Get ready for a trio of tips that’ll help you launch the iPhone’s camera app in a flash, hit the shutter button with perfect aim, and sneak a lightning-fast peek at the photos you just shot.

Let’s get snapping, starting with…

Update [4/1/14]: Some of these tips are now out of date. Click here for my latest iOS 7 camera tips for iPhone & iPad.

1. Launch the camera from the iPhone’s lock screen

You’re out and about with the kids when one of your little ones does something especially photo-worthy.

But by the time you’ve unlocked your iPhone and swiped your way to the Camera app, the moment’s over.

Sound familiar?

Tap, hold and swipe up on the camera icon to jump directly to the iPhone’s viewfinder.

Next time, try this:

• Click the Home key or the sleep/wake button to light up the iPhone’s lock screen; you should see a little camera icon sitting to the right of the familiar “slide to unlock” slider.
• Tap and hold the camera icon, then swipe up—and when you do, the iPhone lock screen will slide up like a window shade, revealing the camera viewfinder. Go ahead and snap away.

Note: In case you’re wondering, no—an iPhone thief can’t use the camera shortcut to bypass your passcode. You’ll still need to enter your PIN to browse your previously-snapped photos, place a call, or access the home screen.

2. Use a volume button as the shutter release

You’ve been tapping, tapping, tapping away at the iPhone’s camera, only to realize later that you failed to squeeze off a single shot.

The iPhone’s volume buttons double as the shutter release for the camera.

What happened?

Well, chances are your fingertip missed the virtual shutter button on your iPhone’s slippery touchscreen.

Here’s a solution: instead of dealing with the on-screen shutter release, try clicking one of the volume buttons to snap a photo.

And yes, either volume button will do.

3. Swipe to see your latest photos

You just took a series of baby photos and you want to see if any of them came out … but you also want to be ready for any unexpected grins.

Swipe from left to right on the viewfinder screen to jump to the last photo you snapped.

Well, you could always tap the little image thumbnail in the bottom-left corner of the viewfinder screen to review the shots you just snapped, then press the blue camera button to go back to the viewfinder.

Here’s a faster way, though:

• From the camera viewfinder, swipe from left to right, and you’ll instantly jump to the latest picture in your camera roll.
• Swipe the other way, and you’ll wind up back at the viewfinder, ready to snap photos again.

Looking for more iPhone tips? Click here!

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Hi Terri! Yep, those pulsing green and blue boxes that appear in the iPhone’s camera viewfinder can be confusing, particularly when you’re trying to squeeze off a quick shot.

But don’t worry—they come in peace.

The green square, or squares, as the case may be, will appear on the screen whenever your iPhone detects a face—or what it thinks is a face, anyway. (The iPhone’s facial recognition feature can sometimes be fooled by anything that looks even remotely like a human face.)

The iPhone camera can detect up to 10 faces in one shot, and as it does, it tries its best to focus the lens and adjust the exposure so the faces look as sharp and bright as possible.

Tap anywhere on the screen to change the focal point and exposure for your snapshot.

Meanwhile, the blue square shows you the spot that the iPhone’s camera is trying to keep in focus and properly exposed, assuming there are no faces to zero-in on. Generally speaking, your iPhone will try to focus the lens in the middle of the frame.

Want to focus on something in the foreground or background instead? Just tap the screen to change the camera’s focal point.

When you do, the pulsing blue square will jump to the spot in the viewfinder that you tapped, and you’ll see the image go fuzzy and then sharpen as the camera lens focuses itself.

Hope that helps, Terri. Still have questions? Let me know!

Bonus tip

Normally, the iPhone camera’s auto-focus and auto-exposure features work overtime to keep your photos sharp and well-lit. Want to take matters into your own hands? If so, you can lock the focus and exposure settings by tapping and holding a spot on the screen.

When you do, the little blue square will pulse, and a message that reads “AE/AF Lock” will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Tap again to unlock.

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Having the same problem? If so, here’s a quick (if somewhat dirty) solution: Take a video instead of a picture, and then go back and take a screenshot to capture the perfect, fleeting moment.

