Instagram launched a standalone app inspired by “visual storytelling” called Layout, which lets users combine multiple photos into a collage that is shareable on Instagram and Facebook.

Users can select up to nine photos from their camera roll and the app will give them previews of layouts, which, unlike other similar apps, don’t have any borders.

Photos in the camera roll can be shortlisted according to categories like ‘faces’, which only shows photos with people in them, or ‘recent’, which will show the 30 newest.

“From there, you have complete artistic control,” the company, bought by Facebook for $1 billion in April 2012, said in a blog post.

Users can drag and drop the photos they want, edit them, adjust their size, as well as flip and rotate them “to create cool arrangements and mirror effects”.

There is also a ‘photo booth’ option which takes a series of quick shots and turns them into a new layout, much like an actual booth.

“It’s fun, it’s simple and it gives you a new way to flex your creativity,” the post added.

Layout is the second standalone app from Instagram, the first being Hyperlapse from August 2014, and is available for iOS devices only. An Android version is expected in coming months.

Neither the Instagram app not an Instagram account is needed to use Layout, although users can access the photo-sharing app’s filters and tools if they want.

Instagram’s user base exceeded 300 million in December, overtaking Twitter’s 284 million users, with 70 million photos and videos being shared each day.