Friends who are fervent Instagram (“IG”) users have urged me countless times to share more photos on Instagram. I signed up an account sometimes in April 2012, shared my first photo I took at a client’s dinner and dance party. Fast forward three years to present day, I have shared a lowly total of 80 images. Here’s the thing: it’s not that I don’t want to share more, it’s that I find the lack of direct upload (Instagram does not provide an API for such purpose) from Windows a major inconvenience for me. I manage a huge repository of images in the Windows desktop environment and I’m not fond of the tried and true method of emailing myself the image files each time I have images to upload.
After several years of on and off hiatus, I found what I consider to be a very convenient method to quickly get my images from desktop to the iPad where I have IG installed (big screen and all). Between the PC and iPad, I use an incredible free networking app called Dukto that lets Windows/Android/iOS devices effortlessly see each other for the purpose of text and file transfers (I like it so much I paid for the pro version on iOS).
The left screenshot is my Windows 7 desktop while the right screenshot is the iPad. Once the images are prepared on the desktop for Instagram upload, it’s just a matter of dragging them to Dukto container. Within seconds the images are wirelessly transferred to the iPad.
Because Instagram doesn’t provide an API for any third-party app to play nice with it, there is no direct sharing to IG. Next best alternative is a free and highly popular companion app called InstaSize. Within the Dukto iOS container, clicking Open in InstaSize immediately loads the image for customizing options before it opens in Instagram app for take off.
You can do loads with InstaSize but I use the app mainly for transit to IG. Non square images are automatically “instasized” to fit in the window and I usually just choose black for border colour where appropriate. Click on the red arrow and image opens in IG where you enter your caption and hashtags — within seconds it’s published.
I am hopeful that someday soon we can do away with the intermediary steps to easily share images. Meanwhile this is my account https://instagram.com/janshim/ 
April 2, 2015 | If you haven’t already read about this, Google has released a Chrome app Arc Welder that lets Android apps run on Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome OS. As you can see from my Facebook post right below, I tried running Instagram on my Windows 7 64-bit and everything worked as though it’s running on an Android device.
