How to add or edit an Instagram background
Easily adjust the Instagram background colors of your instincts Instagram stories that use photos or videos are by far the most popular, but sometimes using simple text on a basic background is much more effective in communicating what you have in mind and making a connection. with your followers. Here’s everything you need to know about how to add a solid background color to your next Instastory, change the background color, and use a pattern or image instead.
How to change the background color of an Instagram story background
Using a color background in an Instagram Story background can be done natively in the iOS and Android Instagram apps. Here’s how to do it:
- Open the Instagram app and tap the camera icon to compose a new story.
- From the bottom menu, select Create.
- Tap the small circle icon in the lower right corner to cycle through the available background color options. Tap the camera icon to take a photo and have it appear behind your colored background with a 50% transparency effect.
- Tap on to enter and typing a message as usual. Your color options are limited by the font style used for your text.
- When the input option is active, press the top center button to cycle through the different font styles. It also allows you to change the background color options.
- After each change of font style, touch the small circle icon to display additional colored backgrounds.
- When you’re ready, tap any unused space to confirm your text and minimize the keyboard.
- Now you can add additional text and gifs to your Instagram story background. You will also add music to your Instagram story.
- Type your story when you’re ready to publish it.
Read More: How to remove photo background without photoshop
How to add colorful backgrounds to an Instagram story Background
If you want to use something a little more vibrant than a solid color background in your Instagram Story background, you can change the background color to a pattern by uploading your custom image.
Many websites have a plethora of textured and patterned background images that you can use. Some of the most interesting are FreePik, Pexels, and PixaBay.
Here’s how to use a custom image as a background in an Instagram story background:
- Open the Instagram app and tap the camera icon to start a new Instagram story background.
- Swipe across the screen. This opens a photo gallery in the Instagram app.
- Find and touch the image you want to use as wallpaper for the Instagram Story background. If necessary, use two fingers to resize the image to fill the entire screen.
- Add text, gifs, stickers, or music to your Instagram story background.
- Tap on your story to publish it. Your new Instagram is now visible on your feed.
How to add cool colored backgrounds to an Instagram Story
If you want to use something a little more dynamic than a solid-colored background in your Instagram Story, you can change the background color to a pattern by uploading your custom image.
Here is how to use a custom image as a background in an Instagram story:
- Open the Instagram app and tap the new post icon.
- From the bottom menu, select History.
- Swipe up on the screen. This opens a photo gallery within the Instagram app.
- Find and tap the image you want to use as the background of your Instagram Story.
If necessary, use two fingers to resize the image to fill the entire screen. - Add any text, gifs, stickers, or music to your Instagram Story.
- Tap Your Story to post it. Your newly styled Instagram is now visible in your feed.
Instagram Stories background: Photos, Colors, Templates And Tips [2020]
Putting a background photo for Instagram Stories or changing the background color of your story are some of the tricks that will allow you to make your content in this format more attractive and thus increase the visibility of your stories.
Next, we explain some of the tricks and tools that will help you surprise your audience. And in case of design is not your thing … in the last section, we leave you some templates for your Instagram stories.
The background photo on Instagram Stories
The process for putting a background photo on Instagram Stories varies a bit depending on the type of device. Next, I detail step by step how to put a background image in your Instagram story according to your type of mobile:
Background Photo in Apple
Inserting a background photo in stories if you have Apple is relatively easy. the process is the following
- Download the Picsart app
- Go to Color Backgrounds and choose the transparent color background (png)
- Choose the size of Instagram Stories
- Insert an image and adjust it to the size of Instagram Stories
- Tap on the button of the rubber and make a hole in the center of the photo
- Save Picsart’s photo to your gallery
- Open Instagram Stories and share one of your posts in Stories or a photo from your gallery
- Enter the gallery and click on copy on the image that you edited with Picsart
- Go back to Instagram, click on paste and adjust the images
Read more: Free Images Bank
The background photo on Android
In the case of Android, you must follow the same steps as in Apple. However, many Android phones will not allow you to copy and paste images from the clipboard to Instagram Stories, so you must install the following application in the Play Store:
- Toolkit for Instagram – Gbox
Instagram Stories Tips
To exploit all the possibilities that stories offer us, it is recommended that you follow some guidelines. Here is a compilation of good practices that will allow you to improve the quality of your stories:
-Choose an objective: Adapting to the social media plan that you have defined, you will have to define what you want to obtain through the stories on your Instagram profile. If you are a company, your goal may be to humanize your brand, gamify or promote some of your products.
-Tell a story: Take advantage of the flexibility of this format to upload more than one story and explain a story that can capture the attention of your followers. A good example would be to explain the process of creating your product through different videos.
