Live Photos

How to select different still frames of Live Photos

Live Photos is among the features Apple was selling prominently during the iPhone 6s ad campaign. Live Photos is still around, thanks for asking. As you’ll recall, Live Photos lets you record what happens 1.5 seconds before and after you snap a photograph.

These images come alive when you touch them in the Photos app and can be set as your Lock screen wallpaper or shared via services like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr. When you take a Live Photo, the Camera app uses AI to select the best still image.

It’s this still portion of a Live Photo that’s displayed in the Photos app, sent when you share it and more. In this tutorial, we’re going to teach you how to select a different moment in your Live Photo as the still frame.

WhatsApp now lets you send short videos or Live Photos as animated GIFs

Following a recent update that added a bunch of new camera features and the ability to draw on photos, Facebook-owned WhatsApp today pushed another update that enables support for animated GIFs. Not only can you now send and receive animated GIFs through WhatsApp for iPhone, but also easily send any short video or Live Photo in your library as an animated GIF. WhatsApp 2.16.15 is required for these features, available free on the App Store.

10+ new features in iOS 10.2 beta 1

Apple yesterday issued beta 1 of the forthcoming iOS 10.2 software update for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. For starters, iOS 10.2 beta 1 includes three new wallpapers, provides a bunch of new emoji as part of the Unicode 9.0 standard and gives Camera the optional ability to remember filter, Live Photo and mode settings.

Star ratings are back in the Music app and Videos has its own widget. Oh, and you can now annoy friends with a brand new animation in Messages.

Without further ado, here’s our video hands-on with iOS 10.2 beta 1 accompanied by a detailed description of all the new features and enhancements.

New Google app turns Live Photos into animated GIFs and movies with cinematic backgrounds

Google today announced it’s launching a brand new iPhone application aimed at those who wish to turn their Live Photos into animated GIFs. Aptly named Motion Stills, the app turns Live Photos into Motion Stills with Google’s stabilization technology and cinematic backgrounds.

These Motion Stills can then be shared as looping GIFs on social media. Motion Stills is available free in the App Store.

tvOS 9.2 is here: Dictation, folders, Live Photos, wireless keyboards, iCloud Photo Library & more

tvOS 9.2, a new update for the operating system which powers the fourth-generation Apple TV, is now available for public consumption. The new firmware, released alongside iOS 9.3, OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 and watchOS 2.2, is a very interesting update for the cool new features it brings to the table.

tvOS 9.2 enables several features missing from the initial tvOS release, including long-awaited support for wireless keyboards, dictation, Siri support for App Store searches, app folders on the Home screen, a revamped app switcher, Siri Remote improvements, support for Live Photos and iCloud Photo Library and more.

OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 is out with full Live Photos sharing, password-protected Notes and more

After spending more than two months in beta, OS X 10.11.4, a fourth major update to OS X El Capitan, today released for public consumption. The software update is now available and recommended for all OS X El Capitan users.

Even though it comes with a few noticeable outward-facing changes, OS X 10.11.4 does pack in some newsworthy improvements—namely in stock Messages, Notes and Photos apps. Full sharing of Live Photos via iMessages has been implemented throughout the system, too. Like other major OS X releases, 10.11.4 includes a handful of under-the-hood changes and tons of bug fixes and performance optimizations.

This app lets you crop, zoom and trim Live Photos without destroying the live part

The Photos app on your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Mac lets you use the Auto Enhance and Remove Red-Eye tools with Live Photos in a non-destructive manner, which is nice.

But use filters, or perform a crop or trim on your Live Photo and it’ll get turned into a still image because Apple’s Photos solution isn’t advanced enough (yet) to support these editing operations in conjunction with Live Photos.

This can be quite cumbersome for two reasons. A) You must manually restore your Live Photo by tapping Edit → Revert; and B) these stills only include the motionless part of your Live Photos.

With Live Crop, a nifty little app by developer MobiLab, not only can you trim and crop out parts of your Live Photo without destroying its live component, but also crop, zoom, trim and resize Live Photos, your videos as well as animated GIFs.

Apple posts new iPhone 6s ads highlighting 3D Touch and Live Photos

Apple on Wednesday posted two new iPhone 6s ads to its YouTube channel entitled Less Time and Live Photos. As it says in the headline, each spot highlights one of two major features from the company’s latest handset: 3D Touch and Live Photos.

The first video, Less Time, talks about what 3D Touch is and the many ways you can use it. Notably, actress Aubrey Plaza makes a cameo. The second clip, Live Photos, similarly shows the feature in action, and lists off some of its many benefits.

Samsung jumping into Live Photos bandwagon: ‘Vivid Photos’ reportedly coming to Galaxy S7

Live Photos, a feature of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus which optionally captures 1.5 seconds of video before and after a picture is taken, is reportedly going to be replicated by Samsung’s next-generation Galaxy S7 smartphones when it debuts later this year, according to sources who spoke with Marius Maria over at Android Geeks.

As there’s no guarantee that Samsung’s engineers will finish it in time for the handset’s debut, it might arrive later this year with a software update.