Instagram Phasing Out Live Filters

The good news: Instagram (“finally”) shipped an update today to support the iPhone 5 display size. The bad news, from Matthew Panzarino:

Instagram has posted a notice on its ‘known issues’ site (as pointed out to us by Mark Wilkins) that details the reason live filters aren’t on the iPhone 5:

As of the current release (v3.1), Instagram does not support live filters on the iPhone 5. Going forward, live filters will be phased out as we work to improve the Instagram experience for all users.

So, for whatever reason, Instagram feels that live filters aren’t a part of the best experience it can provide. And it appears that they’ll be ‘phased out’ in future versions of the app

Sounds like a pile of horseshit from Instagram, considering that the whole reason they gave for replacing their original not-live but aesthetically superior filters with the current crop was that live filters were an important feature. If they bring back the old filters, I’ll say hip-hip-hooray. If they stick with the current meh filters and remove live previewing, I say boo-hiss.

Remember the Gotham filter?

I hope I’m wrong, but this reeks to me of pandering to the lowest common denominator as Instagram expands to more Android phones and other non-iOS platforms.

★ Tuesday, 25 September 2012