On one hand, Twitter may be looking to build a decentralized social media standard but on the other, it continues to add some helpful features to the platform. The latest feature will make your Live Photos captured via an iPhone or iPad (basically, an iOS device) a lot more useful and likable.
Live Photos is one of the fun standout camera features on iOS devices. For those unaware, it not only stores a still image while clicking a photo but also a short 3-second video along with it. You could use third-party apps to convert the video into a GIF and share it online, but Twitter is now introducing the option to tweet your Live Photos as GIFs across the platform. You can add Live Photos as GIFs to tweets, retweet with comment, replies, and even DMs.
Twitter hyped up the launch of this feature with a dramatic minute-long video, which you can check out right here:
Give the gift of GIFs. You can now upload your iOS Live Photos as GIFs anywhere you upload photos on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/D8TIfsBwyd
— Twitter (@Twitter) December 11, 2019
If you want to try out the feature, just start writing out a new tweet and select the live photo you want to include in it from the gallery option. Now when you pick a live photo, Twitter will show a GIF button over the picture – at the bottom. Tap the GIF button and you’re done. Your live photo will now be tweeted as a GIF. Super fun, right?
-
Twitter Preserves JPEG Image Quality As Well
Uploading Live Photos as GIFs is a feature restricted to iOS users, but there’s another important feature update that’s available for all. And it’s a blessing for photographers.
As seen in the tweet below, Twitter is now going to preserve the image quality of JPEGs uploaded to the platform. The compression earlier degraded the quality quite a lot, but your photos will now be crystal clear. There’s a caveat to this feature though. The image preview (thumbnail) in the timeline will still be compressed and low-quality. You have to open the image to see the uncompressed version, which is understandable.
Starting today, Twitter will preserve JPEGs as they are encoded for upload on Twitter for Web. (Caveat, cannot have EXIF orientation)
For example: the attached photo is actually a guetzli encoded JPEG at 97% quality with no chroma subsampling.https://t.co/1u37vTopkY pic.twitter.com/Eyq67nfM0E
— Nolan O'Brien (@NolanOBrien) December 11, 2019
Twitter gives photographers another platform to highlight their art but without the awful compression that kills the essence of the pictures. Who’s ready to upload more pictures? Let us know your thoughts on these features in the comments below.