Photography

Concerned about privacy when using popular apps like Instagram? One news story after another highlighting data breaches and undisclosed app activity has some iPhone owners on edge. The fact that Facebook owns Instagram hasn't exactly made users of the most popular photo sharing platform more comfortable, considering the company's dependence on advertising for revenue. Despite privacy controls on iOS devices, sharing the Camera Roll with apps is easy, but who knows what apps actually do with access to your entire Photo Library?

Aside from deleting your Instagram account entirely, there are steps you can take to protect your data from being exploited by advertisers. Improving Instagram privacy requires checking a few settings and changing what data iPhone owners allow Instagram to access.

iOS devices offer a quick way to hide specific pictures in the Photos app. Hiding photos simply places them into a Hidden album, and removes the images from elsewhere in the photo library. While this provides iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users with an easy method of hiding pictures on the Camera Roll or another album, these images can be viewed directly in the Hidden album at any time.

Google has rolled out Google Lens support for iOS users. The addition comes as a built-in feature of the existing Google Photos app. Google Lens makes it possible to extract information from photos, such as details from a business card or event flyer, the history of a landmark or building, or reviews of a book or album. Lens can also aid in the identification of plants, animals and famous paintings.

Apple shared a new video highlighting Portrait Lighting mode, a camera feature currently exclusive to the iPhone X and iPhone 8 Plus. Portrait Lighting offers a variety of lighting effects designed to simulate studio photography. Portrait mode itself blurs the background behind the subject, giving the appearance of bokeh.