WP App Review : Instagraph

Instagraph (Version 1.0)
Venetasoft
$2.49

After a long wait, there's finally a Windows Phone app which lets you upload photos to Instagram. The initial release was plagued by two main problems. First, uploading a photo would send it into a queue, causing it not to be so "insta" in terms of sharing your photo. It would take anywhere from 5 minutes to up to 30 minutes for the photo to show up on your photostream. Second, the photo that actually appears on your photostream would sometimes not be yours. Venetasoft quickly pulled the app and shut down the servers to work on a fix and have recently updated it.


As of this blog post, Instagraph is still currently not showing up in the stores. I purchased it on the first day so was able to get the update and was finally able to play around with it for a bit. Linking your Instagram account is easy enough (sorry, no new account creation for now.) Once you link your account and open up the app, your most recently taken photos are shown in a gallery. Alternatively, you can choose from all your photos in any of your albums or shoot directly from the app by tapping on the camera icon. Once you choose or capture a photo you're taken to an edit screen where you can adjust your photo in several ways.

The following adjustments are currently available :

• Enhance : Auto, Night, Backlit, Balance
• Stickers : Gives you the option of overlaying stickers designs
• Effects : Singe, Vivid, San Carmen, Indiglow, Concorde, Aqua, Strato, Laguna, Ventura, Soft Focus
• Orientation : Rotate, Flip
• Crop : Custom, Square, 3x2, 3x5, 4x3, 4x6, 5x7
• Text : Lets you overlay text with the option of choosing colors
• Redeye, White, and Blemish : Lets you fine tune your image

There's a good amount of adjustments you can make in-app letting you bypass using several photo apps for different effects. Or you can just upload it normally or use your other favorite photo editing app and just use Instagraph as an upload tool for Instagram.

Testing out the app, I uploaded a photo to see how long the wait time was before the photo would show up on my Instagram photostream. Personally, it took just under 5 minutes for my photo to show up. I know that in this day and age, everything is about instant gratification and we take it all for granted (myself included.) Still, it feels like a long wait although I'm not sure of all the technical details of how they're setting up their servers and getting it all to work, hopefully it'll improve with new updates.

The main focus of this app is for upload, but it really needs a viewer as well. It can't be all that difficult for the developers to add it in since there are plenty of Instagram viewers but I'll gladly wait for it until they perfect the uploading part of their app. For now, using Instagraph in conjunction with Metrogram will have to do.

So overall, was the wait worth it? Well, it's certainly better than nothing. It definitely isn't a bad app and just needs a few performance and tweaks to make it a much more solid app. The developers seem dedicated in providing a decent app so we'll just have to keep waiting and see if they improve on it some more. If you're an Instagram user, I'm sure you've already bought it since there isn't any other choice. But if you're still on the fence, I would definitely give it a try. In the end, it works and showing support to the developers is always a good thing.