iPhone 13 iPhone camera is overprocessing. Will it ever end?

[Allen_Wentz]

I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. I would never do portraits or other "static" subjects with an iPhone professionally. I have the 15 PM, and it's great for what it does, but it doesn't compare to my professional gear. I think the iPhone takes great photos, especially with the right conditions, but the iPhone lenses are never going to take in anywhere near the amount of light that a professional camera lens will. Photography can be described as the art of capturing light. No amount of trickery is going to make the iPhone be able to defy physics and take in more light than the its tiny lenses are capable of. I wouldn't hire you if you were taking any photos with the iPhone for a professional purpose. I don't care how good iPhone cameras get. They will never compare due to physical limitations.

You miss the point. I just knew someone would misinterpret my static commentary to include portraiture. Personally I agree with you about portraits and would always use the Nikon D850 and real tele lenses for that purpose. But look at the pix captured by Apple's pros on iPhone. They are first class and they include portraits.

You say "I wouldn't hire you if you were taking any photos with the iPhone for a professional purpose." which is why I had previously stated clients like to see the big gear as a validation of professionalism. But the fact is that the iPhone 15 PM often can reach professional competence [in spite of the iPhone's horrifically poor UI]. You do not have to believe me, but you do need to look at the captures Apple uses in its marketing.

Circa 2005 I shot and built many ads (fashion field product pix) using a Nikon D2x and/or Nikon D3 that went into pricey 4-color glossy mags. Today's iPhone 15 Pros are capable of similar captures. The lack of using $1k lenses would be noticeable to me, but probably not to most clients or readers. Good lighting and good tripod are far more important. And today most media is on line, not the more demanding 4-color glossy print.

The point was not to suggest that a thumbnail-size lens could be the equal of real glass, or that the horrible iPhone UI time-effectively competes with a pro Nikon camera body. They do not. The point is to respond to the OP and others claiming that iPhone overprocessing makes it impossible to capture good pix. Those folks are wrong.

 

[Bruh Bear]

You miss the point. I just knew someone would misinterpret my static commentary to include portraiture. Personally I agree with you about portraits and would always use the Nikon D850 and real tele lenses for that purpose. But look at the pix captured by Apple's pros on iPhone. They are first class and they include portraits.

You say "I wouldn't hire you if you were taking any photos with the iPhone for a professional purpose." which is why I had previously stated clients like to see the big gear as a validation of professionalism. But the fact is that the iPhone 15 PM often can reach professional competence [in spite of the iPhone's horrifically poor UI]. You do not have to believe me, but you do need to look at the captures Apple uses in its marketing.

Circa 2005 I shot and built many ads (fashion field product pix) using a Nikon D2x and/or Nikon D3 that went into pricey 4-color glossy mags. Today's iPhone 15 Pros are capable of similar captures. The lack of using $1k lenses would be noticeable to me, but probably not to most clients or readers. Good lighting and good tripod are far more important. And today most media is on line, not the more demanding 4-color glossy print.

The point was not to suggest that a thumbnail-size lens could be the equal of real glass, or that the horrible iPhone UI time-effectively competes with a pro Nikon camera body. They do not. The point is to respond to the OP and others claiming that iPhone overprocessing makes it impossible to capture good pix. Those folks are wrong.

I get that the equipment doesn't make the photographer great, it's the photographer that utilizes the equipment to its potential. But a professional photographyer that is good at both the iPhone and professional equipment is going to take better pictures with the professional equipment every time. Yes, the iPhone can take professional looking photos. I completely agree. My only point is when compared to a professional camera, it's going to fall short every single time. But yes, with the right person behind the camera and right lighting conditions, the iPhone can take spectacular photos.

 

[ToddH]

Me too. I always think @ToddH talks a lot of sense and always find his comments interesting.

