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iPhone SE (2022) What the hell, Apple?

H

HalfFullmoon

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 29, 2021
261
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I upgraded (more like downgraded) to a SE 2022 from iPhone 8 and I am surprised that no one seems to care about this, but why is Apple photoshopping my selfies? I speak specifically of Apple auto-brightening my face, or in rare occasions, auto-darkening my face. I want the selfie to be what I see on the screen, not Apple's idea of what should be. Is that too much to ask for? If I wanted it to be brighter, I can do that myself, even after the photo was taken. Seems this problem is affecting all new iPhone users: Ios15 iPhone 13 brightens every dark photo. In my case, the photos don't have to be dark to begin with. My iPhone 8 with the latest iOS update doesn't do this.

This is going to be a deal breaker for me. I am thinking of switching to S22.
 
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Yup. It's Apple's new 'computational photography' and it's garbage for anyone who wants control over their images. They implemented it starting with iPhone 11 and it's gotten progressively worse. There are many threads about it here. It was implemented for the FB and instagram crowd who wants everything too look story book cartoonish. It will probably continue to get even more aggressive in future iPhones. The really sad part is they could add a toggle to turn it off but they won't even do that. The reason your 8 doesn't do it with ios15 is that there are hardware dependencies.
 
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HalfFullmoon said:
I upgraded (more like downgraded) to a SE 2022 from iPhone 8 and I am surprised that no one seems to care about this, but why is Apple photoshopping my selfies? I speak specifically of Apple auto-brightening my face, or in rare occasions, auto-darkening my face. I want the selfie to be what I see on the screen, not Apple's idea of what should be. Is that too much to ask for? If I wanted it to be brighter, I can do that myself, even after the photo was taken. Seems this problem is affecting all new iPhone users: Ios15 iPhone 13 brightens every dark photo. In my case, the photos don't have to be dark to begin with. My iPhone 8 with the latest iOS update doesn't do this.

This is going to be a deal breaker for me. I am thinking of switching to S22.
Click to expand...

The S22 line will over-soften your face on selfies, even with that function turned off... so, which is the lesser of two evils for you?
 
Every smartphone, including S22, is using computational photography.

There are 3rd party camera apps that you can use to eliminate and/or change the issues you have with Apple’s default approach.

The built in app does have some options for controlling your photos.

iPhones are some of the highest rated phones for cameras. So even if there is a crowd of people with the same issues you have, it is a minuscule sample. Plus, Apple has a tendency to write their apps with their way or the highway mentality. But again… 3rd party apps exist.

Good luck. I recommend buying a DSLR if you are really that concerned with how you look in your selfies.
 
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You have to be prepared to accept compromise in any phone camera, in my experience. As previously mentioned, that Samsung you mentioned uses pretty aggressive smoothing on selfies, from what I’ve read.
 
Just returned my S22 Ultra and am going back to my iPhone 13 Pro. As others have said - if you don't like Apple's photo manipulations, you *really* aren't going to like Samsung's. Skin softening/beautification, even when you've "disabled" the feature. Also it really screws with skin tones.

I was also disappointed in the main cameras on the S22U. The telephotos are great and the portrait mode produces nice shots, but the main 108MP camera is surprisingly bad at capturing detail - both in 12 MP "binned" mode, and 108 MP with and without "detail enhancer" enabled.

And that shutter lag - unfortunately something that has plagued Samsung for years and continues to do so. When taking side-by-side photos with my iPhone 13 Pro, the S22U lagged by nearly a half a second.

Too bad, because I *loved* the display on that phone, and the telephoto cameras were truly brilliant. I really enjoyed being able to take photos at 10x optical zoom.
 
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In my reading, I discovered on trick that lets you circumvent Apple's crappy processing. You can take a pic with live photo turned on. Then select image after the first one. Apple processing only botches the first image. The rest are left unaltered. I KNOW, IKNOW. it's a kludgy workaround that shouldn't have to be, but it does work.
 
It's probably the SmartHDR algorithm.

Note that my S21 also behaves similarly, even with autoHDR turned off. Seems like it has become expected to auto adjust highlights/shadows. So before you buy your S22, maybe test it out in a store first.

For me, as long as it only adjusts the highlights/shadows, I don't particularly mind. But what's annoying is when a phone starts putting beauty filters by default (like many Chinese phones).
 
Just use a third party app like Moment, Halide, or Reeflex. No computational photos are added to the third party apps.
 
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HalfFullmoon said:
I upgraded (more like downgraded) to a SE 2022 from iPhone 8 and I am surprised that no one seems to care about this, but why is Apple photoshopping my selfies? I speak specifically of Apple auto-brightening my face, or in rare occasions, auto-darkening my face. I want the selfie to be what I see on the screen, not Apple's idea of what should be. Is that too much to ask for? If I wanted it to be brighter, I can do that myself, even after the photo was taken. Seems this problem is affecting all new iPhone users: Ios15 iPhone 13 brightens every dark photo. In my case, the photos don't have to be dark to begin with. My iPhone 8 with the latest iOS update doesn't do this.

This is going to be a deal breaker for me. I am thinking of switching to S22.
Click to expand...
The 13 mini does this, it makes my SO skin lighter! But unnaturally looking.
 
jav6454 said:
I believe the selfie algorithm was tuned down a while ago. It used to be worse in terms of "beautification".
Click to expand...
Imo in Apple’s case, it’s unintentional and more like a side effect of smart HDR. You can imagine the function of HDR, lightening shadows and reducing highlights, on a human face. The end result might look like beautification.

It’s unlike the Chinese phones that intentionally coded it for faces and put it as a feature. ?
 
ian87w said:
Imo in Apple’s case, it’s unintentional and more like a side effect of smart HDR. You can imagine the function of HDR, lightening shadows and reducing highlights, on a human face. The end result might look like beautification.

It’s unlike the Chinese phones that intentionally coded it for faces and put it as a feature. ?
Click to expand...
Agreed. I for one think SmartHDR still needs tweaking.
 
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