7 Surprising Apple Photos Tools to Take Your iPhone Photography Game to the Next Level

You probably saw it beautifully #ShotoniPhone photos online and wondered why your brand new iPhone can’t produce similar results. The truth is that most viral images are heavily edited before being shared. While many photographers rely on Adobe Lightroom for fine color and detail adjustments, your iPhone’s built-in Photos app can be sufficient on its own. If you want to create professional-looking images without advanced third-party editors, these native tools can make all the difference.

1. Automatic portraits

Mobile photography is often instantaneous and time-sensitive. Maybe you see your photogenic friend (or fur baby) posing naturally and decide to take a quick photo before he moves. In these cases, it probably won’t occur to you to switch to portrait mode in the Camera app as you rush to capture the unplanned moment.

Fortunately, newer iPhones can automatically capture depth data under certain conditions. So even if you take the photo in normal shooting mode, it will still provide a portrait mode look. First make sure the relevant option is enabled by going to the Institutions app> Camera > and check again Portraits in photo mode switch.

Now when you take a close-up of a person, cat or dog, you can activate the depth effect in the Portrait tab of the default photo editor. In addition, you can change the highlighted subject by tapping anywhere on the photo, adjust the strength of the depth effect and add a lighting effect. These adjustments can help you transform your regular, candid photos into polished portraits.

2. Photographic styles

Photographic Styles are advanced filters that you can apply to images taken with recent iPhone models. Unlike traditional filters, Photographic Styles let you adjust the color, tone, and palette of a given image, giving you more control over the final look. In addition to the standard style, you can choose from 15 unique effects, ranging from subtle to dramatic. Once you’ve chosen one of the main styles in the photo editor, you can tap on it to further customize it and adjust the intensity using the sliders.

If you tend to use the same filter, you can set a default photographic style that will apply to all your future shots. Go to Institutions > Camera > Photographic stylesand follow the on-screen instructions.

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3. Image adjustments

Once you’ve chosen a photographic style, you can move on to finer image adjustments that further change the overall mood. Visit the To adjust tab in the default photo editor and go through all the available options. You have exposure, highlights, brightness, contrast, saturation, warmth, noise reduction and more. Drag each slider in either direction to see how it affects your photo in real time and choose the appropriate value for each adjustment accordingly.

For starters, I tend to lower the highlights to emphasize details, increase the shadows and drop the contrast to reveal hidden elements, and increase the saturation and vibrancy to add more color to dull shots. The formula can certainly differ depending on the lighting, subject, and intended mood of the image.

If you’re a beginner, you might want to tap the magic wand icon, which uses smart features on the device to automatically adjust many of the sliders. You can then track the changes, discover what each option does, and manually perform additional operations if necessary.

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4. Live Photo Effects

By default, most photos you take with your iPhone are Live Photos. The option records 1.5 seconds of video before and after each click, so you can watch a short clip of the captured moment when you tap and hold the photo. However, the capabilities go beyond just tapping and holding for video playback.

When you’re viewing a compatible image, you can tap Live label to the top left corner to display the available Live Photo effects. My favorite effect is Long Exposure, which merges the individual images it captured to create an artsy still from another life meh image.

Other fun effects include Loop and Bounce, which turn your Live Photos into GIF-like files that play automatically. In particular, you need to keep your hands still during the 3 second recording period to get reliable results across the board.

5. Clean up

Professional photographers often rely on cloning tools to hide blemishes and dust particles or to remove unwanted people or objects in the background. The Photos app offers an AI-powered utility that serves the same purpose. Go to the Clean up tab in the photo editor and wait for the system to process the image.

Once done, you can tap on detected intruders to immediately remove them from the photo. Otherwise, you can manually draw on the object or person you want to remove, and Apple Intelligence will do the rest. It’s worth noting that using Clean Up will change the photo’s metadata, and certain social media platforms will mark it as AI no matter how insignificant the edit is.

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6. Geometric corrections

After you’ve perfected the improvements above, you may want to make one final edit before sharing the final shot. Go to the Crop tab in the photo editor and use the sliders shown to straighten the image and correct perspective if necessary. You can also crop it to exclude unnecessary elements around the edges and refine the composition.

7. Batch operation

If you took multiple photos in the same setting, you won’t want to manually apply all of the above adjustments to each individual shot. Luckily, on any edited photo, you can tap and click on the three-dot menu Copy edits knob. This lets you select in detail the types of edits you want to copy, including image adjustments, photographic styles, crops, and more. You can then select a group of other photos and click Paste edits to apply them in batches.

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