Hi Glen

Just saw your comment. I haven’t logged on the forum lately. I read some of these comments and I need to read more to catch up. I no longer use the iPhone 13 Pro / max. I currently have the 15 pro max. I’ll post more comments in the thread

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I get that the equipment doesn't make the photographer great, it's the photographer that utilizes the equipment to its potential. But a professional photographyer that is good at both the iPhone and professional equipment is going to take better pictures with the professional equipment every time. Yes, the iPhone can take professional looking photos. I completely agree. My only point is when compared to a professional camera, it's going to fall short every single time. But yes, with the right person behind the camera and right lighting conditions, the iPhone can take spectacular photos.

We agree. The thing is, a pro 2-pound camera body plus multiple-pound lenses do not get to the point of pushing the shutter without huge sacrifices in mobility and security - - even when we ignore the cost. So the phone one always has in one's pocket is quite a large value add to timely professional image capturing.

If one has a free armed camera-bearer it would be different, but none of us have said armed camera bearer.

 

[Bruh Bear]

We agree. The thing is, a pro 2-pound camera body plus multiple-pound lenses do not get to the point of pushing the shutter without huge sacrifices in mobility and security - - even when we ignore the cost. So the phone one always has in one's pocket is quite a large value add to timely professional image capturing.

If one has a free armed camera-bearer it would be different, but none of us have said armed camera bearer.

I agree. The best camera is the one you have on you at the time.

 

[ToddH]

I realize that most people that use the iPhone to take photos, mostly use JPEG or HEIF instead of ProRAW. The raw format of
ProRAW is much cleaner than JPEG or HEIF because raw is not a compressed image like JPEG. I’m sure you all know this and prefer not to use ProRAW because it has to be edited. Comparing film to digital does show the difference between the two. However if ISO 6400 speed film will look worse than digital due to all the grain. A ProRAW file can easily be edited to match the look of film by reducing the sharpness and clarity.

Apple designed the iPhone camera to meet the needs of the general public regarding photography. Many people don’t know much about photography and this is why Apple designed the camera software to do a majority of the work for the user. Just point and shoot and let the iPhone do the rest.. How many of you have gone into the settings menu for the camera and adjusted the settings to improve camera quality? I see a lot of people here on this forum telling us that they don’t know much about photography, therefore their photos don’t look good & they look over-sharpened. Well this is what JPEG or HEIF does & a lot of extra processing is applied because the camera isn’t better controlled by the photographer.

Photography is my passion & As a photographer, I feel I have the advantage because I have trained myself to think like the camera. I see the shot in my mind before I take the photo and evaluate the scene before I take the shot. I have to know how to adjust my camera settings to compensate for the scene I’m about to shoot. The more you practice with the camera of your choice, the better you will be at photography.

General photography isn’t a fast paced process. Photography is an art and you have to take your time to adjust your camera to get the best shot. Don’t just whip the camera out and press the shutter and hope the iPhone did something magical for you. You’ll have to adjust for highlights, shadows, dark colors etc. Also, you have to determine what your subject is. I hope I’m not off topic here…

As for the over sharpened questions here, if you folks would be willing to learn to edit raw or ProRAW files, you can choose how much sharpening you prefer to apply to your images. It makes a huge difference compared to shooting only in JPEG & HEIF. The 48mp ProRAW files from the 15 pro max are awesome!! So clean. The HEIF files aren’t bad either. Either way, digital imagery must be edited in some fashion in order to get a fine polished image. No, we can’t adjust the sharpness of the iPhone camera app in HEIF format. Yes.. you can adjust sharpness output on the ProRAW files in Lightroom mobile and it’s not hard. Also the ProRAW file is a digital negative. You can go back to Lightroom reset all edits and re edit the photo in a different way if the first attempt wasn’t good enough. When finished, save the edit as a JPEG to the camera roll. Consider using third party camera apps. I can recommend several that allow more control of the camera including manual focus and exposure compensation.

This thread is a good topic. I’ll keep reading and I’ll answer your questions.

Here is a shot I edited in Lightroom using ProRAW. It’s very clean. The closeup is a screenshot crop.

Here is what I got at a Chuy’s restaurant using ProRAW. Before & after.

 

[pw5a29]

The post processing is built for the 80% of mass population who just do casual posting, I agree the post processing will make the photo more pop.

