Photography

Reports indicate Apple is poised to offer significant upgrades to the next generation iPhone camera. The iPhone 6s is expected to launch this fall, packing hardware and software upgrades into the same form factor as the existing iPhone 6. Mobile photography is clearly a priority for Apple considering the award winning "Shot on iPhone 6" campaign that has swept the globe. Camera upgrades have always been highlights of Apple keynote presentations, even when the change does not involve increasing the number of megapixels. This is all set to change according to documents leaked on Chinese site Weibo.

Instagram users may have already noticed an improvement in picture quality over the past several days. Last week the company announced it would roll out higher resolution uploads and photo viewing on its iOS and Android apps. For those keeping track, current Instagram resolution is 640 x 640 pixels. The upgrade will bring image resolution up to 1080 x 1080, almost tripling the number of pixels in each photo. Even better, the update will not require Instagram fans to download a new version of the app.

iPhone photographers will gain minor improvements to the camera roll with the iOS 9 update coming this fall. The latest beta release features two new Albums that are built-in to the stock Photos app. Alongside the familiar folders such as Panoramas, Videos and Bursts there are now categories labeled Screenshots and Selfies. The first addition pulls any iPhone screenshots into a separate folder, making it easy to browse or delete these captures independently from other photos. Screenshots contain a freeze frame of anything displayed on the iPhone, and are currently mixed in with other photos. All iPhones can be used to take screenshots with a simple button press combination detailed here.

Apple has been going out of its way lately to showcase the talents of iPhone 6 photographers around the world. Of course, in the process the technical abilities of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus camera are highlighted. For anyone who has not seen the Apple World Gallery, there are some stunning images and videos in the collection. Apple has recently added five more videos to the collection, bringing the total number of "films" to 18. Each composition runs 15 seconds including the advertising tag line "Shot on iPhone 6" and a unique music soundtrack matching the visuals. Selections from the World Gallery have been utilized in television ads and in an outdoor advertising campaign around the globe.

Photos has arrived with the 10.10.3 update to OS X. This means iPhoto users with multiple photo libraries will have to migrate over to the new app. If there is only one library present, Yosemite will automatically migrate this system library the first time Photos is opened. Just keep in mind that using iCloud Photo Library will result in all content automatically uploading to your iCloud account. So what if you have multiple iPhoto libraries to migrate? Follow these steps to migrate additional iPhoto libraries to the Photos app: