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

But it is a change that occurs only in the screen display of the iPhone. If you download the image to your computer, to your Mac, that artificial contrast is not produced.

I believe “creative controls” and “exposure adjustment” under preserve settings are just to keep the settings on the camera so that if you exit the camera then you’ll have the same settings after you come back. It don’t affect the gallery after taking the pic, Unless there’s a bug.

This is so frustrating. I would still be okay if it enhances the pictures. But I take good photos and the phone adjusts it later and makes all my pics look so bad, as if all photos were taken in very low light and from a cheap quality phone. The video is good, it appears bright. Is there a way I can contact the apple support via email or something? I’ll try to find.

I had same issue! I had preordered iphone 12, thought it might me the unit itself so I returned! And got iphone 12 mini! Same issue with it! Returned it again! Thinking Maybe I got bad batch and went to apple store to buy from them myself! Got iphone 12! Walla same issue! Apple is not addressing these issues with update and on youtube all I hear is best camera bla bla bla! Seems like they get paid to review them! I don’t believe them now! This is frustrating! Camera is the only thing I hate on iphone 12 now! I did talk to support and it seems they can’t do **** about it!

I am sooooo disappointed. I have iPhone 12 Pro (iOS 14.4.4) and have the same problem. I bought it, since apple advertised it as best smartphone camera on the planet. I tried to switch on/off Camera Settings in different combinations but nothing helped really. The photos looks good initially but after few seconds background processing they become worst. Another problem is the selfie mode, when I take a selfie my face look so unrealistic as I would apply filters to soften my skin. Shame on A...

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.

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've moved on! After 8 yrs in apple ecosystem! I'm happy with samsung s21 now after trying 3 iphone 12 and an iphone 12 mini with same issue! Apple will not do anything! Maybe they'll do things differently on the next iphone 13! Can u imagine what will happen if they admit fault! They'll avoid it! Sorry guys who r stuck with the current iphone 12! I'm glad I got to return them on time! My wife's older iphone XR has better! Disappointment

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 :)

Update: this doesn’t work either. Camera+ 2 still leverages deep fusion. Need to download a “pro” camera app like Halide where you have a true RAW option + option to disable deep fusion post processing.

It’s called the iPhone awful move for idiots. They now cater to the general population who thinks adding sharpness to photos looks great. It’s very sad that after spending so much money Apple is changing my photos to some standardized commercial looking bs they decided for me. I’ll have to buy a photo app to use on my iPhone because Apple just wasn’t capable enough to give us what we actually need. So then what’s the point of this phone? I am going to sell it, get rid of my ICloud and move to a different platform. I already feel trapped anough

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!

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.

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 made a picture which looks better with the "view full HDR" option. I. e., when I view the picture in the Photos app, first it looks less natural (the bright light of the sun is corrected too much), then after e few seconds of processing it looks more natural. It actually looks really great and I would like to find a way to share (export) the processed "view full HDR" version of the picture. I have not succeeded so far. Even on my MacBook Pro I can only see the "original" version of the picture.