Instagram 2.0 brings high-res photos, live filters

The immensely popular photo filtering and sharing app called Instagram has gotten an update today to version 2.0. This update brings two major improvements, one being the ability to process higher-resolution images and the second being a live filter feature that lets you preview an effect as you're composing a shot.

This new version has a more powerful imaging engine that lets you capture photos ten times larger than before. This means higher-res images with 1536 x 1536 pixel resolution on the iPhone 3GS and 1936 x 1936 pixel resolution on the iPhone 4. And in addition to the live filters feature that lets you preview as you compose, the update also adds faster tilt-shift effects as well as four new filters called Amaro, Hudson, Rise, and Valencia.

These additions won't slow down the app and in fact, filters that used to take 5 seconds to render will now work in 5 milliseconds. The update is available now at the App Store and works only with iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch devices running iOS 4.2.1 or above. An Android version of Instagram is still not available at this time.

[via VentureBeat]