6 tips for using Live Photos on your iPhone 6s

Live Photos are enabled when the circles button at the top of the screen is yellow.

Live Photos are a truly fun and unique feature in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.

When you have the Live Photos feature enabled in the Camera app, it will automatically include a 3 second video with each still photo that you take.

Here are some things that I’ve found as I’ve been taking hundreds of Live Photos on my iPhone 6s:

After tapping the shutter button, the LIVE indicator tells you that the 1.5 sec video is still being recorded - hold steady!

1. Verify that Live Photo taking is turned on when you want it on. Seems obvious but sometimes I turn it off when it isn’t necessary and then I forget to turn it back on. The concentric circles indicator button at the top of the Photos app screen is yellow (see screen shot). If it's gray instead of yellow, tap it to turn on Live Photos. (If you don't see the indicator, your iPhone doesn't support Live Photos.)
    
2. Live Photos take a little more space on your iPhone and in iCloud, but it’s at most a couple megabytes per photo, so it’s not a big deal. You can leave it on for most photos without worrying about the space.
    
3. Since a Live Photo keeps 1.5 seconds of what you see on screen before you press the shutter button and 1.5 seconds after you press the shutter button, you REALLY have to concentrate on holding your iPhone steady and still before and after you press the button.
    
4. When you press the shutter button, a yellow LIVE indicator will appear at the top of the screen (see screenshot). The LIVE indicator will disappear when the 1.5 seconds after the shot have been recorded. Keep your eye on the LIVE indicator and keep your iPhone steady until it disappears.
    
5. Since iOS 9.1, the Camera app uses the built-in iPhone motion sensor to sense if you accidentally tip the iPhone down before it’s captured the 1.5 seconds after the shot and if it senses that it cuts the video short. This saves a lot of blurry videos of the floor that happened when Live Photos first appeared in iOS 9.0.
    
6. Since Live Photos also record sound, it’s a good idea to listen to your subjects to be sure that in addition to the images, you’re also getting the sounds you want. Your subjects will probably not realize you’re recording a video, so you may (or may not) want to avoid record them all saying “smile” or “everyone say cheese!"

Live Photos are an amazing new way to capture the people and world around you.

And when you use Timebox to stitch together a video of a day or an event captured with Live Photos, the result is an almost magical way to share your life.

Give it a try!

Timebox Tips - How to move photos around in Timebox

A few people have asked us how to move their photos and videos around in Timebox so we thought it would be helpful to write a post about it. There are a few different ways to do it depending upon what you what to accomplish. Here are a few scenarios:

Rearrange photos in a story

You want to rearrange the photos and videos in a day or a story.

1. Open a story, tap Edit, then tap and hold the photo (or video) you want to move (it will change shape and “float” above the story).
2. Drag the floating photo to it’s new location in the story. 
3. You can drag a photo on top of another photo or on top of a block of text. 

You can also tap and hold on the white area of a block of text to drag the text block on top of a photo.

Copy photos to another story

You want to copy or paste (or share) just one photo or video.

1. Open a story, tap and hold the photo you want to work with, then choose Copy, Paste or Share. 
2. Tap the back arrow to go back to the timeline.
3. Open the destination story or tap the plus sign to add a new story, tap and hold anywhere in the story, then tap Paste.

Move photos to another date

You want to move some photos and videos from one day to another day. 

1. Open a story, tap Edit, tap Select, tap the desired photos to select them, and then tap Move To. 
2. Choose the date where you’d like to move the selected photos, tap move, then tap done.

Sometimes Move To is not allowed when you've manually added the selected photos to a story but they were also automatically added to a different story. In this case (or any other time you like) you can also:

1. Open a story, tap Edit, tap Select, select the photos you want to copy, tap the share button in the lower right corner of the screen, and tap Copy from the choices.
2. Go back to the timeline, open the destination story or tap the plus sign to add a new story, tap and hold anywhere in the story, then tap Paste.

For more tips take a look at the Timebox FAQ.

Contact us anytime with a question or comment and we’ll get back to you.