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Live Photos: see the changes coming with iOS 11

As we reported after its announcement in June, iOS 11 looks set to bring with it a suite of improvements for iPhone and iPad when it officially launches this September. One of the most interesting changes involves Live Photos, Apple’s picture format that combines standard photographs with a few seconds of video motion.

Live Photos are pretty magical, but they’ve been fairly limited in the past and reliant on third-party apps to make anything beyond extremely basic edits. Now, though, iOS 11 will give users the chance to trim down the length of their Live Photos – incredibly useful if you move or shake the camera at the end of the clip, ruining the video portion. You’ll also be able to skim through the 3-second video to choose a new “key photo” to be used as the main static photo.

Read more: the best apps for turning Live Photos into movies or GIFs

On top of those edits are some cool brand new features, allowing users to set their Live Photos to loop endlessly or bounce back and forth. Using “computer vision,” the Photos app will try to make these loops as seamless as possible. There’s also a function that uses the frames shot over several seconds to emulate long exposure photography that emphasizes movement through blurring. These long exposure shots are perfect for images of busy highways, running rivers, or glowing sparklers. Basically, anything that has one aspect of movement amongst an otherwise still background.

These features have been previewed using the iOS 11 beta by the guys over at AppleInsider, and it’s worth checking out their video below to see some of these new tools in action.