-Exploit all the formats of stories: If Instagram gives us thousands of tools to publish in stories … why not use them? Use polls, questions, gifs, and add music to your stories to get the attention of users. Using these native Instagram formats will make your profile look more organic and closer to your audience.
-Create several highlights: Featured stories are a great tool to highlight the best stories on our profile. I recommend creating different highlights according to themes or interests if you are a personal profile, and according to products or lifestyle if you are a professional profile.
-Take advantage of the Swipe Up: If you have more than 10,000 followers, Instagram will allow you to include links in your stories through the famous swipe up. Without a doubt, it is a great tool to increase the traffic of your website or product/services page. I recommend that you share videos of yourself promoting your services with an offer and encouraging your followers to swipe up to discover the offer. The results are really good.
-Use hashtags and geolocate: As I explained to you in this Instagram Hashtags guide, using geolocation and hashtags is essential to increase the reach of your posts.
-Share your Instagram TV videos: Now that Instagram TV allows you to monetize and is increasingly used by users, you have to take advantage of this function, upload long videos and share them with your audience through Instagram Stories. If you still don’t know anything about Instagram TV, I recommend you read this article: Find out what it is and how to upload videos to Instagram TV.
Best Instagram Stories Tools
From my point of view, the best five tools to create your designs for Instagram stories are:
- Canva: An online editor for all types of designs that has a large repository of stickers, fonts, and templates. It stands out for being very easy to use.
- Visme: I have been using it recently and I love it. It lets you do everything Canva does, plus it lets you add eye-catching graphics, diagrams, and animated objects. Very complete, although perhaps more difficult to use than canva.
- Inshot: A perfect application to edit your videos or create attractive collages for Instagram Stories.
- Mojo: perfect for creating attractive and interactive designs. You can combine several images or image + text and have them appear with different default effects. A must for all social media.
Instagram Stories Templates
In all the tools that I have indicated in the previous section, you will find a large number of templates to use in your Instagram Stories and impact your audience.
However, if none of the templates for Instagram stories offered by these tools convince you, here are 3 links where you will find many more templates:
- Envato Elements – Definitely a winning bet. On this website, you will find thousands of templates for both Instagram Stories and all kinds of formats. The monthly fee to use this website is 14.50 euros per month, and you can purchase a 30% discount if you are a student.
- Edit: we could include it in the tools section, but I don’t consider it as powerful as the previous ones. In edit, you can choose from hundreds of templates and edit them online and then share them in your story.
- Designer: it is probably not the most complete repository, but if you want to download templates for Instagram stories for free, you should take it into account.
How to change the background in Instagram Stories when answering questions
Instagram Stories is one of the more interesting topics that has been added to the platform in recent years. This functionality is distinguished by its versatility and by an increasing number of available functions. One of its strengths is the ability to add questions and thus get answers from the community. Responses received can be shared in new stories, which greatly increases interaction between accounts.
The first step is to go to the story where you asked your question. Then swipe up to see all the answers.
To display the context menu of options, click on the one you want to share.
Now select Share a reply.
From there, you start to create a new story with the built-in response. You can add a background video or photo by clicking the circular button. You can also use a background color, using Create .
Use the selector to switch between different shades. When you’re done, post your new story using the Send To button.
Then click Share, the option to the right of Your story. You can also share it with your close friends or send the story by direct message. To finish click on Done .
Note that, by default, the account that responded will not be notified that you have posted their response to your Stories. However, you have the option of tagging this user who, in this case, will receive a direct message.
How to put a white background on Instagram Stories
These stories offer many possibilities since you can publish only text, photos, videos, boomerangs, superzoom … in addition to adding different stickers to take questionnaires, put music or mention our followers and followed among other things.
Next, we will explain how to set the white background when sharing a story of both text and photo, since by default this background does not appear. You will also see how to change the background of an Instagram story with another color or the photo that you want.
One of the ways to be able to put a white or colored background in Instagram stories is to do it from Facebook. To do this, the steps you must follow are the following.
Step 1
The first thing to do is download a white background or select a blank image from the gallery. Now you have to enter Facebook and select you to want to upload a story.
Step 2
The next thing you should do is click on the white image that you want to upload to the story.
Step 3
Now you need to enlarge the image so that it covers the entire background.
Step 4
The next thing you should do is click on the icon of the stickers at the top.
Step 5
Now click on the gallery symbol.
Step 6
Select the image you want to upload.
Step 7
You will see that it remains on a white background. Click on save.
Step 8
Finally, you can upload this image with a white background in Instagram stories.
