Despite its success and millions of users, many people still think of Instagram as an image sharing platform for teenagers to post selfies and pictures of their breakfast. In reality, Instagram is full of inspiring photography as many professional photographers and talented amateurs have discovered the platform as a viable tool for promoting themselves and their work.

Problem is that, despite more and more 'serious' photographers using it, Instagram remains a mobile platform and posting pictures that have been taken with a non-connected camera and edited on a computer typically involves some third-party uploading tool or image transfer to a mobile device for upload. 

Now a new Lightroom plugin makes things considerably easier, at least for those users who rely on Adobe's editing and image management software. LR/Instagram lets you post images to Instagram directly from Lightroom. Once installed you can authorize one or more Instagram accounts. Images are uploaded by dragging them into a publish collection and before you do so you can add hashtags or captions or crop your images to an aspect ratio that is supported by Instagram. By default images are auto-padded with a white border.

The plugin can be downloaded and installed for free from the LR/Instagram website but the developers ask for a $10 contribution via registration in the Lightroom Plugin Manager if you like the tool.