How to Change a Live Photo to a Long Exposure Photo on Your iPhone

Want to transform your Live Photo into a still image? Change it to a Long Exposure to keep a sense of movement with it.

Live Photos are a way of capturing your memories as moving snippets, and the feature has been rising in popularity since its release in 2016. It’s a feature you will only find on Apple devices, which might be problematic if you ever want to share or post a live photo.

Luckily, you can change your Live Photo to a Long Exposure photo in the Photos app, which will capture that movement in a still image. Let’s take a look at what a Live Photo is, what a Long Exposure photo is, and how you can convert a Live Photo into a Long Exposure.

Live Photo vs. Long Exposure

Live Photos on iOS allows you to automatically record 1.5 seconds before and after taking a photo. You take a Live Photo by tapping the shutter like a typical photo, but when you view it in the Photos app later, you can enjoy a little video clip on either side.

Long Exposure is a photography technique in which the camera’s shutter is open for a longer amount of time. Depending on the device, this could be a few seconds to many minutes. The result is a blurred effect where anything that moved while the shutter was open is captured in movement.

Since Long Exposure requires slow shutter speed and heavy hardware, you can’t capture a Long Exposure photo with the Camera app, but there are other ways to take long exposure photos on iPhone.

How to Convert a Live Photo to a Long Exposure

Anything moving in q Live Photo will be seen as a blur once converted to Long Exposure, and the still objects will be caught in sharp focus, creating a pleasing effect. Here’s how you convert a Live Photo to Long Exposure photo:

1. Open Photos and tap the Live Photo you want to convert.
2. Tap on Live in the corner, and a dropdown menu will appear.
3. Select Long Exposure from the list.

You can turn on or turn off Live Photos quite quickly if you want to begin with a new picture altogether.

Create Long Exposure Photos With Your iPhone

Your iPhone is not kitted out to capture a Long Exposure photo by default yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take them from your iPhone. All you have to do is capture a Live Photo and then convert it into a Long Exposure in the Photos app. However, you’re only limited to a three-second Long Exposure photo with your iPhone.

There are several other images you can convert your Live Photo into, and one of them can even be a boomerang.