Posted by Mayuri Khinvasara Khabya – Developer Relations Engineer, Google; in partnership with Bismark Ito – Android Developer, Rex Jin – Android Developer and Bei Yi – Associate Engineering
Meta’s Instagram is without doubt 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 creative expression and creativity.
Instagram builders noticed a chance to construct a richer media expertise by turning into an early adopter of Extremely HDR picture format, a brand new function launched with Android 14. With its adoption of Extremely HDR, Instagram utterly remodeled and improved its consumer 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 pictures and movies are Instagram’s most necessary type of interplay and expression, and enhancing picture high quality aligns with Meta’s objective of connecting individuals, communities, and companies. “Android quickly adopts the most recent media expertise in order that we are able to deliver the advantages to customers,” stated 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 mild depth for extra detailed highlights, shadows, and crisper colours. It additionally permits capturing, modifying, sharing, and viewing HDR pictures, a major enchancment over commonplace dynamic vary (SDR) pictures whereas nonetheless being backward appropriate. Customers can seamlessly put up, view, edit, and apply filters to Extremely HDR pictures 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 skill to edit as much as 10 Extremely HDR photos concurrently and share pictures that retain the complete coloration 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 Characteristic 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 coloration area and bigger file sizes of Extremely HDR photos whereas sustaining compatibility with Instagram’s various modifying options and filters.
The workforce discovered options through the growth course of through the use of code examples for HDR photograph seize 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 are able to construct extra optimized media options with higher efficiency on Instagram,” stated Bismark Ito, an Android developer at Instagram. “I really feel completed after I discover a artistic answer that works on a variety of units 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 units 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 growth course of confirmed, being the primary to undertake a brand new function includes navigating new challenges to present customers the very best expertise. Nevertheless, collaborating with Google groups and Android’s open supply group may help make the method smoother.
Get began
Learn to revolutionize your app’s consumer expertise with Extremely HDR photos.