Does anybody actually LIKE the new iOS 18 Photos app? [MERGED]

[shadowboi]

Uhm, I hate to break it to you, but it's a well known fact that Samsung over-processes the heck out of their photos. To each his own, but I'll take Apple photo processing over Samsung's any day.

Surely. I’ve heard in their latest phones they have toned down their oversharpening and watercolor NR algorithms. Guys from GSMArena were even able to capture some luma noise, something I haven’t seen in any modern smartphone since 2013 or so. More processing means more deteriorated image quality. I hope s25 will continue tradition of “natural” stuff.

Back in the days I’ve had Galaxy s10+ and it made some of the worst selfies I have ever seen, my face had green tint and looked like plastic yellow Lego bricks😂 Hopefully there was and still is Open Camera app that strips 95% of camera processing, something that is unfortunately impossible on any iPhone even with third parties in non-RAW modes

 

[FlyingDutch]

For sure I don’t . It took a while for me to set it properly. Too much sections displayed by default. Btw you can customize it to your liking. I would just have set a more modest default

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Hopefully there was and still is Open Camera app that strips 95% of camera processing, something that is unfortunately impossible on any iPhone even with third parties in non-RAW modes

Doesn't Halide have a zero-processing shooting mode now? I haven't tried it because the subscription is way overpriced, but it might be worth a look.

Personally, I haven't been offended by my 16 Pro's processing, but I also make heavy use of the photographic style options.

 

[shadowboi]

Doesn't Halide have a zero-processing shooting mode now? I haven't tried it because the subscription is way overpriced, but it might be worth a look.

Personally, I haven't been offended by my 16 Pro's processing, but I also make heavy use of the photographic style options.

I tried Halide, it feels like it is more or less the same old rebranded RAW autodevelop feature but with JPEG copy. While it sometimes can produce good results, RAW development algorithm is hidden. I would have liked if they provided interface for fine tuning every single parameter such as boost, sharpness and color noise reduction as it seems to always be at 100% and on my phone can result in black spots on images. Maybe on newer iPhones it works better tho, I have seen some nice Halide shots made with iPhone 15.

UPD: wanted to add about Android. Since post processing there is a personal choice of every phone maker, 3rd party apps often produce unprocessed JPEGs which is very time saving than any of the RAW-dependent options on iPhone, i.e. there is no way to bypass Apple’s processing on iPhones other than shooting RAW, while on Samsung it seems to only affect default camera app. In Open Camera it is possible to partially turn off noise reduction (color noise is still removed), edge detection algorithms and other. But again on newer phones it is complicated because of new quad bayer sensors and third party apps can only output 12mp images (which isn’t too bad tbh), but story seems to be pretty much the same on iPhones (ProRAW is not taken into account; same as Samsung’s Expert RAW since those are preprocessed RAW files and contain barely any useful info to edit)

 

[MrRom92]

No phone camera is excellent until I can run a roll of Velvia through it

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Just realized the last 18.2 Beta reset my customizations to default - again. They really want us to use it how it comes out of the box!

 

[Ledsteplin]

This video shows the difference:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1856049453515583694

I see that now. Part of it is they moved the view down with the little thumbnail images showing in the view. Interesting. Wonder what the reason was for that?

 

[MS20]

I’m honestly not a huge fan of the new iOS 18 Photos app. While the design looks cleaner, I find the new organization a bit confusing and miss some of the older features that made navigating easier.

 

[jjdodders]

Can we also talk about the Clean Up tool and what that's doing?

I'm having issues where I try to clean a photo up and it applies a "Safety Filter" and pixelates the photo instead. I can't turn that off, and it seems to happen when the "AI" thinks the photo is NSFW.

This is excessive nannying in my view. Clearly Apple Intelligence is scanning the photo for nudity and instead of just letting me edit the photo, has determined that it needs censoring. This is a big over-reach of censorship. I'm a grown adult and can decide for myself what is and isn't appropriate for me to look at.

I'm also very concerned at how the photos are being scanned - is it on device or in the cloud? And what is the determining factor for a "safety filter" being applied or not? Most of the photos I've tried it on where the filter was applied were not NSFW, so whatever algorithm it's using isn't very good at its job either.

I'm surprised there isn't a louder reaction to this from users. Is this Apple covertly going back on their previous decision not to scan all your photos in the cloud for CSM? Not only would that be a massive invasion of privacy, but they're also just clearly not very good at determining what is and isn't NSFW content, and are flagging things incorrectly.

The privacy issue is a big concern for me. What are they doing?

 

[gank41]

The privacy issue is a big concern for me. What are they doing?

Considering you can still swipe to delete notifications when the iPhone is still locked, or that the default behavior for the Mail App is to just dump you into the next email whether that's junk or something personal & private, I'm pretty sure Apple's concerns about "privacy" are not what we think they are.

 

[twdawson]

Considering you can still swipe to delete notifications when the iPhone is still locked, or that the default behavior for the Mail App is to just dump you into the next email whether that's junk or something personal & private, I'm pretty sure Apple's concerns about "privacy" are not what we think they are.

That’s the one thing about the mail app that is making me look into finding something else.
I used to use K9 on my pixel but nothing I can find on iOS that matches it.

 

[gank41]

That’s the one thing about the mail app that is making me look into finding something else.
I used to use K9 on my pixel but nothing I can find on iOS that matches it.

I’ve been using Spark, but generally still like the default Mail app better. There’s lots of email apps out there. It’s a shame there isn’t a way to have a default Photos app, too.

 

[twdawson]

I have deleted all my iCloud Photos and just started using google photos as I can use it cross platform.