 

[winxmac]

@ToddH from what I have read here, some say iPhone photo processing got worse since 2017 [A11 Bionic and newer] and they just want to have a toggle to disable the aggressive processing like how we can disable switching to ultrawide when shooting macro [introduced in a later iOS 15 update] and just use the main camera...

Majority of iPhone users are used to the point-and-shoot digital cameras of the past, unlike some of us here who prefer greater control with our photography and videography, and would love to shoot in RAW format and record in LOG format to apply adjustments in post...

Some even say that older iPhone models are giving better results because little to no processing is observed... Although to shoot in RAW using iPhone 11 series and older, you will need a third party app...

I also shoot in RAW using my Nikon D5500 DSLR camera and ProRAW using my iPhone 14 Pro Max [no longer with me] and iPhone 13 Pro, however, I don't think I can get the same result compared to the before and after shot of @ToddH although I use an older version of Photoshop and I only tried Lightroom for a very short time...

Others here want as much control as possible while others here seem to be fine with whatever the iPhone is giving them... Others say that Apple's aggressive processing still shows even when using third party camera apps...

I have tried taking some photos using Galaxy S10+ and did not like the result and many would agree that they would rather use an older iPhone model than the latest android flagships when comparing the HEIF and JPEG output of iPhone vs android phones so telling them to just use an android phone is out of the question...

I don't know about Google Pixel [never owned one] but Samsung and other android manufacturers tend to apply aggressive smoothing and exaggerate the colors [too saturated] so in the end [when talking about point-and-shoot and post/upload vs more control photographers], they go with iPhone for its standard/neutral/true to life output and they can use Photographic styles [iPhone 13 and newer] or edit in post for color adjustment...

 

[ToddH]

@ToddH from what I have read here, some say iPhone photo processing got worse since 2017 [A11 Bionic and newer] and they just want to have a toggle to disable the aggressive processing like how we can disable switching to ultrawide when shooting macro [introduced in a later iOS 15 update] and just use the main camera...

Majority of iPhone users are used to the point-and-shoot digital cameras of the past, unlike some of us here who prefer greater control with our photography and videography, and would love to shoot in RAW format and record in LOG format to apply adjustments in post...

Some even say that older iPhone models are giving better results because little to no processing is observed... Although to shoot in RAW using iPhone 11 series and older, you will need a third party app...

I also shoot in RAW using my Nikon D5500 DSLR camera and ProRAW using my iPhone 14 Pro Max [no longer with me] and iPhone 13 Pro, however, I don't think I can get the same result compared to the before and after shot of @ToddH although I use an older version of Photoshop and I only tried Lightroom for a very short time...

Others here want as much control as possible while others here seem to be fine with whatever the iPhone is giving them... Others say that Apple's aggressive processing still shows even when using third party camera apps...

I have tried taking some photos using Galaxy S10+ and did not like the result and many would agree that they would rather use an older iPhone model than the latest android flagships when comparing the HEIF and JPEG output of iPhone vs android phones so telling them to just use an android phone is out of the question...

I don't know about Google Pixel [never owned one] but Samsung and other android manufacturers tend to apply aggressive smoothing and exaggerate the colors [too saturated] so in the end [when talking about point-and-shoot and post/upload vs more control photographers], they go with iPhone for its standard/neutral/true to life output and they can use Photographic styles [iPhone 13 and newer] or edit in post for color adjustment...

Yes I agree that the processing got worse after 2017, the iPhone X was terrible in medium-low light and low light, photos were very watercolor looking. Taking panoramic photos of landscapes with clouds in the sky produced streaks in the image when using the iPhone X. With the release of iPhone 12 Pro Max and the introduction to ProRAW changed everything for me. I was no longer forced to use only HEIF or JPEG. Third party apps for raw weren’t that good either.

