I often get questions during sessions that I need to look up after the program. I am going to create this page for all my programs as a place to catch up with the answers once I find them. Since there is overlap - I will likely have one set of answers here.
UPDATED April 2025
NOTE: I wanted to share some good general resources that you can learn about smartphone photography. Many of these sites have basic articles that are intended to get you to buy or download software - I only recommend doing so if it works for you. When searching on the web - try to find articles that have been written fairly recently.
iPhone Photography Tips & Tools for Better iPhone Images (Regan Baroni - Professional photographer)
11 iPhone Photography Tips For Capturing Beautiful Photos (Christina Greve - Photographer and Scholar of Psychology)
20 Tips and Tricks for iPhone Photography (Christopher Lin at the SLR Lounge)
Android camera photography tips: use your smartphone to capture great shots (Amateur Photographer Magazine)
How To Take Good Photos With Your Phone? (Samsung - Android)
Use these 5 camera settings on your Android phone for better photos (ZDNet)
You can also use MeLCat - MeLCat (Order books from over 400 libraries that are sent to your home library - you can find books on any topic)
Q. How can I 'flatten' a "motion photo" taken with an Android Phone?
A. Motion photos can take up a good deal of space on your phone and on your cloud storage. These photos are actually brief movies that provide Google Photos with multiple options for sharing and using that image. These pictures can be twice as large as regular or non-motion ones.
On your phone, view the picture that has "motion photo" option. Put your finger on the picture and swipe up. This will show you the "Shots in this Photo." You can scroll through the individual pictures (or frames) and see which one you want. When you find it, you will see "save copy" in the upper right. Do that and it will save just that slice. Then you can delete the original. Remember that when you delete a picture, you typically have 60 days of it in the "trash can" before it is gone.
To turn "motion photo" off - it should be the second icon from the right. It should be white. If it is yellowish, then you will be shooting in that mode.
Q. Is there a way to view pictures that are not in an album?
A. I do not believe there is a way to do this at present. (as of March 2024)
Q. Is there a way to hide pictures from my main Camera Roll?
A. The Camera Roll is the main batch of pictures that shows up chronologically listed at this site - https://photos.google.com/. There might be lots of reasons why you want to hide pictures. What if you bought your spouse or partner a present, but did not want that person to see it in your pictures. Click on the photos you want to hide and send them to the Archives (by following the menu under the three dots in the upper right hand corner or by typing Shift+A). This will not delete them, but will remove them from your list of regular pictures. If the pictures are in an album, they will remain there.
Q. How may I pull pictures off an old phone that is not on a service?
A. One of the best ways to do this is to plug the phone with a USB cable into a computer. On your phone, you should see a screen pop up asking for permission to connect to the computer. Allow the connection. Then you can open up the phone in File Explorer (Windows). You may have to look around for the photos - but when you find them, you can pull them over to your computer. A common folder where they are located is DCIM under Files. DCIM often stands for "Digital Camera Images." Your phone does not need service to pull the images over.
Q. How may I delete pictures off my Android phone, but leave them on Google Pictures?
A. When you take a picture or video with your Android device, you are likely saving it in two places. First, the item goes into storage on your phone. Second, the item gets backed up to Google Photos. If you take alot of pictures, then you might find that you get storage warning messages. You can delete pictures from your phone without losing them.
Open up Google Photos app on your device
Tap the account profile in the upper right hand corner (either your initials or a picture in a circle)
This will tell you if all pictures are backed up and how much account storage you have used.
Selecting "Free up space" will let you delete it from your device without losing the pictures or videos.
Some Basic Sites:
iPhone Camera Basics (Apple): https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/camera-basics-iph263472f78/ios
Take great photos and videos: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/take-great-photos-and-videos-iph9bbc8619e/ios
Q. How can I 'flatten' a "live photo" taken with an iPhone or iPad?
A. Live photos can take up a good deal of space on your phone and on your cloud storage. These photos are actually brief movies that provide you with multiple options for sharing and using that image. These pictures can be twice as large as regular or non-motion ones. Here is information on how to use Apple's Live Photos - https://support.apple.com/en-us/104966
Furthermore, under iOS, you can toggle a picture between "live photo" and still photo. To do that, you have two basic steps involved. First, you need to set the "key frame." This is the image that will be shown when you 'flatten' the picture. When looking at the photo, click Edit across the top. The click on Live across the top so that it turns yellow. THEN, click Live on the bottom and you can select the frame that you want to set as the "key frame." When that is done, you can use the menu in the upper left hand corner of the screen while looking at a picture - and choose "Live Off." This will likely not reduce the amount of space that is taken up on the phone or the cloud, but may make for a easier download. I do not believe that this is something that can be done in batch.
Q. How may I pull pictures off an old phone that is not on a service?
A. NOTE - These are for Android phones - but should be similar with an IOS phone. One of the best ways to do this is to plug the phone with a USB cable into a computer. On your phone, you should see a screen pop up asking for permission to connect to the computer. Allow the connection. Then you can open up the phone in File Explorer (Windows). You may have to look around for the photos - but when you find them, you can pull them over to your computer. A common folder where they are located is DCIM under Files. DCIM often stands for "Digital Camera Images." Your phone does not need service to pull the images over.
QUESTIONS
OneDrive (Microsoft) - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/onedrive/online-cloud-storage
Q. How much storage do you get for no charge?
A. Only 5GB. That is not a great deal and can be filled up quickly with pictures on your computer. So if you have the basic package, you will fill it up in no time. You can see other plans here - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/onedrive/compare-onedrive-plans
Q. Why is it backing (or trying) everything up?
A. This is the way that it is typically setup. If you have the free version, you will not get that far before you end up running into problems.
Q. How do I log on to OneDrive?
A. You need your Microsoft or Office365 Account. It is not very intuitive - and you might have only logged on when you installed the program. This is not the same as your computer PIN for a home PC or laptop.