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How to combine Live Photos into a shareable video

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live photo videos
Turn your Live Photos into videos.
Photo: Muhammad Haikal Sjukri/Unsplash

In iOS 13 and iPadOS, you can easily collect a bunch of Live Photos, and combine them into a single video. It’s great for sharing, or just making a cool remix of your clips. And this isn’t another one of those (awesome) posts where we use Shortcuts to do the dirty work. Making Live Photos videos is a new feature built into the Photos app.

Here’s how to use it.

How to use a GIF for your iPhone wallpaper

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Look at this wallpaper. Just look at it.Look at this wallpaper. Just look at it.
Look at this wallpaper. Just look at it.
Photo: Jake Cvnningham/Flickr CC

Wouldn’t it be great if you could take that awesome (and hilarious!) GIF, and use it as an animated wallpaper for your iPhone? You could wake your iPhone, press on the screen, and watch the action unfold. Over and over. And over.

Sadly, GIF wallpapers are impossible. Or are they? Well, you can’t set an actual GIF to run as your lock-screen wallpaper, but you can convert any GIF into a Live Photo, and use that to animate your iPhone’s lock screen.

Here’s how.

How to take long exposure iPhone photos [Quick Tips]

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live photos
Create stunning long exposure style photos in seconds on your iPhone.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

They say the best camera is the one you have with you. And when isn’t the iPhone with you? iPhone photography has created a whole new generation of amateur photographers. While you may be looking for the next great app to help produce some stunning photos, did you know you can easily recreate a long exposure style image right within the camera app?

Check out our latest Quick Tips video below to see how.

Pro Tip: How to pick a new thumbnail for your Live Photos

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live photos key
With Live Photos new key-photo settings, you can go back in time.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Pro Tip Cult of Mac bugWhen you take a Live Photo, your iPhone automatically picks a key frame to serve as the non-animated thumbnail. Depending on your subject, this automatic pick may be terrible, showing a blurred frame, or worse. If you’ve shot a photo of a skateboarder popping a sweet heel flip, for example, the still frame may not even have the skater in it.

The good news is that you can easily choose your own key frame.

Easily convert Live Photos into GIFs in iOS 11 [Quick Tips]

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iPhone X Live Photos

Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Live Photos are great. They can capture special moments in a way that some pictures just can’t. The little movie clips that play when you force-touch a Live Photo can show the joy or wonder of the image. But therein lies the problem. They’re basically video clips embedded into photos, which makes sharing them to non-iOS users a nightmare.

A plethora of apps can convert Live Photos into GIFs or a standard video clip, but iOS 11 makes it even easier. Check out our video below to see how to quickly convert a Live Photo into a GIF.

How to create long-exposure effects with iPhone

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long exposure sea
Long exposures turn moving water into creepy mist.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

One of the neatest tricks you can do with a standalone camera is the long exposure trick. You may have seen it used to turn the tail-lights of a car into long streaks of red curving through the dark behind a ghostly car, or to blur turbulent waters into a peaceful, misty-looking lake. In a regular camera, you have to finagle the shutter speed to get the level of blur just right, and there’s no second chance. On the iPhone, it’s way easier.

How to capture FaceTime Live Photos

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facetime live view
FaceTime can capture LivePhotos and save them to your camera roll.
Photo: Cult of Mac

You know how when you’re on a FaceTime call with your parents, and your father holds his favorite recipe up to the camera, and you use the screenshot to capture a photo of it? Well, now there’s a proper, official way to capture images from FaceTime calls. Even better, they’re not just stills. The captures are Live Photos, so you can relive that goofy smile from your grandparent long after they’re gone.