Using the 15 pro max and ProRAW gives me the best images I’ve ever seen from an iPhone. With the additional external lenses from Reeflex (2x, & 110° wide lens) improves image quality greatly. The 2x gives me 48mm equivalent at 48mp of resolution. Great for portraits! 50mm on 35mm camera and 85mm are my focal lengths of choice. I have a Sony A7R V 61mp camera that I use for pro work, I really like it. I believe the 48mp resolution of the 15 pro max holds its own against a 40-50 mp DSLR when using the same focal length lens.

I’ve tried Samsung in the past, didn’t care for it. I considered the Sony Xperia as well, but it’s still android.

These photos were taken with the 14 pro max using ProRAW, an external 8x10 LED soft video panel light, edited in Lightroom mobile. All 48mp resolution, reduced to fit on this forum. As you can see, I can get amazing results from my iPhone. I hope to see other iPhone users get the same results.

Using a light wand with Barn Doors on it and the color temperature set to tungsten, I simulated sunlight for this portrait

 

[shadowboi]

Wow, so many responses here, and great shots. Glad that the topic brought so many talented people here and that I am not the only one who noticed the issue.

I see, ProRAW is good. But unfortunately far from ideal.
Albeit I can’t say I am interested enough in “Pro” models, neither do I understand why they decided to invent some “ProRAW” if regular RAW existed since iPhone 6s. Like… what’s even the point of it? RAW is RAW, they could have just added it to camera app long ago. Also ProRAW seems to denoise literally same as JPEG/HEIF, so not much of advantage for me, I am not into changing white balance anyway and prefer to set it properly while I shoot.

Aaand, that’s why I would strongly disagree with one argument that Galaxy S10+ and newer Samsung shooters are bad – at least they had RAW (regular DNG straight out of the sensor) baked in default camera app since 2019 or so. And it was quite useable, no noise reduction, lots of controls. I will post some of my shots with it here soon, need to dig deep on my SSD. Also I believe there was option to disable smart processing or smth for JPEGs.

Tbh never in my life I was interested in denoising any of my photos, be them taken with ancient Sony DSC N1 from 2005 (decent thing! I believe it was first touchscreen point-and-shoot) or supernoisy iPhone 4. I love noises. I don’t really like lens aberrations tho and always defringe if I ever see them. When I see every iPhone to apply massive amount of noise reduction in order to look similar to beefier cameras with bigger sensors – it looks cheap and fake, iPhone will never achieve same image quality as even old DSLRs from 2007 or so, its physics.

I think I should edit the original post and explicitly tell I am not saying film>digital. You can recreate any film look with 99% accuracy in digital. And digital noise looks almost identical to film noise. And btw noise is what analog photographers are going for when they go to shop for another overpriced roll of film.

Since examples I provided are scanned films, those are technically digital shots now since analog to digital conversion happened.

I was able to reproduce similar look with my 8mp iPhone 5 and 5mp iPhone 4. Megapixels really matter nothing, so again not really getting what Apple tried to achieve by adding 48 of them in newer shooters, as well as everyone knows that if you increase pixel count without increasing size of matrix you get more noise and poorer low light performance (hence, more noise reduction).

Not to lose my point I would like to reiterate few things:

• iPhone camera should not try to compete with DSLRs and mirrorless sensors since it cannot defy laws of physics;

• They should get a true natural JPEG profile and get their stuff done with noise reduction – if I wanted noiseless shots I would grab a bigger camera that is capable of them, I am quite ok with small iPhone sensor and noisy shots;

• More post processing applied to image just ruins it further. It cannot save poorly exposed shots. Photography is a game when you catch a light, not when light catches you. No amount of HDR would make a shot better if it is already bad;

• if Apple really wants my attention they should remove noise in better manner – introduce bigger sensor. I don’t need or want 3 camera lens array, never liked it on my S10+ or 11 Pro. If I want zoom again, I have DSLR. One inch sensor is possible to put into smartphone;

• More megapixels≠better camera. Period.

 

[winxmac]

ProRAW introduced in iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max is RAW format combined with Apple algorithm/processing...

I did not know that you can use a third party app to capture "true" RAW in iPhone 11 series and earlier, however, I would not subscribe to an app to be able to shoot in RAW...

