Apple Support: ‘Capture Content Outside the Camera Frame on iPhone’

Apple Support:

When Capture Outside the Frame is turned on in Settings , content captured outside the frame appears when you use the crop, straighten, and perspective tools to make edits in the Photos app.

  • To capture content outside the frame when you take photos, go to Settings → Camera, then turn on Photos Capture Outside the Frame.
  • When you record QuickTake videos, Camera automatically captures content outside the frame. To turn off, go to Settings → Camera, then turn off Videos Capture Outside the Frame.

Note: If you don’t use the content captured outside the frame to make edits, it will be deleted after 30 days.

One of my first suggestions to any of you with an iPhone 11 or 11 Pro is to turn on “Photos Capture Outside the Frame”. It’s on by default for video, but off by default for photos, for reasons I still do not understand. Update: See this post for two reasons why this is off by default.

When the Camera app does decide to capture outside the frame, the image will be flagged by the Auto Adjust indicator icon: a small square with a star in the upper right corner. It seems to me that the Camera app will often capture a little bit outside the frame for small amounts of straightening, but when you see that Auto Adjust indicator icon, it means it has captured a lot outside the frame, like this.

Monday, 30 September 2019