By Sarah Kingsbury
Have you ever asked, "Can I save a Google Map offline?" The answer is yes! If you are traveling to a place where you won't have reliable or affordable access to data or Wi-Fi, you can actually download maps in Google Maps, which allows you to save the maps you need ahead of time, and you will be able to access them offline.
By Sarah Kingsbury
Panoramic photos are great for capturing an expanded view of a beautiful landscape. Typically, this is done by moving your iPhone from left to right or right to left as you take the photo in Pano mode. But what about when you want to capture a shot of something really tall, like a tree, for example, or even the Eiffel Tower? Well, you'll be excited to hear that you can take vertically oriented panoramic photos with your iPhone too!
Do you have an idea for an app but lack the programming knowledge to begin building it? In this weekly blog series, I will take you, the non-programmer, step by step through the process of creating apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Join me each week on this adventure, and you will experience how much fun turning your ideas into reality can be! This is Part 21 of the series. If you are just getting started, check out the beginning of the series here.
HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and an HDR photo is created by balancing the shadows and highlights of an image so that neither is being favored or ignored. We'll walk you through everything you need to know about what HDR is and which iPhones you can adjust the HDR settings on.
Photographers have long been using HDR to improve their photography. Apple adapted HDR for the iPhone camera. Here's what HDR means and what HDR is on the iPhone.
HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. But what does High Dynamic Range photography mean? It has to do with the differences in vision between the human eye and a camera. Dynamic Range in photography is the range from the lightest light and the darkest dark that can be seen in a photo. Our eyes can see a much larger dynamic range than a camera—and that’s where HDR comes in to make up the difference.
Using HDR Mode can drastically improve the quality of your iPhone photos. The iPhone camera's HDR setting has been around for a long time, so you won't need an HDR camera or a special app to use HDR mode.
For example, say you’re taking a picture of a lighthouse against a blue sky. You can focus and properly expose the lighthouse, or you can focus on the sky. One or the other will appear accurately, but not both. It will either appear as though the sky is washed out (overexposed) or the lighthouse is just a dark shadow. HDR combines multiple exposures so that both the sky and lighthouse are optimally exposed, meaning that both are properly lit, and the contrast levels of the photo are balanced.
HDR on your iPhone is the combination of three shots, taken within milliseconds of each other, and stitched together into one photo. Your iPhone takes three pictures in order to capture each part of the landscape in perfect exposure. As we stated above, it’s hard to achieve ideal exposure of both light and dark areas. So, the iPhone creates a High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo by combining the properly exposed parts of each of the three images into one that looks seamless.
The images below show how HDR works and what it looks like when you use HDR on your iPhone:
If you have an iPhone XS through an iPhone 12, including the 2nd gen SE, then your camera will automatically take HDR photos whenever possible unless you turn it off in Settings. Once you hit the iPhone 13 line, HDR is the default, and you cannot turn it off in settings.
Note: with Auto HDR (or Smart HDR) toggled off in Settings, and HDR set to on in your Camera app, your iPhone will still only take HDR photos when it detects that the HDR technique will improve the photo. If your HDR setting appears to be on in the Camera viewfinder and you're still not seeing HDR photos in the Photos app, then your subject matter probably doesn't have enough contrast between light and shadow to make the HDR technique necessary. Try taking a picture of a tree against a clear sky, or out a window from a dark room into a bright outside, to make sure that HDR is working.
Yes and no. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, regardless of whether you're talking about photographs or displays. As a photographic technique, HDR has been around since the early days of film. HDR displays, on the other hand, are an advanced technology that offers millions more colors than HD displays by literally shining more light, so the image is more vibrant and striking. You can take and view HDR Photos without an HDR display, and they'll still do a better job than normal photos of balancing light and dark. That said, every iPhone currently supported by iOS 17 has an HDR display in addition to their HDR Cameras, so they combine ancient photographic techniques with advanced technology to take and show photos that are more true to life, brighter, and more colorful than ever before.
All iPhones currently supported by iOS 17 have HDR mode automatically enabled. You can disable it on an iPhone 12 and earlier, but not the iPhone 13 line or later.
By Sarah Kingsbury
Have you ever been watching something on Netflix with your iPhone or iPad only to realize the app was using cellular data instead of Wi-Fi? Most of us do not have unlimited data available, so that can be an expensive mistake. To avoid using data when you don't have to, it's a good idea to prevent data-gobbling apps from accessing data as their default setting. You can do this by turning off cellular data for specific apps, like video and music streaming apps, and changing the frequency with which apps like Mail fetch new data.
By Sarah Kingsbury
The ability to mark, move, or delete emails using the Mail app comes in handy when you need to manage your inboxes. You can easily mark, move, or delete an email in your iPhone's Mail app from within the body of an email using the menu at the bottom of your screen. You can also manage individual emails from within your inbox by swiping to the left over the email. But this is tedious if you have a large number of emails to deal with.
By Jim Karpen
It can be really handy to use Siri to create events and reminders — so much faster than opening the app and doing it manually. However, you need to be careful how you word your request, because Siri will sometimes mix things up: creating an event when you wanted a reminder, and vice versa.
By Sarah Kingsbury
You can send contact details (also known as a contact card) via text or email directly from the Contacts app in your iPhone. Do you often find yourself typing out phone numbers or addresses into a text when you need to share one contact's information with another contact? Well, you'll be happy to hear that there's a much easier way to share contact information on your iPhone—and it doesn't involve copying and pasting or tediously typing it out.
Have you ever been watching something on Netflix with your iPhone or iPad only to realize the app was using cellular data instead of Wi-Fi? Most of us do not have unlimited data available, so that can be an expensive mistake. To avoid using data when you don't have to, it's a good idea to prevent data-gobbling apps from accessing data as their default setting. You can do this by turning off cellular data for specific apps, like video and music streaming apps, and changing the frequency with which apps like Mail fetch new data.
To turn off data for specific apps go to Settings>Cellular and scroll down to Use Cellular Data For. Toggle off any app that is a heavy data user or that you don't need to access when away from Wi-Fi. You can always turn cellular data back on if you want to make an exception.
To change the frequency that Mail and other apps fetch data wirelessly, go to Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars>Fetch New Data and scroll down to Fetch. There you can set the frequency to 15, 30, and Hourly intervals. Or you can choose to fetch manually. The greater the interval, the less data you will be using. And you'll save battery power too!
Top image courtesy of Twin Design / Shutterstock.com
By Sarah Kingsbury
If you've ever tried to capture your kids being adorable or hilarious on video, you know that super stealth is often required. If a child notices that they are being filmed, the cuteness usually ends immediately. Fortunately, zooming is not just for static picture taking.
