I’ve been a fan of Mixel for a long time, and now it’s become much more useful to me as it creates square collages that can be sent directly to Instagram.

I find this highly useful after shooting a burst of shots of my kids (as one never knows which one will best capture fast-moving action): I select an arbitrary number of shots, feed them to Mixel, let it auto-create a collage, and then shuffle or manually adjust the results as desired. It’s often a faster, visually richer alternative to apps like Diptic (which I also like). It’s not something I use constantly, but when I do want it, I find the $1.99 well worth the investment.

In semi-related news, Mixel has been acquired by Etsy. Congrats to Khoi & the team.