Up Close and Personal
MAGNIFIER IS THE MAGIC IPHONE CAMERA YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD
When I was nine years old I wanted a microscope. Obsessed over it. I can’t remember why, now, except that I was a nerdy kid and it seemed to be an essential appliance for exploring the tiny part of the natural world.
Microorganisms in sea water.
Microorganisms in lake water.
A blood sample. Nope.
More microorganisms.
That microscope turned out to be a one trick pony, but it was my gateway into the world of magnification. There was always a magnifying glass around the house. Big ones to play Sherlock Holmes. Small ones for building models. Folding pocket magnifiers for exploring outdoors. It was cool to experience my world up close and personal.
Wouldn’t you know that Apple thought the very same thing.
And the Magnifier app that comes on every iPhone is so much cooler than the ones I had growing up.
By default, Magnifier is available by triple clicking the lock button - the large button on the right side of your iPhone. That opens the Accessibility panel where Magnifier is an option. Otherwise you can just search for the app or find it grouped with other Utilities.
The Magnifier takes advantage of the iPhone camera technology to give you a boatload of handy tools.
Magnification is the obvious one, of course, and the app has a slider to zoom in and out. Much easier than reverse pinching in the Camera app.
Other features include a Brightness slider, Filters to enhance detail and text, the Flashlight for really dark circumstances, and the Detection mode for the vision impaired (that’s a whole other story).
The thing is that you can take a photo - or a batch of photos - while using Magnifier, and they don’t save to your Camera roll. It’s like a throwaway digital Post-It Note for those teeny-tiny ingredients labels, awkward to get at appliance serial numbers, dimly lit menus, and caught-without-your-reading-glasses form instructions. Perfect for reading the fine print.
When you take a picture, the shutter button turns into a deletion button so once you’re done with the image, you tap the button again to clear it out.
As a tech guy, where everything has a long geeky serial number, the Magnifier is a life saver to capture ID’s that need to be emailed - with the handy Share button - for support or registration.
If the shot is important as a record or reminder, the Share actions also let me save to a folder or to my Photos Library, as well as several other actions.
Magnifier is one of those apps that you won’t use every day, but you’ll love having it when you do.
It’s also a great discovery tool for those 9 year-olds in your life.
"When I was nine years old I wanted a microscope."
9 is a great age for the random but fundamental purchases in life.. when I was 16, I insisted on purchasing binoculars. I was not a kid at this point, but yet I insisted.
Glad to see a magnifying app that can be used nowadays. The wonders of the modern world. Thank you for sharing looking forward to using it.
Awesome!
I always look forward to receiving your texts.