Posted by Mayuri Khinvasara Khabya – Developer Relations Engineer, Google; in partnership with Bismark Ito – Android Developer, Rex Jin – Android Developer and Bei Yi – Companion Engineering
Meta’s Instagram is likely one of the world’s hottest social networking apps that helps individuals join, discover communities, and develop their companies in new and progressive methods. Since its launch in 2010, photographers and creators alike have embraced the platform, making it a go-to hub of inventive expression and creativity.
Instagram builders noticed a possibility to construct a richer media expertise by turning into an early adopter of Ultra HDR image format, a brand new function launched with Android 14. With its adoption of Extremely HDR, Instagram fully reworked and improved its person expertise in simply 3 months.
Enhancing Instagram photograph high quality with Extremely HDR
The event workforce needed to be an early adopter of Extremely HDR as a result of photographs and movies are Instagram’s most necessary type of interplay and expression, and enhancing picture high quality aligns with Meta’s purpose of connecting individuals, communities, and companies. “Android quickly adopts the most recent media know-how in order that we will convey the advantages to customers,” mentioned Rex Jin, an Android developer on the Instagram Media Platform workforce.
Instagram builders began implementing Extremely HDR in late September 2023. Extremely HDR photos retailer extra details about gentle depth for extra detailed highlights, shadows, and crisper colours. It additionally permits capturing, modifying, sharing, and viewing HDR photographs, a major enchancment over commonplace dynamic vary (SDR) photographs whereas nonetheless being backward suitable. Customers can seamlessly submit, view, edit, and apply filters to Extremely HDR photographs with out compromising picture high quality.
For the reason that replace, Instagram has seen a big surge in Extremely HDR photograph uploads. Customers have additionally embraced their new potential to edit as much as 10 Extremely HDR photos concurrently and share photographs that retain the complete colour and dynamic digicam seize vary. Instagram’s pioneering integration of Extremely HDR earned industry-wide recognition and reward when it was introduced at Samsung Unpacked and in a Pixel Feature Drop.
Pioneering Extremely HDR integrations
Being early adopters of Android 14 meant working with beta variations of the working system and addressing the challenges related to implementing a brand-new function that’s by no means been examined publicly. For instance, Instagram builders wanted to seek out progressive options to deal with the expanded colour area and bigger file sizes of Extremely HDR photos whereas sustaining compatibility with Instagram’s numerous modifying options and filters.
The workforce discovered options in the course of the improvement course of through the use of code examples for HDR photo capture and rendering. Instagram additionally partnered with Google’s Android Digicam & Media workforce to deal with the challenges of displaying Extremely HDR photos, share its developer expertise, and supply suggestions throughout integration. The partnership helped pace up the integrations, and the suggestions shared was applied sooner.
“With Android being an open supply undertaking, we will construct extra optimized media options with higher efficiency on Instagram,” mentioned Bismark Ito, an Android developer at Instagram. “I really feel achieved after I discover a inventive answer that works on a spread of gadgets with completely different {hardware} capabilities.”
Constructing for the long run with Android 15
Extremely HDR has considerably enhanced Instagram’s photo-sharing expertise, and Meta is already planning to increase assist to extra gadgets and add future picture and video high quality enhancements. With the upcoming Android 15 launch, the corporate plans to discover new APIs and options that amplify its mission of connecting individuals, communities, and companies.
Because the Extremely HDR improvement course of confirmed, being the primary to undertake a brand new function includes navigating new challenges to provide customers the absolute best expertise. Nevertheless, collaborating with Google groups and Android’s open supply group can assist make the method smoother.
Get began
Discover ways to revolutionize your app’s person expertise with Ultra HDR photos.
