Apple's Photographic Styles effects have been greatly improved on the company's latest phones, and they really make photos pop.
Photographic Styles are photo effects that change the color and tone of an image, and they've been around since the iPhone 13 generation.
But Apple has improved this feature on the iPhone 16 to give images a clearer representation of color, highlights, skin tones, and shadows. In particular, this makes photos more sparkling.
iPhone 16.
iPhone 16.
While phone makers tend to improve camera hardware and image processing software every year, the Photographic Style feature has had a bigger impact.
It allows iFans to change their photos in a way that is easy to see and instantly satisfying.
Using Photographic Styles on iPhone 16
Photographic Styles are a lot like filters, but Apple’s updated version doesn’t just apply an overlay effect to an image.
Instead, it applies an aesthetic to a scene based on specific colors in the photo. Experts say this makes it much easier to create dramatic effects for snapshots, essentially without any editing.
Discover the amazing photography capabilities of iPhone 16 - 2Image applied Photographic Styles on iPhone 16.
Image applied Photographic Styles on iPhone 16.
Photographic Styles are only available for the iPhone 16 series, built into the camera app, and users can apply them before taking a photo or after taking it.
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This allows iPhone owners to highlight certain skin tones or create an aesthetic based on a mood. Some examples of skin tones include:
Cool Rose, Neutral, Rose Gold, and Amber while Vibrant, Luminous, Quiet, and Dramatic are examples of mood-based options.
Users can also set a specific style as default, and the iPhone camera will apply that effect without the user having to manually enable it.
Discover the amazing photography capabilities of iPhone 16 - 4Discover the amazing photography capabilities of iPhone 16 -
5Image applied Photographic Styles on iPhone 16.
Image applied Photographic Styles on iPhone 16.
What’s more interesting is that users can adjust the tone and color for each individual style, creating a flexible level of customization.
Users are essentially creating their own custom color and tone profiles for the camera, making it more personalized than ever.
Photographic Styles help phones take more "artistic" photos
Clearly, the smartphone giants want to give us more control over the photos we take with our phones — for better or worse.
Close-up of the iPhone 16 camera.
Close-up of the iPhone 16 camera.
We can now remove objects from images, add objects that aren't even there, pick a favorite facial expression and add it to another image, or resize or change elements of a photo. Many of the AI-powered photo editing tools that have appeared on Google's Pixel phones over the past two years are designed to help users capture the perfect moment even when that moment doesn't happen.
Apple also introduced a tool called Clean Up to remove parts of an image, as part of Apple Intelligence.
iPhone 16 Quad.
iPhone 16 Quad.
Perhaps that’s why Photographic Styles has been such a hit with professionals. It also helps users create the perfect image, but in a very different way, a more creative way that’s less distorted from reality.
The idea of taking an existing photo and making it darker or more contrasty is much more appealing than changing the scene itself, which is the "key" to Photographic Styles.
Is Photographic Styles worth buying a new iPhone for iFans? Of course not. However, it's a useful feature that, when combined with other upgrades, will make the iPhone 16's camera a huge "step forward" for older iPhone users.