My iPhone 13 Pro takes terrible photos

[Andropov]

Is anyone else experiencing this? Is it just my iPhone adding MASSIVE sharpening + clarity filter on top of the images or is this common? See Canon 6D picture as a 'ground truth' of what I'm seeing (the 6D pic matches what I'm seeing). Camera looks worse than the XS I was using last year. On this particular pic the difference was particularly big, I couldn't get the colors on the iPhone to look nowhere near real life, not even in post. Any workarounds?

EDIT: Google Drive with the photos at its original resolution.

 

[mollyc]

So I'm still using an iPhone 8+ so really can't compare....but are you shooting raw on your phone? I think that would help with the over sharpening.

 

[DT]

Yeah, that's a pretty big disparity if the 6D is much closer to "reality". I usually look at my iPhone (13 Pro Max) pics as I shoot them, and do a quick comparison vs. what I'm seeing, and they're generally pretty close (unless it's a low light situation or something).

 

[Citysnaps]

I couldn't get the colors on the iPhone to look nowhere near real life, not even in post. Any workarounds?

I took the liberty of messing with your image - hope you don't mind. Just took a minute of time.

The first thing I noticed the color temperature of your iPhone image was much cooler. So in Lightroom I dragged the temperature slider towards the reds to warm it up a bit. Then added some negative Clarity to soften the image up a little, and also reduced contrast a little. And then dragged a gradient over the lower left corner and reduced highlights.

As to why your phone is behaving that way, I don't know. I have a 12 Pro iPhone and don't see that.

 

[Andropov]

So I'm still using an iPhone 8+ so really can't compare....but are you shooting raw on your phone? I think that would help with the over sharpening.

Nope, shooting HEIC now. I have Halide installed, but I can't get it to shoot RAW. I thought it was a bug on Halide's side. Whenever I shoot with the output set to normal RAW (DNG), the photos are never processed/saved, just a plain blank pic. Weird.

Yeah, that's a pretty big disparity if the 6D is much closer to "reality". I usually look at my iPhone (13 Pro Max) pics as I shoot them, and do a quick comparison vs. what I'm seeing, and they're generally pretty close (unless it's a low light situation or something).

Yes, the 6D is much closer. Despite the iPhone's insistence, my table is wood-colored, not pale gray For reference, here's yet another picture, this time from a Samsung Galaxy M31:

It's worse than the 6D photo (too cold), but still closer to reality than the iPhone's.

I took the liberty of messing with your image - hope you don't mind. Just took a minute of time.

The first thing I noticed the color temperature of your iPhone image was much cooler. So in Lightroom I dragged the temperature slider towards the reds to warm it up a bit. Then added some negative Clarity to soften the image up a little, and also reduced contrast a little. And then dragged a gradient over the lower left corner and reduced highlights.

As to why your phone is behaving that way, I don't know. I have a 12 Pro iPhone and don't see that.

Whoa! That's much better. I tried doing something similar, but I couldn't improve it that much. What bothers me is that by changing the white point so the overall color looks correct, the highlights of the image look slightly too warm.

 

[Andropov]

So I'm still using an iPhone 8+ so really can't compare....but are you shooting raw on your phone? I think that would help with the over sharpening.

I got RAWs working! After a reboot Halide is saving photos again. It definitely seems to be a problem with the iPhone's post processing, here's a close-up comparison of Halide RAW -> JPEG vs Camera app JPEG. It's super obvious when photographing text. I always get those terrible light halos around text when using the 1x camera.

Anyone here can confirm their iPhone 13 doesn't do this when shooting text from the Camera app with the 1x lens? I'm thinking on taking it to the Apple Store, but I'm worried they'll tell me it's the intended behaviour.

 

[Cmaier]

I got RAWs working! After a reboot Halide is saving photos again. It definitely seems to be a problem with the iPhone's post processing, here's a close-up comparison of Halide RAW -> JPEG vs Camera app JPEG. It's super obvious when photographing text. I always get those terrible light halos around text when using the 1x camera.

Anyone here can confirm their iPhone 13 doesn't do this when shooting text from the Camera app with the 1x lens? I'm thinking on taking it to the Apple Store, but I'm worried they'll tell me it's the intended behaviour.

The recent iPhones are known to excessively post-process, though I haven’t done any detailed testing myself (I don’t rely on my iPhone camera very much).

 

[Citysnaps]

I got RAWs working! After a reboot Halide is saving photos again. It definitely seems to be a problem with the iPhone's post processing, here's a close-up comparison of Halide RAW -> JPEG vs Camera app JPEG. It's super obvious when photographing text. I always get those terrible light halos around text when using the 1x camera.

Anyone here can confirm their iPhone 13 doesn't do this when shooting text from the Camera app with the 1x lens? I'm thinking on taking it to the Apple Store, but I'm worried they'll tell me it's the intended behaviour.

I don't have a 13, but yeah, that in-camera jpeg looks way over-sharpened.

I wonder if that's intentional believing the *average* iPhone shooter isn't fussy about getting things in focus?

 

[Citysnaps]

I sure wish the RAW button in the camera app was sticky (including after quiting and then later opening the camera app). Rather than being semi-sticky reverting back to jpeg after a few minutes of not shooting. Or at least have a user option to make it hard-sticky.

 

[Eric]

I don't know about how/if it posts processes RAW files, by nature it comes out looking dull and listless with no processing but I would have a look at the different "styles" that are new to the iPhone 13. By default though, it's much like a point and shoot and as Cmaier mentioned it will do all the processing in the phone as you shoot.

How to use iPhone 13 Photographic Styles - 9to5Mac

This detailed guide covers how to use iPhone 13 Photographic Styles including initial set up, changing styles on the fly, and more.

9to5mac.com

 

[Andropov]

I wonder if that's intentional believing the *average* iPhone shooter isn't fussy about getting things in focus?

I was wondering that too, but the effect is so strong in some photos that I'm having a hard time believing it to be intentional. It looks bad, even from afar.

I don't know about how/if it posts processes RAW files, by nature it comes out looking dull and listless with no processing but I would have a look at the different "styles" that are new to the iPhone 13. By default though, it's much like a point and shoot and as Cmaier mentioned it will do all the processing in the phone as you shoot.

How to use iPhone 13 Photographic Styles - 9to5Mac

This detailed guide covers how to use iPhone 13 Photographic Styles including initial set up, changing styles on the fly, and more.

9to5mac.com

I'll try them out, but I believe those filters only change white point and tint. It would be nice if iOS 16 introduced a 'don't oversharpen my pictures' photo style

 

[Citysnaps]

I take it you'd prefer not shooting in RAW?

 

[DT]

I wonder if it's a slightly off camera assembly and in attempting to correct some kind of lens issue, the post processing goofs it up.

 

[Andropov]

I take it you'd prefer not shooting in RAW?

I don't *mind* shooting RAW, but it's a bit cumbersome to need to do that for a point and shoot camera.

I wonder if it's a slightly off camera assembly and in attempting to correct some kind of lens issue, the post processing goofs it up.

It's possible. I'll see if I can go to the Apple Store and compare it against the display iPhone 13's to see if they behave the same.

 

[kenoh]

Have you got the Smart HDR setting turned on? is it that that is mangling the images? turned it off on my ipad.

Settings -> Camera -> Smart HDR

Also, maybe you have the creative controls turned on in preserve settings - so it is keeping nasty settings from someone using it previously? - did you let a friend use it and they messed with it?