HIRE ME TO SPEAK
HIRE ME TO SPEAK

How to hack Instagram to share your favorite older photos

I write about strategies to turn fans into customers and customers into fans. I also share ways to use real-time strategies to spread ideas, influence minds, and build business.

Social Media  |  Personal branding

I love sharing on Instagram! It is so easy and fun to snap an iPhone pic, edit, apply filters, tag with my location, and share.

Because I travel a lot, Instagram is a really cool way for me to remember places I’ve been by looking through my dmscott Instagram photostream. This week I am in Honduras, last week was Bangkok, Thailand and Vientiane, Laos and in December I was in Antarctica and Istanbul, Turkey and all are showcased on my feed.

As I sing Instagram’s praises, some people have asked me about sending older photos via Instagram. While the service is set up to be instant, real-time sharing, I’ve found a bit of a hack making it possible to send any photo you like through the service.

The photo I am using as an example is one that @YukariWatanabe shot while we were in Roatan, Honduras this week. she emailed it to me and I followed the steps below.

Notes: I’m an amateur geek. Professional geeks may have a better way to do this, but my way works great for me. I use a MacBook pro and iPhone 5 and I’m not sure if this works on other platforms.

Six steps to hack Instagram to share your favorite older photos

1) The first step is to get the photo you want to send via Instagram into iPhoto on your Mac. If the photo is already in iPhoto (like that great rock concert pic you shot a year ago) you’re all set and you can skip step 3.

2) If the photo you want to send isn’t in iPhoto yet (your wedding portrait from a decade ago perhaps), you’ll need to make a digital image and get it onto your Mac. Then, in iPhoto, go to File > Import to Library. Once the photo is in iPhoto, you’ll need to synch your iPhone to get the newly uploaded photo onto your iPhone.

3) Next comes the hack. SEE THE TOP IMAGE BELOW. You need to bring the photo you want into your iPhone camera roll. To do this, go to the Photo app on your iPhone, find “albums” and choose “last import”. In there you will find the photo you just uploaded.

4) Click the photo and then edit it slightly. SEE THE SECOND IMAGE I usually just use the crop tool (bottom right) and crop the photo a tiny bit. Then touch “save” and in the next screen “save to camera roll”. Now your photo is saved to your camera roll so you can easily find it on Instagram.

5) Go to the Instagram app on your iPhone and click the button to send an Instagram photo. THIRD IMAGE. Your camera will be ready to shoot a photo but you will bypass that. Instead find the camera roll, which includes the photo you want to send, at the bottom left of the screen. Click that square, find the photo in the roll, and click it.

6) Now you’re all set to edit and send your classic photo via Instagram in the normal way. Apply your filters, add a caption, tag the location, and share with your followers.

The bottom image is what the final Instagram screen shot looks like.

Bonus for reading this far: To capture a screen shot in an iPhone like I did below, hold the middle button down and at the same time hold down the power button. The screen capture will be in your camera roll.

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