The upside of taking a screen capture of a video is, of course, that you can pause and rewind to a frame where (for instance) everyone is smiling and looking directly into the camera.

The “dirty” part of the trick, though, is that a photo captured from a video won’t be nearly as sharp as a standard still image.

How much fuzzier are we talking? Well, that depends on the quality of the video recorder on your camera or smartphone, as well as whether you’re capturing the photo on your PC (where you can zoom the size of the video image) or directly from your smartphone’s smaller display.

In general, you can expect to lose more than half the resolution of a regular snapshot, and you may notice more digital “noise,” to boot.

For many of us, though, a softer but perfectly timed photo might be worth a lot more than a razor-sharp image of half-closed eyes and blurred faces.

Here’s a few ways to take a screenshot of a video, starting with…

On an iPhone:

• Open the Camera app, tap the switch in the corner of the screen to turn on the video recorder, and tap the big silver button with the red dot in the middle to start shooting. When you’re done, tap the silver button again.
• Next, tap the little video thumbnail in the bottom corner of the display. drag the progress bar at the top of the screen until you find the perfect moment, and tap the middle of the screen to make the playback controls disappear.
• Take a screenshot by pressing the iPhone’s “Home” and “sleep/wake” buttons at the same time. You can find your captured image in the Camera Roll.

On an Android phone:

• Open your phone’s camera application, switch to video mode (the method of doing so varies wildly depending on the make and model of your handset, by the way), then tap the settings button to make sure you’re shooting video at the highest resolution possible (preferably 1080p).
• Once you’re finished shooting your video, open your phone’s gallery app (which, again, will vary depending on your particular device), then flick the progress bar to just the right frame.
• Finally, take a screenshot. On newer Android phones, you can capture the screen by pressing the power and volume-down buttons at once; if that doesn’t work for you, check your user manual.
• Trying to take a screenshot of your video, but can’t get the playback controls to disappear? If so, the next section’s for you…

On a PC or Mac:

• Transfer the video from your phone or digital camera to your computer, open the video and expand the playback window as far as you can—the bigger the better, so we can pull as much resolution out of the video frame as possible.
• Find the perfect frame, then snap a screenshot. To do so on a Mac, press COMMAND + SHIFT + 4, or launch the handy Grab app. On a PC, tap the “Print Screen” button. (If your PC doesn’t have a Print Screen key, check your user manual for help.)
• Import the screen capture to your favorite photo editor app to crop the image and tweak any image-quality settings.

Bonus tip

 
The latest iPhone software (a.k.a. iOS 6) and newer Android phones will let you snap still images as you shoot video.

On the iPhone, just tap the camera button in the top-right corner of the display while you’re shooting; for (some) Android phones, tap the middle of the screen.

It’s a handy feature (provided you have a steady hand and a quick trigger finger), but it won’t let you go back in time and choose a precise frame to capture.

Got questions? Post ’em in the comments below.

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Hi Anne! So, first the good news: downloading photos from Facebook is incredibly easy. The bad news? Read on.

You can download any Facebook photo that’s viewable by you by opening Facebook’s so-called “photo viewer”—which is just a fancy way of saying you need to click the photo.

You can also download a Facebook photo by right-clicking it and selecting “Save As,” or simply by dragging it to your desktop.

Once the photo is open, you can save it to your desktop in one of three ways:

• Click the “Options” button near the bottom of the photo, then click “Download.”
• Right-click the photo and select “Save As.”
• Drag the image from the photo viewer to your desktop.

Now, what if you want a high-resolution version of the photo—that is, a version that you could blow up and frame on a wall?

Well, here’s the thing: whenever you save a photo from Facebook, you’ll automatically receive the highest-quality version that’s available.

That means if the photo was uploaded to Facebook by a professional photographer with an $800 SLR camera, you can expect a jumbo-size image (up to a whopping 2,048 pixels on a side) that’ll look snazzy in a photo frame.

If, on the other hand, you’re downloading a blurry Facebook photo snapped by a bargain-basement camera phone, don’t be surprised when the image doesn’t look any better on your desktop.

Hope that helps, Anne. Have more questions? Let me know!

