Layout Review

Developer: Instagram
Price: FREE
Version Reviewed: 1.0.0
Device Reviewed On: iPhone 5

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Overall Rating:

If you’ve never used a collage making app before, then Layout will probably seem pretty useful to you. Unfortunately, anyone with a passing interest in collage creation probably already has a superior photo editing tool on hand. While Layout is easy to use, it’s also pretty basic.

The simplicity involved in using Layout is pretty great. A matter of choosing up to 9 photos before picking out one of many layouts that might look good for your chosen images, there’s not really much more you need to do. In terms of speediness, Layout is unmatched. You can choose to move photos around by simply holding and dragging, or pinching to zoom in and out. There are also options to mirror an image, replace one, or flip them around.

The problem is that this is precisely where Layout stops when it comes to features. You can’t add filters from within the app, you can’t add borders, change the color balance, or do much at all, besides stick to the rigid layout options offered by Layout.

If you just want to make a very quick and basic collage, Layout is fine. It adds convenient extras like the ability to view images based solely on if they have a face, making collecting those vacation snaps extra easy to do. If you want to have more power over your creations though, Layout falls kind of flat.

It’s free and very easy to use, so it’s not all bad, but you can’t help but wonder why this isn’t a feature that could have been implemented within Instagram rather than as a separate app. As it stands, there are superior collage making apps already out there, like Fuzel Collage, even if they do take longer to construct.