In ideal situations, we would have all the camera gear with us, however, more often than not, it is the iPhone that we usually have with us when shooting something unexpected...

Yes Apple applies aggressive smoothing and/or beautification, which was an issue with an earlier iOS 12 update that got fixed later, but it is not as aggressive as what android does... And that exaggeration/oversaturation of color on android...

It has been pointed out already in other discussions that due to lower number of iPhone models, iOS apps are way more polished than their android counterparts... Even though you take photos and videos using apps like Instagram and others on iOS, the output seems to be shot with the default camera App on iPhone, unlike when comparing a photo and video taken with the android camera app vs Instagram and others... android app developers seem to target the bare minimum among multiple android phones while iPhone apps are polished and seem to be designed first with iOS in mind...

 

[Allen_Wentz]

Shooting in RAW by simply pushing the selection button in the top right corner to "RAW" and leaving it that way does not mean one then is choosing to fully edit in RAW. One can take the pic, chimp, and then if the image is adequate for its intended usage just use it. When one goes to use the pic the iPhone will convert to JPEG or H.264 without sharpening, etc. unless one tells it to do otherwise.

Note that JPEG compression works very well and has for decades. If one is a small bit more interested in the image they are using it makes sense to learn how to adjust size and quality of JPEG levels chosen. Edits like exposure adjustment, etc. are optional and are done before JPEG-conversion, any sharpening should be the last editing step pre-JPEG.

Seldom will most folks use full size in their ultimate usages, because the initial capture file sizes of 48 MP cameras are quite large. However that initial 48 MP capture capability is of huge benefit for cropping and greatly expands the versatility of the iPhone Pros. Cropping and horizon correction are something I do on every image even though I often do not perform other image adjustments like exposure or sharpening.

 

[winxmac]

I shot a few photos [Live Photos HEIC] using iPhone 7 Plus yesterday, and wow, it seems the highlight/best of little/no Apple aggressive processing...

I also looked at previous shots [ProRAW] I took using iPhone 14 Pro Max/iPhone 13 Pro, and yes, the color seem to be brighter/vibrant even though shot in ProRAW, but even with viewing it on an iPad 6 screen, the Apple aggressive processing is very noticeable...

Made me think, should I continue with ProRAW on iPhone 13 Pro or downgrade and use a third party camera [paid/subscription] app for RAW images? My 13 Pro is currently a 512GB model while the highest storage available for iPhone 7 and 7 Plus is 256GB [the iPhone 7 Plus with me is 128GB]... The iPhone 13 Pro is almost two months with me after trading the iPhone 14 Pro Max 256GB...

I switched back to iOS 17.6 non-beta after about 2 months of testing iOS 18.0 beta...

Two things I'm thinking about, the battery life and the photo processing on current iPhone models...

I guess, for quick good looking photos, I'll continue using the iPhone 13 Pro, but for other planned shots, I'll leave it to my Nikon D5500 DSLR camera... I shoot in RAW [ProRAW on iPhone] on both anyway...

 

[shadowboi]

Made me think, should I continue with ProRAW on iPhone 13 Pro or downgrade and use a third party camera [paid/subscription] app for RAW images?

There might be a problem with how new iPhones shoot regular RAW. As I noted, there is some issue that does not let to control ISO/exposure – it shows normal photo preview and after taking the photo RAW is either overexposed or underexposed. I am not sure what is the culprit.

While iPhone 7 Plus might be a decent RAW shooter since it does not have this strange bug. But even without RAW it should shoot good photos with less overprocessing and HDR.

As for storage, for me personally 128GB is well enough.

Before my iPhone 11 Pro died it took about 80 gigabytes of photos with it (7000 shots and videos). Same 12 mp sensor, about 5mb per shot. And phone was 256. Not to waste more money I grabbed 128gb and can tell I am pretty good with it and haven’t seen any situations when I ran out of storage yet, I am not really sure I will ever need 512 or terabyte on phone. And ever since my phone died I do not trust storing so many shots on iPhone instead of SSD, cheaper to get SSD or even few of them

 

[ToddH]

There might be a problem with how new iPhones shoot regular RAW. As I noted, there is some issue that does not let to control ISO/exposure – it shows normal photo preview and after taking the photo RAW is either overexposed or underexposed. I am not sure what is the culprit.

