Instagram on Thursday released Boomerang, its third standalone app, which lets users create silent, looping one-second videos.
In a blog post announcing the launch, the company says, “It’s not a photo. It’s not a GIF. It’s a Boomerang.”
Note: If it looks like a gif and acts like a GIF, it probably is a GIF.
The app captures several photos in quick succession — say of a colleague leaping on a Michigan Avenue sidewalk — then speeds them up to create a bite-size loop. Users can share Boomerangs as video files on Instagram and Facebook, platforms that don’t allow the direct posting of gifs. They also can share them by text and email.
Since they’re videos, Boomerangs are technically different than GIFs, which are animated graphics. But the difference is mostly nominal.
“The photos are stitched together into a high-quality mini video that — unlike GIFs — plays forward and backward,” a spokeswoman for Instagram told Blue Sky Innovation in an email.
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Boomerang requires some trial-and-error, as the recording window goes by quickly. New users may need to try several times before capturing a loop they like.
It’s far from the first app to create looping images.
Giphy Cam, for example, creates GIFs from photo bursts or short videos. It also has the added bonus of fun filters. Then there’s Apple Live Photos, the feature included in the latest iPhone release that takes footage before and after an image capture to create a short video — but with sound.
Boomerang works in landscape or portrait mode. Instagram originally allowed only square-cropped photos on its feed but opened it up to horizontal and vertical photos and videos in August.
Boomerang joins Hyperlapse, which creates stabilized timelapses, and Layout, which makes photo collages, in Instagram’s portfolio of apps designed to spice up the never-ending photo feed.
Like the others, Boomerang does not require an Instagram account and saves videos to a user’s camera roll. It is available for free on Android and iOS.
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