Bonus tips

To ensure you’re uploading the highest-quality photos possible, make sure to check the “High Quality” box in a given Facebook photo album.

One more thing: Want to view full-screen Facebook photos in your web browser? Just click the arrows in the top-right corner of the image to jump to full-screen mode. Note: only the Google Chrome and Firefox web browsers support Facebook’s full-screen photo viewer.

Click here for more Facebook tips!

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The trick? Getting a custom “post-by-e-mail” address, which you can find in your Facebook account settings.

Here’s how it works…

• From any Facebook page, click the little downward arrow in the top-right corner of the screen, select Account Settings, then click “Mobile” in the left column.
• At the bottom of the Mobile Settings page, you’ll find a “Post-by-E-mail Address” heading—and right next to it, you’ll see a customized address that looks something like “[email protected].” Go ahead and copy that address into your phone’s contact book, using (for example) “Facebook photo” as the name. Note: Don’t see the “Post-by-E-mail Address heading? It’s probably because you haven’t added a mobile number to your Facebook account yet.
• Now, when you want to share a photo from your camera phone on Facebook, just view the picture in your phone’s photo gallery, select the option to send it in an email message (the method depends on the make and model of your phone), put a caption (like “Check out my photo!”) in the subject line, and send it to your personal Facebook email address. Once you do, presto! The photo and caption will appear on your Facebook timeline.
• Before you e-mail any photos to Facebook, though, make sure to check your default privacy settings first. Go back and click that little arrow in the top corner of any Facebook page, select Privacy Settings, then head for the “Control Your Default Privacy” section. From there, you can choose the privacy setting for any photo you upload to Facebook via e-mail—from “Public” (meaning anyone and everyone) to “Only Me” (in the “Custom” option).

Now, here’s the thing when it comes to your “post-by-e-mail” address for Facebook: make sure to keep it to yourself.

Why? Because anyone with your custom Facebook photo address could post random photos to your Facebook timeline. Not good.

So, what happens if lose your phone, or if you’re worried that your custom e-mail address has been compromised? Well, you can always reset it.

Just return to the Mobile Settings page and click the “Refresh” link in the “Post-by-E-mail” section to delete the old address and get a new one.

Looking for more Facebook tips? Click here!

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Photo Stream makes for a great way to access your freshest snapshots from any of your devices, all without having to dig up a sync cable.

But Photo Stream has its quirks, too—particularly when it comes to how long Photo Stream images are stored in iCloud and on your various iPhones and iPads.

Here’s five things you need to know before wading into Photo Stream, starting with…

1. You’ll need an iCloud account to use it

No iCloud, no Photo Stream. To sign up for a free iCloud account, just visit icloud.com, or you can sign up on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch by tapping Settings, iCloud.
You’ll also need Photo Stream (and iCloud itself) enabled on your various devices.

For iOS devices (assuming they’ve been updated to iOS 5), tap Settings, iCloud, the make sure Photo Stream is switched “on.” On a Mac, launch the latest version of iPhoto, click the iPhoto menu, select Preferences, click the Photo Stream tab, then click the “Enable Photo Stream” checkbox. Windows users, meanwhile, will need to download and install the free iCloud Control Panel.

2. Photo Stream is free

Yes, you’ll need to pony up if you want more than 5 GB of storage in iCloud, but the pictures in your Photo Stream won’t count against your initial allowance. That said…

3. Photos in Photo Stream don’t last forever

By design, your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch will only store up to 1,000 Photo Stream images at a time, while iCloud will keep only 30 days worth of Photo Stream snapshots on its servers.

Just click the “Save” or “Add To” buttons to save a Photo Stream image permanently.

To save images from your Photo Stream permanently, you’ll need to save them to an album in the Photos app on your iOS device.

Just open the Photo Stream directory, tap the square sharing icon in the top-right corner of the display, select the photos you want to keep, and tap “Add to” (to save pictures to a particular photo album) or the “Save” button (to put them directly into the Camera Roll).

Also, if you have Photo Stream active in iPhoto on your Mac (click the iPhoto menu at the top of the screen, select the Photo Stream tab, then check the Enable Photo Stream box) you can save your Photo Stream images on your desktop—and indeed, iPhoto will import all Photo Stream images automatically, and permanently.

