Gallery Textures on Instagram: Your Photos or Videos as Part of the AR Effects
With the new version of Spark AR, which was published on May 12, Gallery Textures have come to Instagram. This functionality lets people add an image from their phone’s camera roll to an effect on Instagram. Excited as we were, we’ve managed to collect some of the first effects featuring this tech, share some of our thoughts and ask a few creators for their initial reflection on the matter.
Every new functionality is welcomed in Spark AR community of Creators as an occasion for experimenting and pushing the boundaries of their creativity. Many times, it comes as a possibility to turn their old, previously impossible to accomplish ideas into a suddenly available reality. After some time, brands get inspired by those new ideas and implement them into their marketing AR strategies.
So it is with Gallery Textures feature, which allows users to pick any photo or video from their camera roll and add it to an effect. It works as a material for an object and enables creators to execute a whole new range of creative and resourceful effects.
Autonommy’s inventive ideas
instan(o)t effect is the most obvious, yet perfectly executed and exciting use of Gallery Textures. Chosen media is printed by a beautiful, 3D model of a polaroid camera. Two other Ommy’s effects presented below – instant coffee and birthday card – imitate real-life objects and give a chance to personalize them in few seconds. When you’re far from your close ones on their birthday, send them a birthday card that will relate to your shared memories!
Empowerment of the users
We’ve asked a few Creators that have already experimented with the new feature about their thoughts. Let’s take a look at what they had to say and at the results of their initial works which took advantage of Gallery Textures:
“The new gallery texture is a fantastic addition and I’m excited to see what new and interesting ideas filter creators come up with for it. It should be great for filter users as well, allowing them to be even more creative, and really put their own stamp on things.
The idea for my Invisibility filter came partly from my love of the movie Predator when I was a kid. The first filter I made, Thermal Vision, was my attempt to recreate the Predators heat vision. And so now with this new gallery texture functionality, I was keen to try and create something similar to the Predators invisibility effect. Hopefully people will have fun playing around with it.”
Craig Lewis (@iamcraiglewis2)
“What I love about the new feature is that it opens up a whole meta-world of possibilities for the user to use their own images as raw material for creation, bringing more control, freedom, and with it creativity. I really love that every effect will look radically different with each use, and will make the AR that much more expressive. In my own filters I seek ways to make the interaction of the user with their textures as physical as possible, so they can literally swim in them or deform them with their body.”
Gijs Wahl (@gijswahl)
“Self-expression is the life-force of Instagram’s content and AR filters have been an amazing addition to that creative toolkit for users. With the addition of gallery textures, they can bring their own personal media directly into the filters, allowing a direct collaboration between the filter developer and a billion users. It’s pretty amazing!”
Luke Hurd (@lukehurd)
Finally, Noland Chaliha has a postulate to all Creators:
“Gallery texture gives users a more incentivized reason to engage with filters and make them more personal which is cool, what I wish is that creators still kept good design practices in mind as they’re adding the feature into their filters as a way to enhance the experience instead of just including the feature as filler on what is otherwise a poorly planned creation”
Noland Chaliha (@alwayscodingsomething)
We’re thankful for all those insightful quotes. It’s amazing that they all revolve around the same fact: Gallery Textures enable Creators and users to collaborate in an unprecedented way, opening up a whole meta-world of creative possibilities.
New opportunities for brands
As with most of the Spark AR novelties, we need some patience to see the first branded effects using Gallery Textures, but in this case we’re sure we won’t have to wait very long. This feature presents itself as a perfect tool for acquiring user-generated content (see below the amazing personalized puzzles effect), organizing contests and mixing brand’s identity with the user’s references in a form of photos and videos. What’s more, we can imagine practical cases that will visualize a personalized object that the client would like to order.
If you want your brand to be the first one to use this awesome feature, meet our creators or contact us.
Below you’ll find some more inspirational effects using Gallery Textures – try them out with your Instagram mobile app!
YourPuzzle by juanmv94 & Crystal Bald by mitsukokubota Instagram Effects
Media Glasses by jackydigital & Te-ve by naza.carrero Instagram Effects