Instagram 6.0 Seduces Pro Photographers With Adjustable Filters And 9 New Effects
“People come to Instagram today to post their photos but haven't come back to edit their photos” Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom tells me. So today Instagram is adding sliders to control 9 new photo effects and the intensity of its existing filters.
Context & Ripple Effects
Instagram has been inching toward manual control since launch: the 2010 update that added its first new post-launch filters treated effects as fixed presets, and the 2012 'Lux' release introduced a single fill-light adjustment rather than true editing. Version 6.0 crosses that line — Kevin Systrom frames it around a gap he sees in usage: people come to Instagram to post photos but don't return to edit them, so the app now ships sliders controlling filter intensity plus nine new effects.
The timing matters commercially. In March 2014 Instagram locked in an ad program giving Omnicom agencies access, with early results pitched at attracting TV brand budgets, while vendors already use the network as an informal storefront. Richer in-app editing raises the quality of the organic content that ad inventory sits beside.
First-order effects
- Pro and enthusiast photographers gain per-filter intensity control and nine new effects natively, removing part of the reason to shoot in Instagram and finish in a separate editor before uploading.
Second-order effects
- Third-party mobile photo-editing apps lose differentiation as the share network absorbs their core function, pressuring them to move upmarket into tools Instagram hasn't replicated.
- Brands and Omnicom-run agency campaigns get a feed of increasingly polished user content, making Instagram's pitch for TV-scale ad dollars easier to sell against the informal commerce vendors already run there.
Third-order effects
- If each release keeps folding external editing capability into the app, the capture-edit-share pipeline consolidates inside one platform — the same trajectory visible in Instagram's steady feature accretion since 2010 — leaving standalone editors with only professional-grade niches.
The trend: Mobile photo platforms are consolidating editing into the sharing network itself, converting creative tooling into a moat for attention and ad inventory.