A bride to be discovers a reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to Technology@lemmy.world – 258 points –
A bride to be discovers a reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography
appleinsider.com

A U.K. woman was photographed standing in a mirror where her reflections didn't match, but not because of a glitch in the Matrix. Instead, it's a simple iPhone computational photography mistake.

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Ah yes, I remember noticing it would make like a short video instead of one picture, back when I had an iPhone. I turned that function off because I didn't see the benefits.

That’s not what this is. I also turned that off, it’s called “Live Photo” or something like that. Honestly I find it to be a dumb feature.

What this is, is the iPhone taking a large number of images and stitching them together for better results.

It's not dumb. It let's you select the best moment within a 1-2 second margin after or before you took the picture.

No, these are literally just short videos. You interact with them like photos, you see them as photos, half the time people sending them think they are photos, but when you tap all the way into them they are a short video. They are absolutely not presented as a “choose your exact frame” pre-photo things, they are presented as photos.

Yeah "Live photo" really is just an Apple marketing term. You interact with them in a certain way on iOS and they are presented in a certain way, but anywhere else they're just very short videos.

Wrong. Pretty crazy, it does let you change which frame is the photo. Click edit, then hit the Live Photo icon next to “cancel”

That isnt the point of a Live Photo, that’s just a “feature.” Similar to how YouTube lets you choose a thumbnail for a video, but that’s not really the point of YouTube.

Per Apple support:

With Live Photos, your iPhone records what happens 1.5 seconds before and after you take a picture. Then you can pick a different key photo, add a fun effect, edit your Live Photo, and share with your family and friends.

So it’s actually the first example of what Live Photo is for.

If you didn’t even know about this, don’t feel bad. I’m an Apple fanboy and my daughter just showed me that it allowed you to do this “different key photo” last month. Kids are good for that.

I’m aware that’s it’s possible, but that isn’t part of the onboarding or anything. What I mean is, it’s an addon. It was never part of the original iteration, which was just “look moving Harry Potter photos.”

It’s a gimmick that doesn’t even work cross device, because it’s literally just a short video.

I’m not following where you’re coming from. Are you just going to hate on it?

Because v1 of something didn’t have a feature, it means it should be discounted from discussion?

There’s several neat things about Live Photos, and the arguably nearest thing is being able to change the key frame. Unintended side effect of this feature apple included, maybe. But that’s not relevant.

I’m simply stating that they are short videos. The fact that they can do more is secondary, platform specific, and gimmicky. You send that “love photo” to an android device, a PC, an older iPhone, etc it all falls apart and it’s literally just a short video again.

The ability to change the “cover image” doesn’t mean it’s meant to allow you to pick the perfect frame, that’s just a secondary feature. You’re still sending the entire short video along.

But… no? When I change the key frame (the image) of the video, then send that to someone as a picture, the picture is of that key frame. If I send over iMessage as Live Photo, it’s both a pic and a video.

So it gives the the ability to slightly adjust when the picture was taken to get that perfect shot with no one blinking and things look just right. Basically, every picture is like 50 pictures and I can pick the best. By default, it picks the middle.

Call it what you want, but it’s integrated pic + vid on every picture. Yes. Coupled with simple tools to leverage that for some nice functionality.

If your argument is just “but it’s simple, it’s just a video” then you’re ignoring the UX execution entirely.

90% of people share their photos from the messages app, they aren’t going into their photos and explicitly sharing what they already think is a photo, as a photo.

I get where you’re coming from, but “this buried feature most don’t know about” isn’t what I’m talking about, I’m talking about what the majority of people experience when using them.

For instance, if you take a photo in the messages app, and don’t turn off the Live Photo option, you are presented with what looks like a photo to send. You aren’t given options to change the key frame, you aren’t given much warning that it’s actually a video, for all intents and purposes it’s a photo to most users. Which is why I’ve been sent bits and pieces of conversations people didn’t know they were sharing.