Apple Live Photos: Changed Key Photos ≠ Full Resolution

So I was tinkering with Apple Live Photos as I was looking for other ways to backup my photos (go go self-hosted storage), and wanted to make sure I could back up live photos.

Then I got interested in how Live Photos work, especially as a photographer, how their Live Photo Key Photo works. According to Apple, live photos, and their associated Key Photo is another magic trick Apple does to allow you to select another photo as the main photo in case you missed the shot you were looking for.

Photo… Photo… Now that word seems foreign. Bleh.

Anyway, I was interested in how the quality differs from a live Key Photo to the still photo and how the Key Photo worked.

First, I took a photo, here it is. Damn 2010 was 14 years ago??? No way.

Here’s the photo:

Here’s a snapshot of zooming in on the picture:

See? The quality is pretty good. Seems like a full resolution photo.

Then I changed the key photo, as one would do and then took another zoomed in shot.

Damn! Thats not as good.

Then I looked at the resolution. None of the photo specs changed, even though I changed the Key Photo to something obviously worse.

I then exported the video that Live Photos use and found the resolution of the live video is 1308x1744, so close to 1440x1920, likely because I cropped the photo. Forums on this have similar responses saying it is lower quality, and is likely 1920x1440.

Now, obviously, for most people this will be fine, when viewing photos on the phone, and posting the to social media, but for those who crop the photo or print them, you may want to consider using the original photo, not the Key Photo. Apple makes it look like you could select a Key Photo like Apple magic, but doesn’t make it aware to users that it’s not the same quality. So now you know.