Understanding filters and photographic styles
By default, your iPhone works hard to capture a portrait’s true colors and tones, however the Camera app also enables you to adjust a photo’s look for creative purposes.
For example, you may want to boost colors for a more vibrant portrait, have a stronger contrast to make the subject stand out, or cool down colors for an atmospheric effect. You may want to create a striking monochrome shot that evokes a vintage film noir look. The iPhone provides two tools to creatively adjust a shot’s colors — Photographic Styles and Filters.
Photographic Styles produce subtle color and tonal changes. On supported iPhone models, go to Settings > Camera > Photo Capture >
Photographic Styles. Swipe between five different Photographic Style presets to change the look of every portrait as you snap it. The default preset — Standard — produces true colors. Rich Contrast gives darker shadows and richer colors. Vibrant creates brighter and more vivid colors. Warm adds golden undertones while Cool creates a bluer, cooler look. Tap Use to choose a style. You’ll need to shoot in JPEG or HEIF format for a Photographic Style to be applied — styles won’t be applied if you shoot in Raw.
In the Camera app, choose a different Photographic Style by swiping up and tapping the Styles icon. Each style’s Tone and Warmth slider lets you customize a style’s default look (for example, you can swipe to change a style from Warm to Cool). There’s also a Reset option to change a custom style back to its default.
An alternative way to creatively change a portrait’s colors and tones is to use Filters. These produce more dramatic results than Photographic Styles, and there are more filters to choose from as you can see from the images above. From left to right we have Original, Vivid, Vivid Warm, Vivid Cool, Dramatic, Dramatic Warm, Dramatic Cool, Mono, Silvertone and Noir filters.
Unlike Photographic Styles, you can edit a filter’s look after you’ve applied it. After tapping the Photo app’s Filters icon, you can dial down the strength of a filter, swap it for another one or remove it completely. Unlike Photographic Styles, you can apply filters to Raw files.