Photos app automatically crops live photo when changing key photo

[felixen]

hi, i know i'm a little late. but i seemed to find a way around that issue!
so, what works for me is - before trying to adjust the live photo. click on the crop icon instead, and i just crop it a smidge (unlike how much it automatically take a chunk out the photo if you just try adjusting it yourself)
then once it's even a 1/10th of a hair cropped - go back to the live photo adjuster and it shouldn't try to crop it automatically

Doesn’t work for me unfortunately 😳 Do you crop from a specific side to make it work?

As soon as I hit the “Make Key Photo” button, the photo will crop. This is even before I actually save the edits in the photo. And it seems that manually cropping it first doesn’t prevent this on my end

 

[Brian-H]

The pre-crop fix doesn't work for me, either. iOS 15.3.1 on iPhone 11 Pro Max.

 

[rumormunkee]

I've had the same experience, but I believe I've figured out what's going on. If you've used the "stabilize video" functionality in iMovie, I believe this is a similar issue. The way the live photo is stabilized is via cropping. So the bouncier your original live photo (essentially mini video), the less cropping that will happen. Try taking a bouncy handheld shot versus a shot on a table/tripod.

It appears there is little to no cropping happening with a very still original. It appears the stabilization cropping is centered on the original key photo. If you change anywhere off the original key photo, the amount of cropping performed is directly dependent on how stable/bouncy your original shot was. I'm still testing my theory on various photos, but it appears that's what is going on...

 

[Whichwaysup]

hi, i know i'm a little late. but i seemed to find a way around that issue!
so, what works for me is - before trying to adjust the live photo. click on the crop icon instead, and i just crop it a smidge (unlike how much it automatically take a chunk out the photo if you just try adjusting it yourself)
then once it's even a 1/10th of a hair cropped - go back to the live photo adjuster and it shouldn't try to crop it automatically

Superb tip ! I’ve tried this on several Live Photos and it works perfectly 🔥