What is a live photo?
A Live Photo is a special feature which an iPhone has in its stock. This feature captures 1.5 seconds of video and audio before and after you press the shutter button to take a photo. In a high-quality still JPEG image, you also get a 3-second Live Photo with sound.
How Do Live Photos Work?
Their functionality is quite simple. With Live Photos enabled, the native camera app starts recording video as soon as we open the app. So, when we press the shutter button, the iPhone has already captured the 1.5 seconds before the shot. It saves this footage along with the 1.5 seconds following the image capture. However, our iPhone discards all other video footage captured before and after those 1.5 seconds. So, we do not need to worry that the constant video recording will fill up our phones’ storage.
How to Take a Live Photo?
Open the native camera app and check that the shooting mode is set to Photo. We cannot shoot Live Photos in any of the other shooting modes. The Live Photos setting is the round icon shown on the left of the screenshot below. If the icon is yellow, Live Photos is on. If the icon is white, we tap it once to turn on Live Photos. Live Photos is on by default, but we can switch it off at any time by tapping the yellow Live Photos icon. However, Live Photos take up a lot of storage space on your iPhone. So, if we leave it on for every shot, you may find that your phone memory has become full.
2. How to View Live Photos?
After taking a Live Photo, it appears in the Photos app alongside your ordinary still photos. We will also find it in a separate album titled “Live Photos.”
Unfortunately, in the thumbnail view, there is no way of knowing whether an image is a Live Photo, and it is impossible to tell which ones they are when viewing them as we view in the gallery. However, there is a way to know which of our images Live Photos are. One way is to tap the thumbnail, so it opens in full screen. If it is a Live Photo, we will see the “LIVE” icon.
You can turn your Live Photos into a continuous video loop as well. Once the video ends, it starts back at the beginning again, until one stops it; this works best in areas where the subject is doing something in the same area of the scene. For example, someone skipping, juggling or dancing.
Thus, this is an interesting feature that has gained a lot of demand in the present times in the iPhone mobiles. With the upgraded modern iPhone 6 screens these live photos look more spectacular and livelier.
