Ayup! This one follows my last post on Apple’s outrageous HDR settings and over-baked images. Since then, I’ve been tinkering and experimenting. Three solutions, one of which I’ll be sticking with. If you’re looking to un-fuck your iPhone photos, this one’s for you…
It’s no secret that mobile photography is getting worse, rather than better. Phone brands primarily cater to non-photographers. Discussing the matter over on Mastodon, Matteo Franchi hit the nail on the head:
This is done on purpose to allow everyone to feel like a great photographer and bring home excellent results even when that’s not the case. For the average consumer an image is perceived as good based on different parameters compared to a photographer.
But still, your mobile is the camera that’s always with you. Photographers should still expect to be able to create usable shots. What’s more, in the right conditions, the iPhone camera remains a solid bit of tech. It simply needs to be reigned in a bit sometimes.
Unprocessing iPhone Photos
The primary objective here is to achieve natural-looking photos. Ultimately, we want them to appear like they were taken on an actual camera. Less processed, less sharp, less crunchy. Yes please!
Thankfully, this is still possible. Here are the three techniques I’ve been playing around with over the last week. The main goals were:
- To be able to remove/disable HDR
- To be able to reduce over-sharpening
- To dial in more of a film look
1. Apple ProRAW & Affinity
First up, I thought I’d try reverting back to ProRAW. Way less processing, hopefully. Well, not quite. HDR was still present, which is the main issue here. Thankfully, when you open a ProRAW file in Affinity, it doesn’t bring in any of the processing or HDR settings.
That said, it presents a very poor-looking image. Not just a flat, RAW-looking photo, either. It turns it crazy bright. When it opens in the develop module, you need to bring the exposure down to get it somewhere close to a viable starting point. Not ideal.
Additionally, you can open any other iPhone photo file type in Affinity, and it will remove HDR. This I certainly will be using. For any complex edits, I can simply open up a JPG and get to work. Winner!
The iPhone’s computational photography mad science can turn murky-looking shots into unnaturally gorgeous shots. However, some people are pushing back against the extensive post-processing that your iPhone does on every picture.
Apple once proudly stated that the iPhone can process 4 trillion operations per photo. Meanwhile, Gen Z is gravitating toward basic digital cameras with zero operations per photo.
2. No Fusion Camera App
Next up, I found a rather incredible camera app called No Fusion. In a way, this is the perfect solution for undigitised photos. It’s based around film simulations and has the option to completely disable HDR.
The issue of over-sharpening on iPhones has long been a pain point, as excessive processing by the system’s algorithms often results in unnatural-looking images.
No Fusion innovatively utilizes the Apple ProRAW pipeline along with its own calibration and compression algorithms. This produces a more natural and softer image.
The app is an absolute bargain at only £30 for a lifetime deal. It offers film presets from the likes of Fuji, Kodak, Leica and Ricoh. And yes, you do get a much more natural-looking photo with zero processing.
I very nearly went all-in. As with any third-party camera app, though, it has its downsides. In certain lighting conditions, it doesn’t perform as well as you’d like it to. Additionally, saving each image is really quite slow. That said, I can highly recommend trying it out for yourself. You get a one-week free trial to do just that. I may return to this one for further experiments…
3. JPEG & Photomator
Where I finally landed was exactly where I started, but with a different editing process. I’ve always preferred the stock camera app on any phone. Despite the over-processing, I often seem to get the best results this way.
I love to shoot JPG, and achieve much of the look I want in-camera. For this, I tend to use 40MP JPEG alongside a photographic style. For black and white, I use Stark B&W, and for colour, I use Dramatic or Natural.
For certain shots, I also use ProRAW set to JPEG-XL Lossless. These seem to be much better for macro work, and import flawlessly to Photomator.
Photographic Styles intelligently adjust specific colors in different parts of your photos to create a customized look. The style you select applies automatically to all photos you take, but you can make adjustments in Camera or edits later in the Photos app.
The most important part of this process is the editing stage. In Photomator (desktop version, unsure about the iOS version), you have a very clear HDR button. Your photo will likely import with it switched on. All you have to do is switch it off.
The image will instantly appear duller, but just needs a few lighting tweaks to recover it back to its former glory. Furthermore, to bring it back down to earth a tad, we can remove the excess sharpening.
Although you can’t go into a negative on the sharpening slider, you can with clarity and texture. This helps to remove the crunchiness and give a softer look to your photo. Touch of grain and vignette, job’s a good’n!
I personally am very tired of the HDR, super detailed, crisp photos that our phones and cameras take. I’m always going out of my way to work against this.
The Final Edit
Ultimately, removing HDR, over-processing and excessive sharpening from your iPhone photos just takes a bit of knowledge, time and effort. If you want a cleaner starting point or quicker workflow, consider using the No Fusion camera app (or something similar).
For straight-out-of-camera (phone) images that are ready to share instantly, I’d say this is actually your best bet.
Both are fully workable techniques that result in the same end goal: more natural and authentic photos. The HDR issue continues to baffle me, but at least there are a few available workarounds.
For now, I’m bringing Photomator back into the mix after mainly relying on Affinity for a while. I’m eternally grateful for the HDR button. As yet, I’ve not seen this in any other editing software. The first thing I’ll be doing on every edit is turning that bad boy well and truly off.