It’s that time of the year. No, I’m not talking about trying to avoid your weird Uncle Larry during a holiday get together, although, that is a possibility. The end of the year always seems to be about remembering what has happened. When thinking about the good moments, though, we tend to turn to photos. I went to a wedding recently and obviously took some photos. My iPhone let me know that I had a “memory” from that evening. But what’s neat iOS Photos is the ability to take Live Photos. Live Photos have been around for a while now, but if you haven’t used them, you should check it out, because they’re pretty cool. It’s a feature that saves a short 3-second video clip with every image that you take. Playing back these images though can be difficult.
But now, there’s an app for that! (That feels like an old joke, but I had to throw it in there.) This new app hopes to instantly turn groups of your Live Photos into shareable video clips. The app, Live Memories is available on iOS. The concept is simple: simply select the photos that you want to turn into a video, decide on the video format and share. Live Memories combines each clip into one continuous video, which allows you to sit back and watch your Live Photos without having to swipe and press. Pretty neat, if you ask me.
Let’s talk about Live Photos for a moment though. How many of you have actually used it? Until recently, I was using an iPhone 6, so I didn’t have this feature. I like it, but I kind of wonder why you wouldn’t just take a short video. Don’t get me wrong, I can see the difference and the benefit, but it makes you wonder if people are using it. And for what? I mostly use it because I don’t realize it’s on. Or I forget to turn it off. It’s this reason that I wonder if Live Memories is going to get used.
I like the fact that Apple has given us Live Photos, and I think Live Memories as a third-party app is great. Without it, you have the tedious task of having to tap every image and wait for it to load. As for what features are missing from Live Memories. Currently, your photos are displayed in one long list. It would be nice to see images grouped together by date or in an album to easily find highlights of events. Live Memories also lacks the ability to reorder your photos or playback individual clips inside the app in order to check if the Live Photo is steady. But otherwise, it looks pretty great.
Is this an app that you would use? Do you take a lot of Live Photos yourself? And if so, what specifically are you taking photos of? I’m curious to know how big of a hit this is. You can download Live Memories from iTunes now for free. In order to remove a watermark, however, you have to opt-in to the $1.99 in-app purchase. If you love Live Photos then you are going to want to check out this app.