Share iPhone Live Photos as GIFs
Matthew JC. Powell shows how to make a cool feature more compatible.
Last issue, we used an iPhone app called Workflow to create single-tap speed dials for essential contacts. That was practical and all, but wouldn’t it be good if you could direct that scripting power to something more... fun? Well, you can. If you happen to own an iPhone 6s, 6s Plus or an SE, you may be aware that you can take Live Photos — photos with a few frames of animation, sort of like the chocolate frog collector cards in Harry Potter. Live Photos are undoubtedly cool, and provide an extra level of enjoyment to your snapshots — but they are limited. Very limited.
Pretty much the main reason people take photos is to share them with people, and Live Photos basically can’t be shared. Aside from users of iOS 9 or Mac OS X El Capitan or later, no one can view Live Photos in their native format. Facebook has started supporting Live Photos, but it’s shaky at best, depending very much on how a given user is viewing Facebook.
If only there was some standard way of sharing short animations that was compatible with basically every computer on the planet... Oh, yeah, there is — GIF! By converting your Live Photos to animated GIFs, you can share them pretty much anywhere. You lose audio, of course — if you really want to share that three-second gem of a soundbite, you’re stuck with Live Photo and its limitations — but that’s really the only downside here.
There are several apps for converting Live Photos to GIFs on the App Store, but if you have Workflow (which you should), you can build your own with just the features you want.
First, open up Workflow on your iPhone and tap the ‘+’ symbol in the upper-right corner to create a new workflow. Next, slide your finger to the right, to reveal the list of actions available.
Under the ‘Photos & Video’ category, there’s a subsection for Photos, where you’ll find an action called ‘Get Latest Live Photos’. This is actually exceedingly handy, since in iOS 9 at least, there’s no easy way to tell whether a photo in your camera roll is a Live Photo or not. Drag that action to the right to add it to your workflow. When you do, you’ll see that, by default, it offers to get 1 Live Photo. Use the + symbol to adjust this if you want to be able to work with more than just the most recent Live Photo you took.
Next, you’ll want to be able to select which of the most recent Live Photos
“By converting your Live Photos to animated GIFs, you can share them pretty much anywhere.”
you wish to convert. Again, go to the list of actions and this time look under the ‘Scripting’ category. In the subsection called ‘Lists’, you’ll see ‘Choose from List’ — drag it over.
Now you have the option to write a prompt — a question to be asked when the list appears. You could follow Apple’s user-experience guidelines and write something like “Which Live Photo do you wish to convert?” Or you could be a rebel and live by your own rules. We don’t judge.
Next, go back to the actions list and the Photos & Video section, where you’ll find ‘Make GIF’. Drag that over and you’ll see you have three options: ‘Seconds Per Photo’, ‘Loop Forever’ and ‘Auto Size’. With the Seconds Per Photo option, the default is 0.15 but you can adjust that to your heart’s content. You can also opt to ask each time you run the script if you don’t want to be stuck with the same speed for every GIF.
Given Live Photos are only three seconds long, it might be worth stretching some of them out a bit for artistic effect.
Next, return to the actions list, find the Documents section and the action ‘Quick Look’. This will give you a preview of your animated GIF once it’s converted, so you can go back and adjust the speed before saving it. The Quick Look action also includes the Action icon (that is, the square with an arrow coming out of it) which enables you to share your GIF by email, Facebook or whatever means you see fit.
Finally, you’ll want to save your new GIF-making app on your home screen where you can get at it. Tap on the cog icon near the top right-hand corner to open the settings screen. There you can give your workflow a name and an icon and add it to the Home Screen.
You can also, if you wish, make it into an ‘Action Extension’. Then whenever you take a Live Photo, you can activate this workflow from within the Photos app by selecting the Live Photo and tapping on the ‘Action’ icon at the bottom of the screen.
OTHER FUN WITH GIFS
You may have noticed that, in the Actions list in Workflow, as well as ‘Get Latest Live Photos’, there is also an action to ‘Get Latest Bursts’. Burst mode is a terrific option when you’re photographing sports and kids and things that don’t sit still well, but it’s a pity that once you’ve chosen the frame that captured the perfect moment, the rest of them just get chucked.
Instead, why not make your bursts into animated GIFs?
All you have to do is follow the same instructions as above, but instead of Get Latest Live Photos, choose Get Latest Bursts. Also, since a Burst is multiple image files, not one single movie file like a Live Photo, you’ll need to insert an extra action.
Find the action called ‘Get Frames from Image’ and drag it into your workflow in between ‘Choose From List’ and ‘Make GIF’. That just tells Workflow to load all of the images associated with that Burst and use them as frames for the GIF.
The other difference is that if you’re converting a Burst rather than a Live Photo, it won’t work as an Action Extension.