I reckon the Photos app on the iPhone is probably one of, if not the most used app by iPhone owners
overall, yet I reckon most people don’t know half of what this app can do. So in this video,
I’m going to share 10 tips and tricks for the Photos app on your iPhone,
to help you get the most out of it. Stick with me until the end of the video,
I reckon there are at least a couple of things in here that most people won’t know about.
OK, let’s get into it.
**Long Exposures from Live Photos**
Live Photos are seen as being a bit faddy by a lot of people,
which I totally get. A Live Photo is when you take a picture, but your phone also captures
a couple of seconds of video too, the idea being that you can tap and hold on the image,
and view a video of the exact moment when you captured the image, bringing the photo to life.
But one feature that they offer, which I definitely think is worth taking a look at,
is the ability to capture a Long Exposure photo, like the one I’m showing you on screen
now. Taking photos like this traditionally involves putting your camera on a tripod,
and using special filters, but your iPhone can take amazing Long Exposure photos really easily.
When taking a photo, ensure that Live Photos are toggled on. You do that by ensuring that
this icon here in the upper right does not have a line through it, as you can see here. Then,
take your photo, but hold your phone as still as you can when you do so.
You don’t have to worry too much here, your iPhone is very good at taking stable photos.
Then, view the Photo in the Photos app, and up here in the upper left of the screen where
it says ‘Live’, tap on that, and choose Long Exposure. Your phone will process the image,
and then produce an amazing long exposure image.
This works really well with scenery, and things like water in particular,
but experiment - try this with light, traffic, anything you like.
**Lift a subject from an image**
iOS16, released in late 2022, brought with it the ability to lift a subject from an image,
and then do something with that lifted image, like pasting it into a document,
or even a Message. It’s one of those features where the promotional material make it look
quite a bit better than it actually works in real life, but it does work,
and so long as you use it on the right kind of image, it actually works pretty well.
So here’s a picture of our dog for example. Notice that in this image,
it’s really clear right away when you look at the photo, that she’s the subject of the photo,
so it should make it quite easy for the Photos app to be able to pull her from the
image. What I’ll do, is just tap and hold for a second on the image, and you see this scan
animation whoosh over her. Once that’s done, the image is selected, and I can then choose Copy.
Then, I’ll go to another app, and paste the image in. Like I said, this would work in a document,
or an email, but one usage for this which is pretty good fun is Messages,
and that’s because once I’ve pasted the image in, I can then tap and hold on the send button,
and choose from Screen effects. Echo is pretty fun, but then so is Spotlight,
and Confetti. You can obviously play around with these to see if any would work for you.
************************Add Captions for better search************************
This is a really little known feature, but it’s actually super useful. You can search
in the Photos app, and machine learning means that searching in the Photos app is
very good by default, although more on that later in the video, but you can add your own
captions to images if you like, which gives you an extra edge when it comes to searching.
To do this, find a photo in the Photos app, and just do a little swipe up. You can see
this box here that says Add a Caption. Tap in there, then type in a caption.
A caption can be whatever you like. One way you could use this, is the way that my parents used
to write on the back of photos when I was a kid, before putting them in a photo album. They might
write the names of whoever was there, or where it was taken, or a funny memory about the picture.
Another way you could caption your photos though is to tag them, and for that,
you can use a hashtag if you like. So you might do something like hashtag days out, whatever you
like. But what’s great about this, is that once you’ve added a caption, the app will index that
caption, and it then becomes searchable. Simply tap the search button, then in the
search field up at the top, type in the caption or the hashtag that you’d like to search for.
**Add a location to an image**
Provided you allow your phone to automatically tag your photos with a location,
you’ll be able to then view that location in the information tab of a photo, down at the bottom,
or view all of the photos captured in a specific location using the Places option in Search.
But there might be some photos that you take where you don’t have a location,
and you’d like to insert one. Perhaps a photo has been shared with you,
or maybe you’ve imported it from a camera, and you don’t have any GPS data in the image.
Thankfully, there are a couple of options available to you here. The first is that
you can head into an image, and then tap on the Info button, and where it says Add a Location,
tap into there. You can enter in a postal or zip code, you can enter in a location marker
like a famous beach or a landmark in a city, or a street, or a town or a city in general.
But here’s another neat little trick you might be able to make use of. Let’s say
that you took a picture on your iPhone at the same location, and in that photo, you’ve got
location detail already showing. What you can do, is open that photo, and head into Info,
then tap and hold on the location section, until you see Copy Location. Tap that option.
Then open the image you want to paste the location information into. If you
tap on Add a Location, this won’t work, so what we need to do instead
is tap and hold on the Add a Location option, then choose Paste Location.
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**Single tap to return to the top**
A really simple one this, but how many times have you seen someone scrolling and scrolling
and scrolling to get all the way either to the top of their Photos app, ie their oldest photo,
or all the way to the bottom, ie their newest photo? If you have thousands
of photos and videos, this could take you a while, and it’s really annoying.
