New Live Photos Features

With macOS High Sierra you can unlock new features of your iPhone Live Photos. You can choose a new frame as the still image. You can set the video to loop or bounce. You can also use the video to simulate a long exposure photo. You can even export a loop or bouncing video as an animated GIF.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: So one of the many changes to Photos in High Sierra is how it handles live photos. Live photos are the photos taken with an iPhone that include a few seconds of video around them.  Now in High Sierra photos, Photos 3.0, you can do a lot more with these. 
So here we have a live photo and you can see it's indicated at the top left that it's live. I can move my cursor over the live portion here and it plays back with audio. You can see it's just a few seconds. But you can do some more things with it. 
For instance, you can easily move around the bottom here to see different parts. But now if you go to Edit one of the things that you can do is move around and actually make a different frame in the video the key photo for this image. So if I make this one the key photo instead this is what I'll get when I look at it as a regular photo. I can easily go back and select the initial one. 
Now there's a few other things you can do. If you look down here there's a drop down with four options. The first one being Live. That's just a regular live photo as before. But you can set it to Loop or Bounce which is going to create this looping video. Loop will, of course, loop forward back to the original. Now it's not actually just doing that. It's doing more because notice that the picture is more tightly cropped. Let's go back to Live and you can see more around the edges. If I go to Loop you can see it zooms in a bit. That's because it's using image stabilization. Otherwise it wouldn't work. If I go to Live and I look at the beginning here and say look at the bottom left hand corner here where that rock is the top right, and then look as I move all the way to the last frame of the video you can see it's moved because I'm holding the iPhone in my hand. So it isn't perfectly steady. If you Loop that it would jump from the last frame to the first frame and you would see the jump. 
So Looping is first doing image stabilization. Then it's also doing a quick fade in from the last frame to the first frame. So you don't even notice where the loop is. In a picture like this with a waterfall you can really not see where the loop is. But if you go to something else you can see it. Let's go to this one of the waving flags. You can see I've set this one to loop and you can see where the fade is a lot easier there. So it'll vary depending upon how what type of photo you're using.
Also, you have the ability to Bounce which will go from the first frame to the last frame and then back. It looks ridiculous from a waterfall but for some other things it may look good or maybe just for fun. 
Then, and this is great for waterfalls, you can do long exposure which is when you take all the video and it's going to make it like you took a long exposure photograph. So for a waterfall it looks fantastic. It shows the motion. It gives you a completely different photo than what you originally took. Of course you can have both there because you can always revert to the original. So the long exposure works great for some things like this. Of course for people in it or something like that it's going to look ridiculous. But you do have these four options. 
In addition, if you can go to, say, Loop and you use that and you think that would be a great animated GIF, or gif if you prefer. Well, you can export as an animated GIF from these live photos now. So you can turn them into that and then upload them to websites and share them and stuff as GIFs. So they're more widely accepted in different places. You can send them in an email and all of that. That functionality is fantastic to be able to have that in Photos.

Comments: 12 Responses to “New Live Photos Features”

Norbert Joost

7 years ago

Hope this relates to your good explanation on Live Photos:
How do I export the photo in the new format HEIF ? There is only the option jpg, png,tiff

Gary Rosenzweig

Norbert: File, Export, Export Unmodified Original. You get the HEIF file. Use Command+I to check and you'll see.

Gary, thanks, I will try tonight and report.

Nope, does't work. To be clear, the photo in Photos is a jpg, and when I export it, it still is a jpg. There is no reformating, unlike the video. Strange and disapointig. You should make a video on the total HEIF thing.

Norbert: Ah, if the original is JPEG, not HEIF, then of course you'll get JPEG. I don't see any way to convert it to HEIF. So what is you reason for converting it? JPEG is more compatible now. HEIF may be slightly more compact, but just one photo won't make much of a difference.

One photo does'tt make a difference. 2000 photos makes a difference and 12000 photos even more so. the point is : in high Sierra you can't convert a jpg into a HEIF photo. I think Apple should provide that feature in addition to png and tiff. After all it is a new and hopefully good improvement that has to be promoted, especially if you export a RAW !

Tom Gonser

Live photo taken on iPhone 7 Plus, then air dropped to High Sierra on iMac, comes through as a single JPEG. How does one get the "Live" photo from iPhone to iMac?

Tom: I haven't tried AirDrop. Usually, you would be using iCloud Photo Library so it wouldn't be an issue. The Live Photo would save to your library in iCloud and appear on your Mac. If you are not using iCloud Photo Library, I suppose the old way of syncing your iPhone by a cable and the Photos app would work. The Live Photo would definitely come over on that.

Michael Saurin

Hi Gary. I have been watching your video "on new live photo features" and taking a video on my iPhone 5s and putting it in to Photos on my iMac (High Sierra) and my iOS is 11.0.1 i don't seem to get the footer part in edit it doesn't show live in top left hand corner or live in bottom right hand corner displaying the four options or bursts in centre. What am i do wrong is it because my 5s iPhone is not compatible any more can you please help. Regards Mike.

Michael: Live Photos is a feature of the iPhone 6s and newer.

michael Saurin

Thanks Gary. Now i know it explains everything, have to update, i'll have to wait till october when iPhone X comes out. Thank you.

Raj Gohil

Hi Gary. Thanks for explaining the live photos features, great video.

Comments Closed.

New Live Photos Features

Comments: 12 Responses to “New Live Photos Features”

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