the app, you're treated to a five-panel slideshow apprising you of its functions. Before you can really get started, you need to give the app permission to access your photos on the phone. As with Instagram's Hyperlapse, you can get started using the app without having to log in to an account of any kind, which I like.
Below Layout's colorful hollow-square logo, you'll see your phone's photos, which you can filter by All, Faces, or Recent. Some of your photos with faces might not appear (face recognition technology still isn't 100 percent), so you may have to look through all photos if you don't see the one you want. Tap on up to nine photos shown in the bottom half of the screen, and you get layout choices for them at the top.
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As is usual for this kind of app, layout options range from square grids to rows to every combination of the two.
Customize Your Collage
Layout has an extremely clear yet powerful interface, and I'd expect nothing less from the developers at Instagram. After you select a layout, it's time for tweaking, tinkering, and customization. You can drag the borders between any of the component photos to resize them, and you can drag the photos around to reposition them in their frames. You can even pinch-zoom within any component photo. What you don't get is anything in the way of photo correction—no brightness or color adjusters here. Then again, if you're a big Instagrammer, you have probably already tweaked your favorite photos in Instagram, anyhow. You do get both image adjustment and collage ability in PicsArt and Befunky, but their absence is part of what makes Layouts simple and clean.
Three buttons along the bottom of the screen let you replace a selected image, mirror it, or flip it upside-down. After that, all that's left to do is save and share your creation. The share page shows you big buttons for Instagram and Facebook, and a More button for those lesser social networks. In the case of Instagram, the photo social network's own app opens, and you can apply the usual filter and editing options it offers before posting.
For Facebook and Flickr sharing, (if you have those apps installed) you'll get an iOS Share Sheet to send the image directly to the social network with whatever comments you want to add. Of course, Layout can share your work to any app on your iPhone that supports photo sharing, from that More button. Likely candidates include Pinterest, Tumblr, and Twitter.
Instagram has once again delivered an elegant app that is both simple to use and powerful in capabilities. It's not quite as single-purposed as the company's cool Hyperlapse app, but like that app, Layout does what it sets out to with ease and aplomb.
If you want to get more than one photo in an Instagram post, you no longer need a third-party app: Instagram's flexible Layout app can do the job elegantly.
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