Photos

If you love hiking in the mountains, camping and fishing at a favorite lake, or just going for a walk in the woods, you likely already know that time in nature does a world of good for both physical and mental health. Researchers at the University of East Anglia performed a meta-analysis of more than 140 studies completed in 20 countries that objectively confirms these subjective impressions. Exposure to wild spaces reduces the production of stress hormones, lowers pulse rate and blood pressure, decreases sleep disturbances, and increases happiness, well-being, and even creativity. For many people, spending time in the great outdoors, whether for an afternoon or weeks at a time, means a break from technology. But there are so many practical benefits of having your phone with you! So before you escape to the woods to eat roots and berries and forget human speech, think about adding some of this essential camping gear and equipment to your packing list. While you're at it, check out our collection of travel, hiking, plant identification, and bird apps.

If you have an iPhone 11 Pro or an iPhone 11 Pro Max with 2x optical zoom and 10x digital zoom, you can easily select the exact amount of zoom you'd like to use with each shot with the zoom slider. With Ultra-Wide thrown into the mix, your zoom menu has changed to make it easier for you to swap back and forth between your cameras. Learning how to use the zoom on the iPhone gives you more freedom to play with photography, so let's get started learning how to use the zoom slider on your iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max.

Ever lost a precious memory because you forgot to back it up? With these two major photo management solutions, Apple Photos and Google Photos, those concerns should be a thing of the past. But which one should you pick? In this article, I'll go in depth to find out. I'll compare cost, file formats, upload quality, and a number of other factors in order to help you make an informed decision.

High-Key Light Mono, for the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max, is a gray-scale portrait effect that whites out the background and turns up the highlights on your subject. To use this effect, open your Camera app and use the Portrait Mode lighting wheel to select High-Key Light Mono. Here’s how to use High-Key Light Mono in the Photo app on your iPhone 11, 11 Pro, or 11 Pro Max.

Hurricanes. Floods. Fires. Disaster can strike at any moment, and our most precious memories are often the most vulnerable. Recently, I started going through my old photo albums to scan and upload my pictures and negatives to a hard drive for safekeeping. Of course, it’s not just photographs that we want to preserve. Vinyl albums, cassette and VHS tapes, analog photography, and even old diary pages are subject to the ravages of nature, storage space, and time. Fortunately, new technologies make it possible for us to preserve and protect our memories in the digital realm. From USB-equipped turntables to flatbed scanners large enough to copy an entire sleeve of images, the means of archiving your most precious memories are only limited by your imagination. But don’t worry, we imagined for you and have a list of devices and apps we think you’ll love.

Apple introduced the Live Photo feature with the iPhone 6S, and it's still a fun and popular feature of the native iPhone Camera app. Unless you've unselected Live Photo settings in the Camera Settings, the Live Photo function is on by default when you open the Camera app, so you need to turn off Live Photo if you want a traditional still shot. Sometimes, though, we all forget to turn off Live Photo; now what? No worries, you can delete the Live Photo version of your picture and keep the still photo. 

We've already gone over how to sign up for Instagram on your iPhone, how to create a second Instagram account, and even how to deactivate your Instagram account if you need a break, but there's one more thing we need to go over. A major frustration for Instagram users has been the inability to download Instagram on their iPads. After all, it would be great to edit photos or watch a video on a larger screen, to switch back and forth between watching a movie on the iPad and checking Instagram notifications, and to just have another option for using the app. In the past, you needed to use workarounds to download and install Instagram on your tablet, but now there's an official iPad version of Instagram. Unfortunately, the official version is tiny; it doesn't fill the iPad screen and leaves a large, black frame around the app. Don't worry, though, we'll go over a trick you can use to get fullscreen Instagram on your iPad 

App Saturday: Instagram

By Hallei Halter

Instagram may be one of the most well-known social media apps. Also called Insta, and gaining popularity with its Instagram Stories feature, it's one way to get a peek at people, businesses, and events. You can post a photo, add a caption, and throw in some hashtags to participate in the community, or just use it to browse accounts you like. Instagram can be used for as much or as little as you want.

App Saturday: VSCO X

By Hallei Halter

Typical vintage filters for photos slap on a yellow tint and call it a day. VSCO, a photography app that doubles as a photo editor, imitates analog camera settings to make your images look like natural film photos. The app also offers VSCO X, a yearly subscription that bulks up the app to include over 100 filters and tools to edit your photos to look like professional pieces.

I love taking photos and my Instagram account shows it. The Layout app from Instagram helps me combine multiple photos into one collage. So if I have pictures from a party or a walk around the park, I can put several of them together into one frame. Layout makes it easy to customize, share, and save my creatively arranged photos.

By default on Mac, iTunes opens automatically when you plug your iPhone or iPad into your computer. If you have a Mac, the Photos app will also automatically open. But for many people this causes a lot of problems, including computer freezes. Luckily, you can disable iTunes auto launch pretty easily. We’ll go over how to stop iTunes from opening automatically when your iPhone is connected as well as how to disable Photos auto launch when your iPhone is connected. You’ll need to change these settings on your computer, so have it ready. 

WatchOS 4 for Apple Watch added a lot of quality features to the smartwatch, including new watch faces. My personal favorite addition is the new Kaleidoscope watch face that uses either a built-in photo or a photo of your choice to create a colorful image in one of three different styles. We’ll go over how to use the Kaleidoscope watch face and how to create your own Kaleidoscope Apple Watch face on iPhone.

If you're into iPhone photography and filming, there will come a time when you feel the need to start investing in accessories to improve your results. One of the most basic yet helpful extras you can buy is an iPhone tripod. A phone tripod can help you get your best shots by stabilizing your iPhone, thereby eliminating unwanted movement and jiggling while you film or live stream. A tripod is also very handy when the time comes for a selfie or group shot where you'd like to include everyone. Whether you have the newest iPhone or an older version like the iPhone 6, iPhone 7, or iPhone 7 plus, there's a tripod out there that will help you take your filming and photography to the next level. Let's get started learning about three of my recommendations for your upcoming purchase. 

Need iPad and iPhone help? Sign up for iPhone Life Insider and Sarah will help you with all your iPhone troubleshooting and iOS-related issues. To learn more go to iPhoneLife.com/Insider. In this Hey Sarah column, one Insider wants to know how to remove everything from their old iPad so they can give it away to a friend while another wants to know if it's possible to delete photos from their iPhone without also deleting them from iCloud.

Beginning with iOS 9 the Mail app included Markup, a photo editor that lets you write, draw on, and add shapes and signatures to your images. Now there's no need for a separate app to sketch and add text to pictures; iPhone and iPad users can insert images into the body of emails, then mark them up right there without ever leaving the Mail app. Let's get started learning how to use Markup on your email images.

Maybe you've learned a bit about iPhone photography already; you already know how to take good pictures, but now you're ready to learn some tips and tricks to take really awesome pictures. If you're hoping to master some photography techniques that will result in creative, artsy, amazing photos, then it's time to start paying more attention to lighting. When it comes to photography, there’s no doubt that light is one of the most crucial aspects of creating a great image with your iPhone, but did you know you can also have a lot a fun with it? Whether you’re new to iPhoneography or you’ve been working at it for years, here are some lighting tricks you should try for great, unusual images.

Pages