Why does my iPhone 12 Pro Max Photo auto adjust exposure of a photo taken with the Camera app?

visitor123 wrote:

This was Apple Support’s reply when I contacted them about this: “After researching this, this is an expected behavior for that device, it shows the image preview and it's followed by the fully processed image.”

Are you shooting RAW? Apple Pro RAW files need developing after the photo has been taken to create a final image version from the RAW file. And the finished and developed version may look different from the first, basic preview of the RAW file.

Apple ProRAW (iOS 14.3) On iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, you can take photos in Apple ProRAW to edit images with higher levels of creative control. See Take Apple ProRAW photos.

About Apple ProRAW - Apple Support

This was Apple Support’s reply when I contacted them about this: “After researching this, this is an expected behavior for that device, it shows the image preview and it's followed by the fully processed image.”

This has been irritating me for a while and I finally took time out last week to contact the apple support and did some analysis of my own.

This is what I found. I would love if you guys also can try this.

Conclusion: The photo actually does not change, it's just the brightness of the screen which adjusts automatically to make the pic look brighter. It does that a lot initially and later stops getting brighter. Eventually the photo itself is dull, you can check that by seeing the pic on a computer.

How to check that: Take a photo and transfer it immediately, then wait for a few minutes or hours until you see the problem again (photo becomes dull). Now transfer the pic to your computer again and compare it with the one you transferred earlier. You will notice that both the pics are the same and there is no difference. Bad news, the original photo is dull.

Worst part is, by default the photo is dull, you know this as soon as you look it up on a computer. Plus one good way is to compare with similar photo taken from another phone, especially try to capture something white or with white background. I compared with Samsung note 10 plus and white is actually white in Samsung, in iPhone 12 pro max, it looks more like off white or with dull lighting. Only some photos taken in bright sunlight look good. I even tried increasing the exposure and everything before taking the pic, but even then Samsung note 10 plus takes better and brighter pics.

I noticed that after a while after taking the pic, the preview (which shows all the pics in the gallery) seemed dull, and as soon as I open the phot it became dull, you can see the transition when you click back on the full screen photo and it goes back to the preview. the screen's brightness plays with our minds and lets us think that the brightness and exposure is fine, so we end up not even changing the exposure and all (which we ideally should not have to if the phone took better pics in the 1st place)

This is actually very unacceptable for a phone which is advertised as the best camera photo. Many other phones can take a better photo, and you can see the real difference when you put them together and compare them on a same screen like on a laptop.

So after discussion with a senior analyst in apple and the response that he received from the engineers, they said that the photo itself does not change and there is no problem with the hardware or software and the phone is functioning AS EXPECTED and it has a NORMAL BEHAVIOUR.

They only thing they suggested me is to go to apple.com/feedback and provide a feedback so that they can improve on it.

I have an iPhone 12 Pro Max and I was also frustrated by over sharpening and over exposure of pictures. After doing a lot of research I found out that this is happening bcoz of Deep Fusion. Then I purchased Halide Mark II app and it has the option to disabled Deep Fusion. And now all the pictures are just like before very natural looking plus they even offer ProRAW options also. Its totally worth the money.

I think this is the only option to PURCHASE HALIDE MARK II APP AND DISABLE DEEP FUSION.

Because apple is not even listening to the complaints made on discussions.apple.com

This site is a total waste of time.

I have tried turning off night mode. But unfortunately the photos are still brighter and over exposed. I went to apple store and they said that it is the expected behavior.

I am using moment app since then and I am very happy with the photo quality. In moment camera app, there is an option to disable deep fusion. (Because of deep fusion only the photos are brighter and over sharpened) I have disabled deep fusion and now the photos look very natural just like my iPhone XR photos used to look ♥️

I’m so happy I finally got to fix it. I downloaded and installed the new software 15.2.1. I then went to settings then camera then to formats and then turned on the apple pro raw option. I think this works for Pros only but now the pictures are gorgeous and they no longer change to those dark and dull ones due to deep fusion.

I found a way to get the original photo back, I hope it works for other people too. Go to the photo, click edit, then ‘auto’ but don’t adjust any of it, then done. Takes you back to the original colour and contrast of the photo even though you technically made no changes. I don’t know why it does this. Every time I took a photo then go to view it, it would flatten the shadows and adjust the colour to a blueish tone. I tried turning off the auto-adjust but it doesn’t do anything. The only thing that works is if you click auto in edits. iPhones are expensive but the software is really lacking. They always care more about the phone design and appearance rather than how it operates and the bugs.

