18 January 2017

Instagram Engineering: “Bringing Wide Color to Instagram”

Last September, Apple announced the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, which include cameras that capture a greater range of colors than previous models, and screens that can display that wider color range. We’ve just finished updating Instagram to support wide color, and since we’re one of the first major apps to do so, I wanted to share the process of converting the app to help any others doing the conversion.

Mike Krieger

Nice update from Instagram – although I can’t really take advantage of it on my iPhone 6. I’ve had a little fun testing their ‘canary’ image on my laptop which I was reasonably sure has a wide gamut screen. It turns out the app support is pretty important as well: modern browsers show the hidden logo (I have Chrome and Edge installed), as do legacy Windows applications like Paint and Photo Gallery. Amusingly though, the new Windows 10 photos app displays the ‘wrong’ image, a featureless red square. I guess these apps still have a long way to go until they can match the features of their predecessors.

Post a Comment