Apple iPhone takes Live Photos using the camera app by default. Live Photo is a short video, but extracting stills directly from it is a bit of a challenge. Fortunately, there are some great apps for this.
With the iOS apps mentioned in this post, you can extract still photos from traditional videos and Live Photos. The only downside is that you may have to compromise a bit on quality. On the other hand, these FHD photos are easier to extract. Besides the app, we also have nifty workarounds that don’t need the help of third-party apps.
If you’re up for it, here are some apps that let you extract still photos from videos on your iPhone.
Capture Image
Grab Picture is a simple app with an uncomplicated approach. It allows you to scroll the video by a single frame or by five frames, making it easy to find the perfect frame. Once you’re done, just tap the Save button and that’s it.
There are no additional frills meaning there are no options to choose photo quality or format. It only saves FHD photos to your phone. In our tests, the average photo measured over 1MB and had good detail.
Grab Picture only works for videos, not live photos, and is available for free.
frame grabber
If you want to extract frames from live photos and videos, Frame Grabber is the app for you. It has slightly advanced features compared to the above. First, it lets you adjust the brushing speed. Second, you can choose between HEIC and JPG formats and choose the compression quality. We kept it at 100% for our testing.
As above, making a photo is very easy. After importing a video or live photo, select the frame and click the Share button.
A tap on the little Clock icon on the right lets you choose the speed, while all settings are hidden under the three-dot menu at the top. Photos are good and have FHD resolution as above. Frame Grabber is available for free on the App Store.
Easy Video to Photo
Easy Video to Photo works similar to the one above. However, it has an important advantage. For one, it lets you extract up to 7 frames at a time. Select a frame and tap the 7x icon to save the 3 frames before and after it. That way, you can select the best from the batch and delete the rest.
This app also has the option to choose the image quality and format. You can also choose to keep or remove the location data and date. The latter is especially important if you don’t want people to know where and when they took the photo.
Image quality is adequate. While it doesn’t have the same sharpness and resolution as a regular iPhone photo, it gets the job done if you need to share the photo on social media.
The interface is quite simple and all the options are on the home page.
Built-in Workarounds
So far, the methods and applications described above allow you to capture video frames of your choice, but the extracted photos are not the most detailed. if you want almost same image quality, luckily there is a small workaround.
For Live Photos
Open a Live Photo from the Photos app and tap the little Edit icon in the top right corner. Then tap the small circular icon at the bottom. This will show the timeline of the small video.
All you have to do is select the frame you want, hit Make Key Photo and press Done.
This step will replace the thumbnail in the Photos app.
Next, tap on the Share icon and select Duplicate Photo from Share Sheet > Duplicate as Still Photo. Here it is — a high-resolution photo frame from Live Photo.
for videos
Unfortunately the path is not so simple for full-fledged videos. However, if you want a photo for an Instagram Story, you get a workable frame.
In the absence of a custom option, you’ll have to go the old-fashioned way of taking screenshots here. The advantage of this method is that you get high resolution videos (compared to third party apps).
To get started though, open the video and click Edit. This will make it easier to scan the video. Take a screenshot when you get to the right location.
Tap the screenshot to remove all unnecessary items. Simple, right?
Keep it short and simple
Although the videos tell the whole story, they are time consuming. So, if you want a short story, save a screenshot and share it with your friends and family. Third-party apps make the job simple. However, for this you will have to sacrifice all quality.