Just to be clear, the iPhone AI always applies changes to the images. Multiple images with different exposure values are taken in milliseconds and multiple algorithms are running in the background to get the best out of a scene. If you want to see the ordinary output, take a picture of high contrast motive in RAW format. The low light areas are too dark and highlights look overexposed. You need to develop those images to make them look nice. Exactly this happens when shooting JPG - the iPhone SW does the post-processing and develops the pictures. If you feel your iPhone is doing too much optimization, try to tweak the camera settings as mentioned before. If this won't help, I'd suggest to check the device by Apple Store staff.

This has been irritating me for a while and I finally took time out last week to contact the apple support and did some analysis of my own.

This is what I found. I would love if you guys also can try this.

Conclusion: The photo actually does not change, it's just the brightness of the screen which adjusts automatically to make the pic look brighter. It does that a lot initially and later stops getting brighter. Eventually the photo itself is dull, you can check that by seeing the pic on a computer.

How to check that: Take a photo and transfer it immediately, then wait for a few minutes or hours until you see the problem again (photo becomes dull). Now transfer the pic to your computer again and compare it with the one you transferred earlier. You will notice that both the pics are the same and there is no difference. Bad news, the original photo is dull.

Worst part is, by default the photo is dull, you know this as soon as you look it up on a computer. Plus one good way is to compare with similar photo taken from another phone, especially try to capture something white or with white background. I compared with Samsung note 10 plus and white is actually white in Samsung, in iPhone 12 pro max, it looks more like off white or with dull lighting. Only some photos taken in bright sunlight look good. I even tried increasing the exposure and everything before taking the pic, but even then Samsung note 10 plus takes better and brighter pics.

I noticed that after a while after taking the pic, the preview (which shows all the pics in the gallery) seemed dull, and as soon as I open the phot it became dull, you can see the transition when you click back on the full screen photo and it goes back to the preview. the screen's brightness plays with our minds and lets us think that the brightness and exposure is fine, so we end up not even changing the exposure and all (which we ideally should not have to if the phone took better pics in the 1st place)

This is actually very unacceptable for a phone which is advertised as the best camera photo. Many other phones can take a better photo, and you can see the real difference when you put them together and compare them on a same screen like on a laptop.

So after discussion with a senior analyst in apple and the response that he received from the engineers, they said that the photo itself does not change and there is no problem with the hardware or software and the phone is functioning AS EXPECTED and it has a NORMAL BEHAVIOUR.

They only thing they suggested me is to go to apple.com/feedback and provide a feedback so that they can improve on it.

I had this issue too, but I found you can change some settings to get an image pretty close to the preview.

First, go to Settings > Camera and then > Preserve Settings. In this section, turn everything on (green). This means any settings you change in the camera app will stay that way, and not snap back to the weird defaults.

Next, go back out to the main Camera settings, find Scene Detection and turn it off. I feel like this is the biggest culprit for making photos weird. Let *me* detect my own scenes, thanks!

I also have smart HDR turned off.

So that’s settings. Now in the camera app, keep everything stripped back. Flash off, HDR off.

The night mode auto actually works ok with scene detection off, and works better on than off completely. I drop exposure a little (-0.3) because I don’t want my photos blowing out.

So far, this is giving me photos I like. Hope it helps you :)

Same thing. There is no official solution bc according to Apple there is no problem. This is how they are supposed to look, according to them. What I’ve done, and has worked:

Download the third part camera app Halide

i believe it’s $10

They have a settings option to turn off deep fusion. Photos look much better for me using this app.

My images also looked terribly over-processed on my new iPhone 12 pro max and that was related to "View Full HDR" setting being activated in the Photos app. After turning it off, the images look more natural and well balanced, as usually known from iPhone.

Check to see what is enabled under ‘Preserve Settings’ in Camera settings. If either ‘Creative Controls’ or ‘Exposure Adjustment’ are enabled, switch them off. Enabling these settings tells the Camera to preserve the last adjustment and/or filter selection you made, and apply it to every photo until you change settings. By disabling these features, camera & adjustments fully reset after each photo.

Hey I Found the culprit of this issue for me . My pictures would have this grayed out dullness to them especially in the sun but when I uploaded to a third party app and saved it to my phone it had the version I saw while taking the photo .

The images are the same as when you took them it’s just showing the hdr version. I know I know you don’t see hdr in camera settings for the latest update 15. It’s in photos settings instead . Go to settings , find photos , then click off “view full hdr” and immediately you can go back to your photos and all your pics are just as you saw and took them initially. This fixed the issue I was having hopefully it works for you too!

No it doesn’t. It has nothing to do with HDR. It’s a post processing process that we have no control over.