While iPhone 7 Plus might be a decent RAW shooter since it does not have this strange bug. But even without RAW it should shoot good photos with less overprocessing and HDR.

As for storage, for me personally 128GB is well enough.

Before my iPhone 11 Pro died it took about 80 gigabytes of photos with it (7000 shots and videos). Same 12 mp sensor, about 5mb per shot. And phone was 256. Not to waste more money I grabbed 128gb and can tell I am pretty good with it and haven’t seen any situations when I ran out of storage yet, I am not really sure I will ever need 512 or terabyte on phone. And ever since my phone died I do not trust storing so many shots on iPhone instead of SSD, cheaper to get SSD or even few of them

128gb is ok for the average user. For photographers like myself, I use the 1TB iPhone and shoot strictly ProRAW and on occasion, ProRes video. Both take up a lot of space. At least now the 15 pro series will allow the use of an external SSD when using ProRes video. It’s better to have too much storage than not enough. I don’t use the cloud, it’s lame (to me). Don’t want to download my photos to view them.

As per this topic, over sharpened photos etc, I think everyone would benefit from ProRAW and editing photos. Of course you’d have to be passionate about photography in order to get the best photos. Since that’s not the case with everyone, the baked JPEG output of the iPhone camera does what it does because a huge amount of the population doesn’t know much at all about photography. So the iPhone software does its best to compensate for that lack of knowledge.

 

[ghostface147]

Or Apple can just put an option for no processing of anything.

 

[michsu]

I turned off the "View Full HDR" setting under Photos, and it appears to be a little better? Maybe the Photos app is what's messing it up? It's not how the Iphone is "taking" the photo, but of "viewing" it. Is there another way to view the photos, but not using the library? I'm at work, so I'll run some tests at home. Can someone help take a look? Thanks. Also, I set the Photo Style to 0,0 (Those 0-50+- aren't very good sometimes).

 

[shadowboi]

I turned off the "View Full HDR" setting under Photos, and it appears to be a little better? Maybe the Photos app is what's messing it up? It's not how the Iphone is "taking" the photo, but of "viewing" it. Is there another way to view the photos, but not using the library? I'm at work, so I'll run some tests at home. Can someone help take a look? Thanks. Also, I set the Photo Style to 0,0 (Those 0-50+- aren't very good sometimes).

Sure, send your tests here.

It is definitely not “view full HDR”, my SE does not even have that feature. There is rather serious issue with obsessive AI noise reduction going on

 

[shadowboi]

If someone still reading this thread, I just happened to find an interesting video from YouTube with truly ULTIMATE comparison of two 1/1.2 sensors: iPhone 14 Pro and Nokia 808 PureView. Back in 2012 I wasn't really into Nokia and rocked with my iPhone 5. As we know, back then phones had over 512-1000 mb ram which is at least 4 times less than we have today. Thus developers didn't really care about computational photos back then. After processors got faster and more ram became available, something pretty ugly happened. Here are some screenshots from a video, judge yourself:

iPhone flower photo looks like someone printed it, chewed, spit it out and then ironed (sorry)

Look at the pavement, edges, everything. 808 wins again, it looks almost like my old Nikon D3100

OVERHDRed again

Sure, maybe video is fake and stuff. But something (my eyes probably!) tell me it isn't.

 

[SalisburySam]

Sorry, not sorry. In each case I much preferred the iPhone over the 808. The latter appeared to be taken through a thin layer of gauze or a greasy fingerprint-coated lens, or by someone who couldn’t focus. Perhaps the 808 photos are arguably more “artistic.” If this were back in the film days, I’d assume the 1-hour processing lenses needed cleaning.

