iPhone Basics: Working with the Photos app

The Photos App: Quirky and Sneaky!

The Photos app on your iPhone is the gateway between you and the photos you’ve taken, and while it’s certainly simple to use there are some quirks and sneaky tricks to be aware of that you may not know. Here’s how to use it effectively to get the most out of your photos.

Emailing a scaled-down photo

To share a photo via email, simply open your Photos app, tap the photo you want to send, then tap the icon in the lower-left of the screen. Select ‘Email photo’ and your photo will be automatically added to a blank email via the Mail app.

Sending one photo via email

If you want to add more than one photo to your email, open your photos app and tap the lower-left icon BEFORE selecting any photos. You will enter a mode where you can now select multiple photos by simply tapping on the thumbnails of the photos you require. You may select upto five photos before tapping ‘share’, which will again insert them into a new email. If you select more than five photos, the ‘share’ option will grey-out.

Sending multiple photos

What isn’t made particularly clear in the app is that the above methods of sending your photos will actually result in a much lower resolution version of your photos being sent than the original files in your camera roll. For example, the iPhone 3GS has a 3 Megapixel camera which produces photos of 2048 x 1536 pixels. When you send via this method, the files are shrunk to 800 x 600 pixels or half a megapixel.

Before you put your conspiracy-theory hats on, there are instances where this might be beneficial – for a start a smaller file means less data is used in sending your email which is particularly good for when you’re sending over mobile data. The other time this re-size is beneficial is if the photo is just a casual snap intended for the recipient to view on their monitor but not necessarily to print out. 800 x 600 is more than adequate for this.

But what if you want to send the original file in it’s full resolution? You might want to send a great shot to a friend or relative to keep or print out, or you might want to simply email it to yourself instead of syncing or connecting it to your computer via USB. No problem.

Emailing a full-resolution photo

If you just want to send the one photo, open your photo and press the thumbnail of the photo you want for a couple of seconds. You will see a ‘copy’ option pop up — tap it. Now, close to the home screen and open your mail app. Start your email and tap within the body of your email and choose ‘paste’. The original photo in all it’s glory will be pasted into the email.

Sending one full-res photo

To send more than one full-sized photo, again open the photos app and tap the lower-left icon to enter multiple-selection mode. Tap the photos you want (again upto five) and tap ‘copy’. Now paste them into your email. Easy huh! Note that all of these methods can be applied to sending videos.

If you have multiple images that are similar, for example a picture of your child where you have had to take more than one (because you never get the perfect picture the first time round), and you want to see more detail before sending it in full resolution, you can tap the thumbnail to view the image as normal and then you press and hold the image where you will then be given the option to ‘copy’ it.

Press and hold, then tap 'Copy'

You can then just open the Mail app, compose a new email and paste the picture in. If you want to do multiple in the same way, you can just press the home button after you have pasted the first image into the email, open the photos app and repeat the procedure. Except this time when you open Mail app you will have your previous email there and you just continue composing it and paste the image below the first one.

Paste multiple images into one email

Deleting

Multiple-selection mode is also very useful for deleting multiple photos rather than individually hitting delete on each photo. As with the process for e-mailing multiple photos, you just need to enter multiple-selection mode, tap the thumbnails of the photos you want to delete until they are all checked, and then tap delete. Be careful though – deleting a photo cannot be undone.

Adding Images from Elsewhere

If you want to capture photos or images from within a website using Safari, simply press and hold the image. A pop up menu will now allow you to save the image, where it will be saved to your camera roll. Similarly, if you want to grab a screenshot of anything on your iPhone, simply push the home button, keep it pressed and press the sleep/wake button at the same time. You will see and hear a ‘flash’ and the screenshot will be added to your camera roll. You can then use the photos app to email these images just like any other photo.

Saving images from within Safari

Organising your Photos

We were recently asked by a reader how you can go about sorting the photos you’ve taken into separate folders without involving your computer. In short, the Photos app does not provide that functionality but there are apps out there that do. The two we thought looked reasonable are Photo-Sort ($1.29) and Photo Album ($2.59).

Happy snapping!