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Comment by Espressosaurus

3 years ago

Iphones already HDR the crap out of their photos. Saturation put to max levels for that pop, colors looking only vaguely like they really did.

The contrast between what my camera raw with a stock profile puts out and what my iphone puts out is striking, and it's very clear the iphone's version of reality is optimized for Instagram and maximum color punch at the cost of looking real.

Thing is, that's what people like. So that's what we're getting.

Reality be damned.

12 comments

Espressosaurus

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astrange  3 years ago

The iPhone camera is tuned for realistic color unless you've left the style setting on Vibrant. I guess it doesn't have an "even less vibrant" style.

It does have higher than real contrast, but that's because images are 8-bit - if you don't try to fill the range, it's going to look low quality with banding artifacts.

  • goosedragons  3 years ago

    But it seems to do weird stuff like remove shadows off people's faces.

    https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/06/mkbhd-post-processing-ruining...

    • astrange  3 years ago

      Yeah, it exposes people in the foreground differently than the rest of the picture. That's still trying to fit them into 8-bit - basically it's trying to avoid the "black people don't activate soap dispensers" effect where dark skin isn't visible in a dark picture. (Also, if the user is only looking at a face in the picture, or if the face has a different lighting source than the rest of it, then it makes sense to calculate its exposure separately too.)

      Larger cameras don't do that specific one as much ("dynamic range optimizer" or HDR programs do some of it), but they do care about skin in white balance and autofocus, and then photographers care when they're setting up flashes.

      It's somewhat overtuned here though.

runjake  3 years ago

You can turn it all off in settings, if you’d like. You can also flip a switch and get RAWs.