You can also save Photo Stream images to your PC by installing the (aforementioned) iCloud Control Panel for Windows.

Last but not least, remember that the photos you take on a given iPhone or iPad will be saved—permanently—in that device’s Camera Roll.

4. Yes, you can (now, anyway) delete photos from Photo Stream

Photo Stream was saddled with an unusual little quirk when it first went live in the fall of 2011: once an image was uploaded to Photo Stream, it couldn’t be deleted—or at least, not without jumping through several hoops first.

You can now delete any image from Photo Stream in just a few taps.

Well, all that changed thanks to an iOS software update back in March. Now, you can delete a specific image off of Photo Stream—and when you do, it’ll be automatically erased from the Photo Stream of any other iPhones, iPads, or Macs connected to your iCloud account.

To delete a Photo Stream image, just open the Photo Stream album on your device, select the image you want to nix, tap the trash can icon in the corner of the screen, and tap the red “Delete Photo” button. Zap!

5. You can always turn off Photo Stream, at least temporarily

Just go to Settings, iCloud on your iOS device, then switch Photo Stream off. You’ll lose access to the Photo Stream on the device, but it will also stop uploading new snapshots to the Photo Stream.

Turn it back on, and you’ll start uploading pictures to Photo Stream again, but any photos you took while Photo Stream was deactivated will stay on your device instead of floating into iCloud.

Note: This updated and revised article was first published in October 2011.

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The secret? A little button in the bottom-right corner of the iPad’s “lock” screen. Tap the button, and your slideshow will begin—perfect for turning your iPad into an instant digital photo frame on your desk.

Update [11/6/13]: Unfortunately, it appears Apple has yanked the iPad’s photo frame feature from iOS 7. There are, however, plenty of photo frame apps for the iPad in the App Store.

Just press the photo frame button to launch a slideshow from the iPad’s lock screen.

Don’t see the photo frame button? Here’s a question: Did you set a passcode for the iPad’s lock screen? If so, you’ll need to tweak a setting to make the photo frame button appear:

• Tap the Settings icon from the iPad home screen, tap General in the left-hand column, then tap Passcode Lock.
• Once you’ve entered your passcode, switch the Picture Frame setting to “On.” Keep in mind, though, that with the picture frame button enabled, anyone will be able to start a slideshow on your iPad, even if they don’t know your iPad’s passcode.

Want to change the settings for your iPad slideshows? Just go to the Settings menu and tap Photo Frame in the left-hand column.

From here, you can switch from a normal “dissolve” between your photos to the snazzier “origami” transition, which makes your snapshots flip open and unfold in an appropriately eye-catching fashion.

You can also choose how long you’d like each photo to be displayed (anywhere from two to 20 seconds), whether you’d like your snapshots shuffled or displayed in order, and pick a specific photo album or “face” for your slideshow.

Had enough of the photo frame action? Tap the iPad’s screen, then tap the photo frame button again to return to the standard iPad lock screen.

Looking for more iPad tips? Click here!

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Well, guess what? You don’t need a PC to crop that interloper out of the image. Instead, you can crop and polish your snapshot right on your iPhone (or iPad, for that matter).

The iPhone has four editing tools (located at the bottom of the screen): rotate, auto-enhance, red-eye reduction, and crop.

Here’s how:

• Tap the Photos icon on the home screen to access your photo albums; the most recent photos you shot will be sitting on the Camera Roll.
• Tap a photo you want to edit, then tap the Edit button in the top-right corner of the screen.
• You should now see four new icons at the bottom of the photo: a curved arrow, for rotating the image; a little magic wand, for “auto-enhancing” the colors and brightness; a red circle with a slash through it, for curing cases of red-eye; and a cropping tool for re-framing the image.
• So, want to do a little cropping? Tap the crop icon, then drag the edges of the grid that appears; tap the Constrain button to set a specific aspect ratio (like 4 by 6) for the frame. You can also zoom in and turn the image any way you want by “pinching” the screen with your fingertips. All done? Tap the yellow Crop button, then tap Save.
• Want to undo any of your changes, even after you’ve saved your edits? Just tap the Edit button again, tap (for instance) Crop, and drag the edges of the grid back to the original edges of the frame; you can also tap the auto-enhance or red-eye reduction icons to turn those effects off. Keep in mind, though, that you can only “undo” your edits while your photos are still on your iPhone.