I am now using spark for email and will see how that goes.

Transferring all my notes to google keep as I am thinking that I need stuff that is cross platform.

I have plenty of other problems with my phone and iOS 18. I have been on the phone with higher lever apple support as I do have AppleCare and they can’t find anything wrong.

Find my is all over the place and doesn’t report location to my wife accurately, we use this for emergency medical reasons.

 

[aboulfad]

I guess they sometimes do listen to our feedback. Here’s an excerpt from the main page of macrumors for 18.2 relnotes.

“
Photos
- Video viewing improvements, including the ability to scrub frame-by-frame and a setting to turn off auto-looping video playback
- Improvements when navigating Collections views, including the ability to swipe right to go back to the previous view
…”

 

[MrRom92]

I guess they sometimes do listen to our feedback. Here’s an excerpt from the main page of macrumors for 18.2 relnotes.

“
Photos
- Video viewing improvements, including the ability to scrub frame-by-frame and a setting to turn off auto-looping video playback
- Improvements when navigating Collections views, including the ability to swipe right to go back to the previous view
…”

Yes, I was excited for RC to finally release yesterday. Ironically I wont really have time to even install it until Tuesday at the earliest anyway but I’m looking forward to trying it out

 

[ManuCH]

Considering you can still swipe to delete notifications when the iPhone is still locked, or that the default behavior for the Mail App is to just dump you into the next email whether that's junk or something personal & private, I'm pretty sure Apple's concerns about "privacy" are not what we think they are.

I don't see how any of this shows a lack of attention to privacy by Apple. That's all behaviors you can change in settings.

 

[gank41]

I don't see how any of this shows a lack of attention to privacy by Apple. That's all behaviors you can change in settings.

Seeing a notification on the Lock Screen is one thing, but not having to authenticate in order to clear notifications is another.

 

[ManuCH]

Seeing a notification on the Lock Screen is one thing, but not having to authenticate in order to clear notifications is another.

*Seeing* a notification may be a privacy issue (and you can change that behavior). Not having to authenticate to clear it is not about privacy, it's about security. Those are 2 very different topics. But I'm nitpicking.

However, you can change that behavior with a little workaround:

• Go to Settings > Face ID/Touch ID & Passcode, and turn off “Notification Center”
• Go to Settings > Notifications, and set "Display as count"

I'm not sure if it will still show new notifications on-screen with the ability of swiping them away if you do that, as I use an Apple Watch so my situation is a bit different. But maybe you can give it a try.

 

[gank41]

*Seeing* a notification may be a privacy issue (and you can change that behavior). Not having to authenticate to clear it is not about privacy, it's about security. Those are 2 very different topics. But I'm nitpicking.

However, you can change that behavior with a little workaround:

• Go to Settings > Face ID/Touch ID & Passcode, and turn off “Notification Center”
• Go to Settings > Notifications, and set "Display as count"

I'm not sure if it will still show new notifications on-screen with the ability of swiping them away if you do that, as I use an Apple Watch so my situation is a bit different. But maybe you can give it a try.

If you need to unlock the device to read the notification, you should also have to to clear the notifications. But you don’t.

 

[ManuCH]

If you need to unlock the device to read the notification, you should also have to to clear the notifications. But you don’t.

Did you try my suggestions? Does that change the behavior?

 

[gank41]

Did you try my suggestions? Does that change the behavior?

No, and I don’t mean to take over this thread with this anymore. I don’t want to change how the Lock Screen looks. I’m just pointing out that you don’t even need to have a phone unlocked after a reboot to dismiss notifications it won’t even let you read. If someone else has your phone, they can swipe away and delete all notifications without authenticating. Even when the pin is needed to unlock Face ID. That’s been an issue for awhile.

 

[ifxf]

For sure I don’t . It took a while for me to set it properly. Too much sections displayed by default. Btw you can customize it to your liking. I would just have set a more modest default

You can’t stop it from automatically going to Years/Months/All when scrolling to the top of the Library view.

 

[FlyingDutch]

You can’t stop it from automatically going to Years/Months/All when scrolling to the top of the Library view.

Yep, but that’s not a big deal (compared to how messed up is everything else)

 

[cigz]

I guess they sometimes do listen to our feedback. Here’s an excerpt from the main page of macrumors for 18.2 relnotes.

“
Photos
- Video viewing improvements, including the ability to scrub frame-by-frame and a setting to turn off auto-looping video playback
- Improvements when navigating Collections views, including the ability to swipe right to go back to the previous view
…”

The feedback being tons of tweets, instagram reels and tiktoks of people saying how much they hate the new photos app.
This is something I was actually expecting when iOS 18 was still in beta.

I don't watch TikTok all the time but sometimes when I'm bored I do and few days ago I saw a TikTok of a man saying how the new photos app is bad and how he hates it.
That TikTok had more than 6 milion views and almost 1 milion likes. That says a lot.

When you search "photos app" in twitter, the only thing you see are tweets of people how they hate this new redesign.

It's not disliked by few people on MacRumors but by millions around the world.

I personally use photos app a lot and I have downgraded to iOS 17 because it was slow, I hated the lack of consistency in design and the amount of bugs it had. For me, that one app had more bugs than whole iOS 18.1

 

[MrRom92]

I will say that it has improved in 18.2 quite a bit, I thank whomever at Apple is bothering to read through this thread. I don’t know if I can say I don’t hate it just yet. But it’s much, much more tolerable.

The general public doesn’t even know how miserably bad this app was during the iOS 18 beta cycle.

By the public release of 18.0 things were already much better, but 18.2 feels even more significantly refined.