PHOTO & VIDEO

RECORD & SAVE YOUR FAVORITE MEMORIES

CAPTURE Get Dramatic with Cinematic Mode

We all fell in love with Portrait mode when Apple launched it with the iPhone X, offering an artistic blurred background to photos of people and things. Now the iPhone 13 line comes with Cinematic Mode, which acts a lot like Portrait Mode, except it's for video instead of photos. You can choose one or multiple subjects as the focus of your video and the rest of the video will be gently blurred. Just swipe through your menu at the bottom of your Camera app as you would for Portrait mode and select Cinematic. Once it's in your Photos, tap Edit, then the Cinematic icon to tap different parts of the screen to change your focus.

Enjoy a Panorama

While no photograph can ever really capture the beauty of an outdoor vista, a panoramic shot can get pretty close. To take a panoramic shot, open the

Camera app, and swipe through the bottom menu until you hit Pano. Then, hold your iPhone up and press and hold the shutter button. Make sure to start to the far left of the scene, not the middle. Move your iPhone to the right, keeping it steady. The arrow on the line in the middle will help guide you. Once your shot is complete, your iPhone will save it and you can share it as desired.

Preserve Your Camera Settings

Do you have a favorite camera setting that you know you'll want to use next time? It's frustrating to open your Camera app and find everything reset to default settings. Luckily, your iPhone offers much more customization of your Camera configuration than you might expect. In Settings, tap Camera, then Preserve Settings. From there, you'll be able to toggle which settings you want to keep between camera sessions; meaning, your app will open with your settings just as you left them. It isn't quite changing a default, in that it'll just keep what you did last time until you manually change it, but it's a huge help.

TREASURE Enjoy Your Specially Curated Content

Your iPhone does a lot of work to put together fun things in your Photos app. It collects photos that have been shared with you, chooses photos from your collection you might like to be reminded of that day, and mixes photos into peppy videos to watch and save at your pleasure. Go to the For You tab in your Photos app for all of this and more. The videos will be under Memories, and you can scroll through Featured Photos, iCloud links, Shared Albums, Sharing Suggestions, and more. If you're not sure what to do with all the photos you have, this is a great place to start.

Look Your Best in a Live Photo

We all know the frustration of trying to choose the best group shot when it seems like someone is always blinking. Live Photos, besides having the potential to turn into videos or GIFs (we'll get to that in a second) give you the opportunity to choose the best moment in a three-second window to represent your subjects. Just open your Live Photo, tap Edit, then tap the Live Photo icon. Scroll through to your preferred frame, tap Make Key Photo, then tap Done. Voila!

Customize Your Memory Mixes

As mentioned above, Memory Mixes are little videos your iPhone compiles of related photos. While typically they're sweet and enjoyable as is, you might want to be able to change the music, the photos involved, or the length of the video. To customize one of these videos, just start playing the memory, then tap the More icon on the top right of the video. From here, you can choose to add the mix to your Favorites, Manage Photos, Edit Title, or AirPlay. You can also choose whether you want the length to be short, medium, or long.

Quickly & Easily Edit Photos

While most of us have a favorite photo-editing app or program, knowing how to edit photos right in the Photos app is a handy trick that can cut out the middleman. Just open the photo you'd like to edit and tap Edit in the top right corner. From here, you'll be able to adjust things like exposure, highlights, and more, plus add filters, crop, or rotate your photos. Once you've adjusted your photo to your liking, tap Done. When you tap Edit on that photo again, you'll be able to select Revert to undo all your changes, so don't worry if you don't like what you ended up with!

Exchange Shots with Shared Albums

While I'm a big fan of sending individual photos to a group chat, creating a shared album is a much easier way to make sure a relevant group gets your photos and you get theirs. In the Albums tab of your Photos app, tap the Add icon, then select New Shared Album. Name your album, then select the contacts you want to share the album with. Now, everything you add to that album and everything your chosen contacts add will be available for the whole group to not only see, but comment on, share, and like. Only you can delete the photos and videos you add, though.

Watch Your Live Photos Again & Again

Live Photos sometimes capture moments we didn't expect, and we want to watch them as a video. Say, for example, you were taking a selfie with your sister and she fell over in the middle of it. If you want to treasure that memory forever, open your Live Photo and tap the top left where it says Live, then choose loop or bounce for a different kind of animated short. If you want a full video, tap Share, then choose Save as a Video.