Simply put, there is likely no easier way to upload images from your computer to Instagram than with this plug-in.
Hardly a week ago I wrote about Pixbuf and it’s ability to do this very thing; to upload image from your computer to Instagram. And of course, in that post, there was due mention of Schedugram as the more potent, expensive alternative to Pixbuf.
Schedugram, in many ways, is the refined version of Pixbuf, and more feature-rich. Arguably, if you’re a large business, or at least a prolific and meticulous Instagram poster, Schedugram is what you’ll want, and the cost of it is a mere triviality. You can schedule with ease, crop an image within the program to fit IG’s finicky parameters, and so on. It’s what we use at SLRL. Though, perhaps not for long.
CaptureMonkey is known for making some nice, simple, but effective plugins for photographers, typically released with little to no fanfare, and generally offering free versions and full-fledged versions for cheap. I’m personally a fan of their Fader plugin for Lightroom, which is some 5 years old now, and is essentially an opacity slider for LR. It allows you to apply all the adjustments to your image (t literally breathes a whole new life into your favorite Lightroom presets), tweak, and then use a single slider to adjust the strength of the effects – it’s brilliant, and so is this LR/Instagram plugin.
LR/Instagram
Because Lightroom maintains such dominance in the market, there’s a good chance you have it and use it as your primary post processing application. So if you live in that ‘space’ you’ll love this plug-in; it’s free to download and try, and you can get full registration for only $10.
Within about a minute you’ll go through the typical steps to install a plug-in in LR, and while setting up the new service in Lightroom’s Publishing Manager you can authenticate you Instagram account right from there. In fact, you can even do it for multiple accounts simply by making new publishing collections. You can see here that I have already set mine up for my personal and SLRL accounts.
To use it all you need to do is drag your image into the Publish Collection…and hit publish. That’s it.
There’s no fuss, and neither does it seem to be an issue if your crop doesn’t fit Instagram’s 4:5 or 1.91:1 aspect ratio – at least not in the times I’ve now used it. If your image doesn’t fit those parameters, the plugin simply adds the white border around it so it does. And that’s great, but you can, however, do a force crop for IG if you so desire.
[REWIND: 2 TOOLS THAT OPEN THE TAPS ON LIGHTROOM’S DEVELOP MODULE & PRESETS]
If you’re wondering how you’re going to insert all those hashtags and a caption, well, LR/Instagram provides a new metadata panel, allowing you to add hashtags to caption, only to be published to Instagram. You can also select a custom template, and specify format using {template} tags.
And that’s all she wrote really. It does what it claims, and works like a charm for me. You can find it here.
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Ten bucks for the plug-in? That’s not bad, and it’s certainly worth a shot via the trial. Off I go to spend more money for photography (Well if it’s worth it after the trial run.)
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This is really a great post. Thank you for taking time to provide us some of the useful and exclusive information with us. Keep on blogging!!
You’re most welcome, and we intend to. If there’s anything you’d like to learn or know more about just drop us a line. Cheers
This is great. I’m going to check out fader also. As far as the cropping is concerned, are you saying that you just publish directly without doing a custom crop first? I see the force to crop option, but not sure if I should use that, do nothing and just publish or create a virtual copy and do my own crop at 4:5 or 1.91:1.
I’ve done it without the force crop. In my experience, it’s worked without a hitch. Cheers Larry.
I haven’t felt the need for Instagram thus far. This plug-in may be just the excuse I was looking for. Thank for the heads up. It looks like it is worth a try.
Come on Daniel. Give it a shot. I’ll follow you ;-)
Okay Kish, I’m all in!
Ha, that was easy ;) lol
Daniel’s just a tease. Joking aside though, IG is the place where images are consumed. It’s great if you tailor it.
I got into Instagram a little, with a few friends on it to follow. But only once I got my LG V10 phone… only post phone shots there. If I’m going to trouble of posting a “real” photo, it’ll go to 500px.
i’m using the plug in some days ago and is fantastic
Me too, and I agree. It’s fantastic. If you haven’t already, check out their Fader slider…it’s brilliant. If you have LR Presets, like ours, it literally opens them up like you can’t imagine.
Since I installed the popup on my windows based PC running the latest LR CC , I get a little pop-up window EVERY TIME I start LR, saying “LR needs to configure your system for the LR/Instagram plug-in”… does anybody else get the same annoying pop-up? And does anyone know how to turn it off?
Cheers in advance!
Hey Hannes, I’m not sure why you’re getting this. I haven’t seen that yet. Perhaps uninstall an re-install. That’s a basics suggestion but perhaps check with the maker.
I did try to delete, restart and re-install but to no avail… just contacted customer support and awaiting their reply…
I heard that Instagram is gong to discontinue the use of most 3rd party apps. Forgive my ignorance to all of this, but will this affect this?
Well Michael, to be honest I haven’t a clue. I’ve heard murmurings like that before, but I can’t see why they’d do it, especially with the new direction IG is going.
I’m a big LR fan, yes it’s got its faults but still brilliantly user friendly and great value for money. I am sure like many, only use a fraction of its potential…and a simple plug in makes it even more versatile.
No argument there. It was built to be simple, though most people know about 1/50th of what LR can or does do.