How to change the background color of Instagram with photo
If what we want is to put the background of white or another color in a photo that we have uploaded on Instagram, we will not be able to do it by default on Instagram, but with the trick that we show you below.
Step 1
The first thing you should do is enter Instagram and select that you want to upload a story.
Step 2
Now select the post you want to upload. Once selected, you have to select the pencil symbol at the top.
Step 3
Then go to the pen symbol at the top. You will see that a range of colors appears at the bottom. Select in this case the white color. (You can select the color you want the background of your story to have.)
Step 4
The next thing to do is hold down the screen somewhere in the image. You will see that the background is translucent.
Step 5
The next step is to select the rubber icon at the top.
Step 6
Finally, you must erase it in the image area so that it can be seen again with its natural color.
In this way, you will have achieved a white background with your photos in the Instagram stories.
Instagram: automatically blur the background of photos
The social photo-sharing network has just rolled out a new way to take photos on Android devices. This new feature called Instagram Focus will allow you to take portraits of yourself or your friends as a real pro. The application is responsible for automatically blurring the background to highlight the faces present in the photograph.
Portrait mode with bokeh effect
The developers behind the world’s most popular image-sharing service have just made some improvements to the camera. Version 39 of the Instagram application is enriched with a new wearing mode similar to that present on the latest high-end smartphones such as the iPhone X or the Google Pixel 2.
This new mode allows you to add a bokeh effect to all your portraits. If this name doesn’t ring a bell, know that this is background defocus. You have certainly seen them before. You know these very beautiful photographs with a very clear subject in the foreground while the background appears all blurred. This is the bokeh effect.
With a camera, it is quite easy to add this effect to a portrait. To do this, all you need to do is have a lens with a large focal length, then select a very open diaphragm (the smallest f value). This will allow a lot of light to enter and automatically generate a blur .
Until now, smartphones have had great difficulty reproducing this blurry effect. But with the advent of phones with dual photosensors and the increase in computing power, things have changed. Latest generation mobiles are now able to differentiate the foreground and the background.
They will first calculate the depth of field of the scene being photographed using their double lenses. The photo application then takes care of applying a slight blur on all the parts of the photos that are not part of the foreground.
Bokeh effect with a single photo sensor
For people who do not have a phone with a dual photo sensor, it is quite difficult to generate a bokeh effect automatically, but not impossible. The implementation is a little more complex.
For models lower than the iPhone 7, there is a trick to improve the rendering of portraits and create a shallow depth of field effect.
- Launch the Photo app
- Place your device a few inches away from the object you want to appear in focus in the foreground
- Keep your finger pressed for several seconds on the screen of your phone until you see the mention AE / AF lock
- Then take your photo by choosing the best framing
This technique requires a certain helping hand and a little dexterity. In addition, the rendering is sometimes imperfect. To improve the quality of his selfies, there is still a software solution.
Perfect the rendering of your photos with an Instagram background
Focus Many photo applications have a built-in function to produce a bokeh effect. This is the case, for example, of the Instagram background application with its latest Focus option. You will now be able to instantly take portraits and accentuate background blur to make faces stand out.
To achieve this Instagram background, Instagram’s camera relies on its emptying detection system. Each portrait shot is put through Instagram algorithms. All is not perfect.
The app sometimes struggles to isolate subjects and backgrounds. Likewise, certain transitions lack finesse. Even if the purists consider it mediocre, the Focus function is far from being a bad alternative for people who do not have a smartphone with a dual photosensor.
Add a blur effect to a portrait with Instagram
Here is the walkthrough for taking portraits or selfies with blurry backgrounds easily. In this example, we used an iPhone. But be aware that it is possible to perform the same operation with an Android smartphone.
- Open the Instagram app
- Start the Camera function
- At the bottom, scroll through the different camera modes
- Select the Focus option, it is between Boomerang and Superzoom
- Place your phone in front of the person to be photographed
- As soon as the app detects a face, the background automatically blurs
- Press the shutter button to take the picture
- By keeping the shutter button pressed for several seconds, you can record a short video while enjoying the bokeh effect
When you’re done, you can add filters, stickers, or text just like with any photo taken with Instagram. Important detail, Focus works both with the rear and front sensors of smartphones.
The list of smartphones compatible with Focus
The Focus function is available on version 39 of the Instagram background application. You will therefore need to make sure you have this version or update the app. Be careful though, not all phones support this new feature.
On the Apple side, Focus mode works with the iPhone SE, 6S, 7, 8, their Plus versions as well as with the iPhone X. For Android smartphones, things are a little more complicated. Instagram has not yet published any official list of devices that support this automatic blur mode.
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