There is a very quick, single tap method of doing this. If you’re at the bottom of your library,
viewing the newest content, and you want to get to the top, just tap the time in
the upper left of your iPhone’s screen. Your photos app will whoosh all the way to the top,
or the oldest photos. Then, if you want to return to the bottom, or the newest, tap on the Library
button down at the bottom left of the screen, and your phone will whoosh you all the way back.
**Powerful Photos Search**
How often have you had a photo in your library that you really want to show someone,
but when you go to your photo library, you just can’t find it? Try using search,
it’s extremely powerful, and very easy to use.
Try typing in a word like a category. Car, dog, beach,
donut, whatever you think might return a result for you. You can type in the names
of people if your photos app knows people in your photos, you can type in specific locations,
you can even type in contextual searches like ‘one year ago’, or ‘winter’ or ‘weddings’.
Give it a try, you might be surprised at just how useful this search can be.
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**Hide and Delete Photos, securely**
I’m sure you’re already familiar with how to delete a photo, simply open the photo,
hit the bin or trash can button down at the bottom right, and the photo is gone. Well, it’s not,
it’s gone into a folder called Recently Deleted, where it will sit for 30 days,
after which it will be fully, properly, automatically deleted from your iPhone.
By the very nature of the Deleted Items folder being for your deleted items,
it’s likely that you’d want to keep that folder private, and for your eyes only,
and with this in mind, I’d absolutely recommend that you turn on FaceID or TouchID,
whichever is relevant for your device, on.
You do this by opening Settings, and then scrolling down to where it says Use FaceID,
this will say use Touch ID if you have a phone that uses Touch ID. Enable this,
and then when you try to access your Recently Deleted album, you’ll need to
verify yourself using your biometrics first. This is good because obviously,
if someone had access to your device, they wouldn’t be able to get access to that album.
But you can also use this to hide photos, and put them in a locked, hidden album.
I’ll let you decide what kind of pictures you might want to put in there, but regardless,
here’s what you’d do. First of all, enable Face or Touch ID like we just did in the previous step.
Then in the same Settings page, which is Settings, then Photos,
ensure that you’ve got Show Hidden Album enabled.
Then with a photo open in the Photos app, tap the ellipsis menu in the upper right of the screen,
and choose Hide. The photo will no longer appear in your photo library, but is still visible if
you access the Hidden album, which of course you can only do by using Face or Touch ID.
Now it is worth pointing out that, if you’re especially paranoid about
people viewing your Hidden Album, you could always hide your Hidden Album,
by going to Settings, then Photos, and disabling Show Hidden Album.
The album still exists, but you’d have to enable it each time you want to view it.
**Use Duplicates to manage your photo library**
It’s very likely that, over time, you’re going to amass a collection of photos and videos,
some that you’ve taken, some that other people have taken,
and some of those are going to be duplicates. These duplicates take up space on your phone,
and you might as well get rid of them, and the Photos app makes this really easy to do.
Simply tap into Albums, and scroll all the way down to the bottom,
then tap into Duplicates. If you don’t see a Duplicates album here by the way,
this simply means that your library doesn’t contain any duplicate media.
Your phone will show you the duplicate content, and you can see we’ve got this merge button
next to each. Tapping that will keep one version with the highest quality, metadata - essentially
your app will try to keep the ‘best’ version, and move the others to the bin.
**Make use of Media Types**
Another tip that isn’t new, but I barely ever see people using is the Media Types,
which you can find by tapping on Albums, and then scrolling down. These are great because
your phone automatically separates out all of your media by type, so if you know that you’re looking
for something in particular, rather than searching through your entire library, you can start here.
The ones that I think people are going to find most useful are options like Selfies and videos,
but also things like Screenshots and Screen Recordings, helpful if you
want to show someone a screenshot you took recently, but you can’t find it.
**Make use of Visual Look Up**
Your iPhone can recognise an increasing number of things from within your images,
whether that’s specific animals or insects, places, landmarks or plants. I will point
out before we get into this one, you need to be running iOS15 or newer on your iPhone for this to
work, so if you’re on a device that doesn’t support that, you won’t be able to do this,
and it’s not fully rolled out in all regions, although support is improving all the time.
When you’re in an image, look for the ‘i’, information button. If it has a star next to it,
your phone thinks it recognises something in the image. Tap on the I button, and look just
below the caption box, where it will say ‘look up’, and whatever it recognises. Your phone will
also put a logo on the photo itself to mark what it thinks it recognises. You can then tap to view
more information. This will vary depending on what it is, but will typically allow you to view
more images, or perhaps a Wikipedia page with more information about whatever that thing is.
**End**
So there you go, 10 tips for the Photos app on the iPhone. What do you think, any tips that
you think should have been included here that weren’t? Drop me a comment, and let me know.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like,
and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.