iPhone Pictures

I take a lot of pictures with my iPhone. I’m currently using a 13. All of my phones have taken really great pictures. I’ve had many of them enlarged (ordered online at Walmart Photo) and framed. I’ve had blankets made for the grandmas with pictures of the kids on them. But within the last year or so, every time I’ve tried to enlarge one of my photos, I’m told that the quality of the picture won’t be good (I can’t remember the exact wording used). The same thing happened when I tried to create a photo blanket for a friend. The last time I had some of the pictures made into 4x6 prints, they looked pretty crummy. Not crisp, not very clear - nothing like they have in the past. All of the pictures look beautiful when viewing them on my phone.

Any ideas?

Go to Settings. Select Camera. Make sure the settings haven’t been changed.

It might be that the storage on the phone was getting full, and the phone automatically reduced resolution. If that’s the case, then clear up space and set the settings to the desired resolution.

Or in iCloud if set to save there.

I went to Camera - Formats. My options are High Efficiency or Most Compatible. Most Compatible was checked so I checked High Efficiency instead.

Those are the only settings that I can see that would make a difference.

So I Googled what I had just done. It seems it would do the opposite that I want it to do. So I guess I’ll change it back.

And that’s wrong - I have become very confused. Upon further reading, it says that HEIC does better at saving quality photos. Back in I go!

There is no resolution setting.

How are you submitting the photos to be printed?

Maybe you’re sending the thumbnails instead of the pictures?

I’m pretty sure that no photo service will accept HEIC files, so if that’s what you are sending, they are printing the previews.

This article may help: What is HEIC, and how do you convert photos from HEIC to JPG?

Leave it to Apple to break photos with some proprietary crap.

You don’t need to convert them.
You can set the iPhone to export jpgs by default.

Yeah, that’s in that article, too.

Pretty sure it’s not proprietary (despite what that article said). Just a very new standard that isn’t widely supported yet.

I had to go to my phone settings and change it. then I had to find the setting to “don’t reset camera settings” which confusingly was also what I wanted - otherwise each time I opened Camera, it reset to HEIC. BTW, HEIC is how you get those little videos where you capture a second of action during the photo. I wonder if that was messing up the photo printing? (Yes, nobody else does HEIC).

Android has supported HEIF photos for years.

I guess Android doesn’t automatically default to it? Or, it’s smarter about exporting pictures?

I assume that would all be up to the device manufacturer.

If you’re talking about Live Photos, that isn’t dependent on HEIC. The photo part can be a jpg.

I haven’t been using HEIC. All the photos I’ve taken have been jpg. My phone was set to Most Compatible.

I’m going to do some experimenting with both and see what happens when I order prints.