Bonus tip

 
There are, of course, dozens of photo-editing apps with more advanced features (such as precise white-balance and color controls, photo filters, custom frames, “noise” reduction, and more) available in the App Store, including Apple’s own iPhone app ($5), the wildly popular Instagram (free), Adobe Photoshop Express (free), and my personal favorite, Camera+ (99 cents).

Looking for more iPhone tips? Click here!

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Hi Angela! Good question—and yes, you can copy images from your iPhone’s web browser to the Camera Roll, or even send a web photo via email or picture message. The secret? A simple tap & hold.

Once you’ve copied a photo from the web, you can paste it into a picture message or an email.

Got your fingertip ready?

• In the iPhone’s mobile Safari browser, tap and hold the photo or image you’d like to save.
• In a second or so, a window with three buttons—”Save Image,” “Copy,” and “Cancel”—will pop up. Go ahead and tap “Save Image.”
• Go back to the iPhone’s home page, then tap Photos, Camera Roll; the image you just saved should be sitting right here.
• Next, try this: go back to the image on the web, tap and hold it, then tap the “Copy” button.
• Return to the main iPhone menu, tap Messages, pick a lucky friend to send your image to, tap and hold the blank where your message goes, and tap “Paste” when the button appears.
• Presto—the image should pop into the dialog box. Tap “Send” to deliver the photo to your pal via picture message.

Note: This tip also works on the iPad and iPod Touch.

Have more questions, or an iPhone tip of your own that you’d like to share? Let me know!

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Liz writes: So I turned on Photo Stream on my iPhone and it’s filling up with pictures, but I read that the photos in my Photo Stream get deleted after 30 days. What’s the best way to save them before they get deleted?

Hi Liz! Yes, you’re right: the pictures in your Photo Stream will be deleted from your iCloud account after 30 days, while your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch will only keep the latest 1,000 Photo Stream snapshots.

The good news, though, is that saving your Photo Stream images forever is easy—and in some cases, it even happens automatically.

Related: 5 things you need to know about Photo Stream

So, here’s the first thing to keep in mind: whenever you take a photo with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, your snapshot is saved not only to your Photo Stream but also to the Camera Roll—and the pictures in your Camera Roll never get delated, or at least not until you tap the “Delete” button. In other words, if you take a picture on your iPhone, it’ll stay on your iPhone until you manually delete it.

OK, but what if you’re sharing Photo Stream with your significant other and you want to save the snapshots that he took on his iPhone? Here’s how:

1. Open the Photos app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, then tap Photo Stream.
2. See the little square with the arrow in the top-right corner of the screen? Tap it, then start tapping the photos you’d like to save on your device.
3. When you’re finished selecting photos, tap the Save button to save them to your Camera Roll, or tap Add To to save them to a new or existing photo album.

Just enable Photo Stream in iPhoto to automatically save all your Photo Stream images to your Mac.

And one more thing: if you’re using Photo Stream with iPhoto on your Mac or the iCloud control panel for Windows, all your Photo Stream pictures will be saved automatically—and permanently—to your system’s hard drive.

For iPhoto, you’ll need to turn on Photo Stream sharing by clicking the iPhone menu at the top of the screen; then, select Preferences, click the Photo Stream tab, and check the boxes next to “Enable Photo Stream” and “Automatic Import.”

(Note: I don’t recommend checking the “Automatic Upload” box, since that entails uploading to Photo Stream each and every new photo you import into iPhoto—meaning you could tie up your broadband connection for hours the next time you import, say, a couple hundred high-resolution pictures from your digital camera.)

For Windows users, just download, install, and launch the free iCloud control panel, check the box next to Photo Stream, then select the directory into which you’d like your Photo Stream images to be automatically downloaded.

Got more Photo Stream questions? Let me know!

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