Instagram for Android

Remember that I joined the new age and got a smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S3- one of the main reasons being so I could use instagram (so fun!).

I figured out a couple of things that I’m sure you seasoned fancy phone users think is commonplace, but it was new to me and I got a few requests to “show me how!” so I thought I’d do that, from one beginner to another.

FIRST – – I have learned to take pictures with my CAMERA, not the Instagram App – – for a few reasons:
–my camera has a higher resolution, so if I take them with instagram I can never get them back to a higher resolution
–instagram makes you write a caption and publish it right then, so if you’re wanting to snap a few pictures in a row, you can’t do that quickly
So what I do is take them with the Camera, then when viewing the picture up at the top is a little icon where you can open the picture in Instagram – so I go through my Gallery, find a picture I want to put on Instagram, and then go through Instagram to do that.  Hope that makes sense.

SECOND – – how to make a collage.  There are tons of apps and tutorials out there when I was looking for direction on this, but they’re almost all related to the iPhone.  So here’s what I do on my droid…

–I grabbed the “Photo Grid” app from the Play Store – see it in the screen shot.  Then when you open it you pick “Grid”

 It will automatically pick a layout for you, but you can play around with different options down at the bottom:

Now, it automatically centers your photo, but say it cuts out a part you want to show.  Tap on which picture in the grid you’d like to maneuver.  Then a new screen pops up and pick the “move zoom rotate” option.  Then with that picture highlighted in dark, use the control buttons at the bottom to move the photo, etc. 

 Click the green check in the corner when you’re done with that.  Then when you’re satisfied with your whole collage, click the green download button in the top corner.  It will be saved into a new photo folder in your Gallery called “PhotoGrid”.

THIRD – now to post that photo collage to Instagram.  Open up Instagram like you’re going to take a picture with it (screen shot on the left below) but click that “gallery file” button thing on the right instead of hitting the photo button in the middle.  It will bring up your gallery – just pick your collage out of the “Photo Grid” folder and it will be pulled into Instagram where you can now apply a filter and publish your collage.

FOURTH – – post an Instagram picture to your Facebook Fan Page.  This is a built-in function with iPhone, but not Androids.  It will post to your personal FB page, but not a fan page.  But there’s an easy way to work around it.  Within your facebook app, click the top left corner for your FB navigation menu – it’ll list your pages on there – and switch to your Page (I clicked “Sugar Bee Crafts”).  Once you are on your Fan Page, you can update your status there or “Share Photo”.  Click “Share Photo” and you can pull photos from the gallery on your phone.  Instagram automatically has a folder in the Gallery where it dumps all your Instagram images, so just grab your picture out of that folder and post it.

FIFTH – – – to write this post, I learned the way to take a screenshot on a Galaxy S3 – you press the “home” button and the “power” button and hold them until the screen clicks like you took a picture of it.  Easy peasy.

Have fun playing with your Droid and Instagram – – it may sound like a lot of steps when I type it out, but it’s not.  You’ll catch on quick and be a pro in no time!

I am still looking for a good app that will write in cute fonts on my Instagram Pics, so if you know of one of those, let me know….