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Can You Choose the Key Photo Of a Live Photo Using Photos for Mac?

While editing in Photos on a Macbook Air running Sierra, I find that I cannot figure out how to select a new key photo for a live photo.
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Justin Lodge

Comments: One Response to “Can You Choose the Key Photo Of a Live Photo Using Photos for Mac?”

    6 years ago

    Yes. Well, at least you can in High Sierra (Photos 3.0). I don't have anything running old Sierra (Photos 2.0) so I don't know for sure if the same functionality exists there.

    In Photos 3.0, you select the Live Photo and press the Edit button. Then at the bottom of the photo you'll see a small timeline with a dot over the keyframe. Under the dot is a box that you can move left or right on the little timeline. Move it away from the initial dot and you'll get a button above it "Make Key Photo." Click that and you've done it.

    Now I'm wondering if this also doesn't depend on the version of Live Photos you are using. When Apple first came out with Live Photos for the iPhone, you couldn't just use any frame of the short video to replace the image. I think the video was a lower resolution than the photo. So if you used another frame, you wouldn't have the high resolution photo as the photo, but a low resolution frame from somewhere in the video. The reason I think this is because the next iteration of Live Photos was when Apple made a big deal out of being able to select another frame as the photo. I'm thinking fro that point on maybe each frame is a full resolution photo or something similar.

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