How to Turn a Live Photo into GIF

Now with the booming trend of GIF, people enjoy sharing their moods by using GIF, even the popular social media like Facebook or Twitter has added a button for it. Moving pictures no longer just exists in the magic world of Harry Potter, now you also can create your own GIF, and one way is to use iPhone Live Photos. Today in this blog, I will tell you how to take a Live Photo and turn it into GIF.

Part 1: Take a Live Photo with iPhone or iPad

Live Photo is an iOS feature from iOS 9, which can be used in the any iPhone model later than 6. To create one is very easy, you just need an iPhone (not older than 6s) with iOS 9 or later, and turn on Live Photos mode while taking photos.
Live Photo is not video; it only captures the moment before and after you take the photo, in total 3 seconds. So the timing you take photo is very important, not so fast, not so late, and get the angle you want, then you will have a good live photo.

1. To take a live photo, you need to turn on Live Photo mode. Open your camera, set to photo mode, and tab on the Live Photo icon on the top centre. 
2. When you see the icon turning yellow, that means you’re in the Live Photo mode, you can take many live photos as you like.

Turn on iPhone Live Photo Mode

Part 2: Edit Key Photo in iOS 11

In iOS 11, Apple allows users to edit the key photo of Live Photos, which means, even though the image you capture may be blurry, you can choose a clearer cover of it. 

1. To edit the key photo, you just need to click into the live photo, then tab on Edit on the top right.
2. Then you can set a new key photo from the frames you took, and click Save.
3. After that, you can see the live photo you took has a new cover.

Make Key Photo on iPhone Live Photo

Part 3: Make a Live Photo into GIF

One main feature of GIF is that it can replay itself. Now in the iOS 11, Live Photo is also added three effects: loop, bounce and long exposure. 

It’s very simple to add one of these features to your live photos:

1. Click into a live photo, and then swipe it up in the middle.
2. Then you can see the Effects bar down the photo, click one and wait for processing.
3. Finally you can go to the Animated album to check the new GIF.

Swipe Up to Add Effects to Live Photo

After you finished adding effect to your live photo, you can choose to share to some social media like Facebook or Twitter, or use it in iMessage or mails.

Note that this method only work in iOS 11 or later. If you have an iPhone running iOS 10 or before, you might need other photo apps to make it.  

Extras: 

A. Extract Still Photo from Live Photos

It’s very easy as well if you want to extract a still photo from the Live Photo.

1. Click into a live photo on iPhone or iPad.
2. Make sure you hasn’t add any effect (loop or bounce) to the live photo, and then tab the Share button on the bottom left.
3. Click on Duplicate, and choose Duplicate as Still Photo.

Note: If you want to extract a frame from the live photo as still, you can first make it as Key Photo, and then duplicate it as still.

B. Recover Lost/Deleted Live Photo

If you accidentally lost or deleted Live Photos from iPhone or iPad, you can see how to get back the live photos from iDevice with/without backup.