Instagram goes beyond the square

LOS ANGELES — You no longer have to worry about how your photo gets cropped to a square format on Instagram.

The world's most popular photo app said Thursday that it's expanding choices for photographers. Originally, the only choice was to present your image in the square format — which was problematic for many shutterbugs, because the sides of their photos got automatically cropped out. So now, when you upload photos to Instagram, you will be able to choose from square, landscape or portrait.

"Square format has been and always will be part of who we are," said the Facebook-owned company in a blog post. "That said, the visual story you’re trying to tell should always come first, and we want to make it simple and fun for you to share moments just the way you want to. It turns out that nearly one in five photos or videos people post aren’t in the square format, and we know that it hasn’t been easy to share this type of content on Instagram: friends get cut out of group shots, the subject of your video feels cramped and you can’t capture the Golden Gate Bridge from end to end."

A cottage industry of apps to get around Instagram's square crop have popped up over the years, including No Crop, Cropic and InstaSize.

Instagram says the changes will become effective at some point on Thursday. Instagram users will need to update their app from the Apple and Google app stores.

Follow Jefferson Graham on Twitter.