How to Post Live Photos on Instagram Story From iPhone.
Live photos have been around for a while. But apart from the cool looks, it doesn’t have many options, at least for me. While you can upload Live Photos to Facebook and Twitter, there is no such option for Instagram Stories. You won’t even be able to share photos as Live Photos with your friends if they don’t have an iPhone, they are converted to a standard JPEG file.
However, there are always workarounds. I was looking for a way to post Live Photos to Instagram Story and found three. Now, to keep things simple, I’ve split this article into 3 parts:
- Use Instagram to post live photos to Instagram
- Use WhatsApp to post live photos to Instagram
- Install the app to post live photos to Instagram
Read: How to Set Video or GIF as Wallpaper on Android
Post live photos to Instagram story from iPhone
1. Use Instagram to post Live Photos to Instagram
Live photos are stored as a set of individual frames, and when you click a live photo in the Camera Roll, it plays as a short 1.5 second clip. The whole point of Live Photos was to capture candid moments, and with this app you can now replay that endlessly in a loop.
One way to post Live Photos to Instagram is hidden in plain sight. Boomerang uses your Live Photos stored on iPhone just like Instagram Stories, and can even convert those Live Photos to videos for posting as stories. Let’s see how.
Open the Instagram app on your iPhone and log into your Instagram account. After logging in, click on the “Camera” button or avatar in the upper left corner. This will open the camera and you can create stories here. You will see several different options such as Live, Normal, Boomerang, etc. Click on the Boomerang option.
You can create fresh clips using this feature, or convert existing Live Photos to Boomerang clips. To select Live Photo from your camera, simply swipe up on the screen to open the pop-up menu. You can click Live Photo to select. There is no marker for Live Photos to distinguish them from regular images, so make sure you select the correct image.
After selecting Live Photo, it will still look like a still image. Don’t worry, just press and hold the screen or tap the screen in 3D to turn on the boomerang function. If your image is not converting to Boomerang, then either it is a regular image and not a Live Photo, or you simply did not press the screen long or hard enough.
After your image is boomerang converted, you can share it as your story or share with your friends on Instagram. Click the submit button at the bottom and choose the option to post your live photo as your Instagram story.
2. Use WhatsApp to post Live Photos to Instagram
WhatsApp, although a popular messaging app, has several features that make it extremely user-friendly. You can play videos in the app, send documents, links, videos and images, including Live Photos. It can send Live Photo as a simple image, video or GIF.
We’ll need a chat thread to convert Live Photos to GIFs, and if you’re a responsible friend and don’t want to bombard them with a bunch of test images, you can create a private group where you are the only member.
Open WhatsApp on your iPhone, tap the chat thread and tap the + button. Select Photo & Video Library to download images from the camera.
Unlike Instagram, WhatsApp makes a clear distinction between regular images and Live Photos. You can see a small dot at the bottom left corner of each Live Photo, 3D touch, or long press Live Photo to open the menu. This will allow you to choose Live Photo as a regular photo or GIF. Click “Choose as GIF” to continue.
You can even edit the length of the Live Photo to suit your needs by adjusting the slider at the top. The switch in the upper right corner can be used to convert Live Photo to GIF or video.
You cannot upload GIFs to WhatsApp for iPhone, so we will send Live Photo as video and upload it to Camera Roll. After submitting the video, click on it and then on the Share button in the lower left corner.
You will have the option to save the video to your Camera Roll album. Now you can find the video and upload it to Instagram just like we did in the previous method.
Tap the camera button in the upper left corner, or swipe right from the left edge of the screen in the Instagram app and swipe up to load options from the camera. Select the first video from the list of options. You can share it as your story on your profile. Don’t forget hashtags.
3. Install an application to post Live Photos to Instagram
While the above two methods work flawlessly, they don’t offer many editing options other than Instagram. Motion Stills is another decent iOS app that not only converts your live photos to GIFs, but also lets you create new ones as well as other decent features like collage makers and movie makers. You can export your footage as Live Photo, share it as GIF or video.
Start by simply pressing the camera button to take a new live photo. You can also select existing live photos by scrolling through the thumbnails.
After choosing Live Photo, you can do a bunch of things, like crop your Live Photo a little, enable auto reverse, and add text.
The animated text feature is a little interesting, it tracks the object just like other powerful video editing apps. You can simply enter text, pick a color and place it on the moving object. It automatically attaches to an object and automatically tracks movement. It’s pretty fun.
You have three options: you can export it as a Live Photo, send it as a GIF, or share it as a video. Click the Share button to open a menu and select an option to export.
You can save the GIF using the Save Image button in the Share menu. Click the Save Image button to save the GIF to your Camera Roll.
This application has a big advantage over Lively as it can handle multiple Live Photos. You can use this app to create interesting collages, combine multiple live photos to create videos, or batch export live photos in GIF format.
Click the + button on the home page to open the pop-up list. Choose any of the options to get started.
The collage editor lets you customize the size, width and color of the border. You can choose from a list of 20 different collage styles containing up to 4 live photos in one.
Instead of using a collage, you can create one video with all the live photos combined and played in sequence.
To share videos and GIFs, you can simply search for the video in the Camera Roll and use the above methods to post the video as Instagram Story.
I take a lot of pictures of my cat, and he is always on the run. So I have a huge amount of live photos that I converted to make a long video of his shenanigans. You should try, it’s great.
Post live photos to Instagram Story
Those were three ways to post live photos to Instagram Story, and I really love that each way is unique in its own right. Lively simply converts your live photos to GIFs, but you can extract single frames from live photos, which are considered real candid shots. Motion Stills is a pretty powerful app in terms of performance and lots of cool features, but the best part about this app is that it lets you combine all your live photos into one video. Siri shortcuts are my personal favorites because I can see how the conversion actually happens and it certainly looks cool. How to turn live photos into gifs, tell us in the comments below?
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How to Post Live Photos on Instagram Story From iPhone