 

[one more]

Have a look at this:

Halide 2.15 Lets Users Take Shots With Zero Computational Processing

Award-winning iPhone camera app Halide was today updated to version 2.15, which includes a new feature that allows users to take photos devoid of all...

www.macrumors.com

 

[shadowboi]

Have a look at this:

Halide 2.15 Lets Users Take Shots With Zero Computational Processing

Award-winning iPhone camera app Halide was today updated to version 2.15, which includes a new feature that allows users to take photos devoid of all...

www.macrumors.com

Good they figured that out but it does not seem to work, feature is half-baked. Recently I have dived in LR Raw which seems like top solution to strap all this stuff off, have been getting great results so far, even made a post about it

 

[ToddH]

Have a look at this:

Halide 2.15 Lets Users Take Shots With Zero Computational Processing

Award-winning iPhone camera app Halide was today updated to version 2.15, which includes a new feature that allows users to take photos devoid of all...

www.macrumors.com

Yeah, that’s pretty cool and I think many will enjoy it. I think it’ll be a nice option for iPhone shooters who do not want the over processed look. I just wish they offered it in 48 megapixel format. 12 megapixels doesn’t really give you much detail or resolution especially when you need to crop. I just updated the app, I’ll be testing the new features. It looks like a raw only feature. however, using their image lab, you can tweak the exposure, etc., and save it as a JPEG after that. Anyway, I just learned of this and I haven’t messed with it much yet so I guess I’ll be experimenting with 12mp files…

 

[shadowboi]

Yeah, that’s pretty cool and I think many will enjoy it. I think it’ll be a nice option for iPhone shooters who do not want the over processed look. I just wish they offered it in 48 megapixel format. 12 megapixels doesn’t really give you much detail or resolution especially when you need to crop. I just updated the app, I’ll be testing the new features. It looks like a raw only feature. Anyway, I just learned of this and I haven’t messed with it much yet so I guess I’ll be experimenting with 12mp files…

For 48MP Apple must update their camera API as far as I know, as it does not provide true 48MP dng files except preprocessed ProRAW (which technically isn’t RAW anyway). This is exceptionally painful for owners of regular iPhone 15 (not pro) since they cannot take RAW shots in 48MP at all since phone has no ProRAW support (and won’t ever have, “Pro” feature).

I have looked through what Samsung and Google do, they neither seem to offer full 50mp or 200mp dngs.

I hate that we are being forced to use RAW just to strip off ugly noise reduction and sharpening algorithms. At least it seems like the only solution, but I would love a dedicated switch for JPEG anyway

 

[ToddH]

For 48MP Apple must update their camera API as far as I know, as it does not provide true 48MP dng files except preprocessed ProRAW (which technically isn’t RAW anyway). This is exceptionally painful for owners of regular iPhone 15 (not pro) since they cannot take RAW shots in 48MP at all since phone has no ProRAW support (and won’t ever have, “Pro” feature).

I have looked through what Samsung and Google do, they neither seem to offer full 50mp or 200mp dngs.

I hate that we are being forced to use RAW just to strip off ugly noise reduction and sharpening algorithms. At least it seems like the only solution, but I would love a dedicated switch for JPEG anyway

Yeah, I have to tend to agree with you. However, ProRAW works really well for me with my style of photography. As for Halide, I don’t really use the app that much because I feel like the focus brackets are a little bit too large and I have to manually focus too often to achieve focus. I really never shoot JPEG or HEIF, always ProRAW and that goes for third-party apps as well, which I have several that I use a lot. like you mentioned, I started looking at other phones and their cameras to compare with the iPhone. Phones like the Sony Xperia 1 VI. But it is still on an android platform, which I don’t like and you can’t really get apps for it regarding photography like you can in the iPhone. I’m not interested in a Google phone because I don’t really care for Google at all. Most of the reviews that I see on YouTube regarding comparisons between other phone cameras and the iPhone, the iPhone mostly always wins. if I get a Sony phone, I will use it alongside my iPhone. i’m not sure how I feel about the Samsung galaxy S 24, I guess I need to buy one and use it for a couple of months to see if I actually like it or not. I know right now that using android is not going to be a pleasurable thing.