I am an avid user of Instagram. One of the apps I use every time I upload a photo to Instagram is Squaready. Squaready is a free tool that many users tend to pull out prior to uploading their images to IG. Its pretty simple to use.

What does Squaready do?

It’s pretty simple really. Squaready, is an app used to crop your photos into a nice perfect square right before uploading. I know what you are thinking… Doesn’t IG allow you to do that already? Well, yes you are correct. You can indeed scale and crop your image in IG. However, it often doesn’t align perfectly when using the native IG app. So when the photo uploads there are black bars at the top and bottom of your image. Those bars in my opinion look pretty crappy and unprofessional.

I myself tried using the native app to get the bars to go away. Lets just say, no matter how often I tried the image still would end up with those nasty – precious pixel wasting – black bars. Thankfully, I stumbled upon Squaready. This takes all the guess work out of the cropping.

Here is how I use Squaready

1. Once I am done editing my photo I open Squaready. (Free in the App Store)
2. I Click the top left image (looks like a folder).
3. I then select my image from my camera roll.
4. Squaready will automatically center the image inside a box. (The same size as IG)
5. I then touch the screen for a moment. Vertical and horizontal slider bars will appear.
— Use these bars to move your image so its framed just like you want. However, be mindfully of the edge of the image. We don’t want to go past the edge of the image.
6. You can also flip or rotate the image. There are also a few other options… I normally never use them though.
7. Once ready, click the top right button to send your cropped image directly into Instagram. It will ask you what size to send it in. I always pick the largest size I can. This will assure you the cleanest highest quality image.

Congrats, you now are free of those nasty pixel robbing black bars.

If you would like to learn more about Instagram, feel free to follow me on Instagram: @withoutink.

Also, check out my Instagram page on my blog. It will show the apps I use and the last 12 images I have uploaded to IG. As well as, the last 12 images of mine that made the popular page.