It’s a round peg in a square hole. Printed postcards have rectangular pictures and Instagram has square pictures.
If you use any of the PostCard apps that offer to print and mail the card you create I have talked about in the past, you get a post card with your image centered on it. Not exactly what people would expect for a print postcard they are used to seeing.
You can re-size the image on the page to fill it out side to side but then you loose the top/bottom:
It’s no fault of these apps, they just hadn’t planned for Instagram square images.
New to this group of apps that offer to print/postal mail your creations is Postagram. This free app allows you to create a postcard using your Instagram square photos, which they will print and mail for you. As you can see, they don’t print the image across the whole card, but they make it so a person can pull the image out of the card to use just it.
When you have Postagram installed on your iPhone, just log into your Instagram account through it. You will be presented with the images you have uploaded to Instagram to choose and use. You can only choose your own images.
Choosing an image takes you to a review/edit screen prior to assigning who Postagram will mail it to for you.
The text on the default Postagram postcard is the text that was with the image on Instagram. You can easily change this with a tap of the edit button.
Next you set up your return address, and finally who the card will be going to. If you do not wish to type the name/address, you can use once in your iPhone’s contact area. Add people to your Favorites area if you are sending them cards often.
You can go to the Postagram Web site and lot in there to see larger views of your Instagram photos. The site does not support the creation of the Postcards, that must all be done via the free iPhone app.
The last step is to pay for the printing/postal mailing done by the Postagram folks. Currently it is 99 cents, not saying if it will be going up in price anytime soon. Notice that even if you want to pay via Paypal, the app requires you put in a valid credit card.
Like so many apps that want access to your friends info when they give you access to Facebook. Postagram wants that access to your Instagram account and friends.
I’ve tried most of the other Print/Mail postcard app/services. Most do a pretty good job with an ocational missprint. I’ll post up the cards I just sent using Postagram.