iPhone 13 ProMax HDR photos oversaturated (i.e look fake)

Thanks. It feels like something that will be fixed in the future. In many scenes the automatic settings are great, just some bugs in the edge cases I guess. (At least that’s how this would be interpreted in the the open source world!)

fingers crossed for a bug fix :)

Thanks for correcting. I haven’t found ProRaw to be of any help with this particular issue but have to admit I’m not one to mess with a bunch of third party apps to dig too deeply into each photo. Like to just point, shoot and use native tools to occasionally tweak. This level of process is where the suffering is occurring. I did forget in my comment that ProRaw is unique to the pro models and appreciate you clarifying.

I think you need to call Apple Care - every time I spoke to someone they were not aware of the problem or know about this forum. I was told it was a physical update not a software update. At any rate for my purposes I sold my 13 pro max and went back to the 11 pro max.

Clearly, you haven't paid attention to the original question. Preferences aside, Apple removed the option to turn HDR off or on. Regardless of your preference, sunset photos look awful and cannot be adjusted in how the image is captured. I'm sure your phone has the Thomas Kincaid option turned on, but the rest of us want to turn it off and we can't.

Given the photo was taken at what appears to be sunrise or sunset, colors may have been shifted slightly as the camera tried to set the proper white balance for the buildings.

For zoom shots, make sure you are using optical rather than digital zoom; the latter will always look somewhat bad due to the need to enlarge existing pixels.

I'm not concerned about the oversaturation issue. That can be easily addressed in Photoshop/Lightroom. My big complaint with HDR--and, moreover, the 13's forced HDR--is the flattening of the tonality. Sure it's great, in general, that your highlights and shadows contain more detail to work with, but a lot times that is not needed and THAT's when I'd like to be able to turn off HDR.

Case in point: I took a picture of someone in a wide, open air situation with the sun setting to one side but diffused by some thin clouds on the horizon. On the subject's other side was wide open water so there was little secondary light filling in that side of them. You would expect the subject to have a well-lit side and a darkish opposite side. But thanks to HDR their sun-side was knocked back--to the point of flattening the person's features--and the darker side being goosed-up so it was very nearly the same value as the sun side. And as someone who has been working with Photoshop since its v1.0.7 I can tell you that is not satisfactorily correctable.

I'd increasingly cut back on lugging around my DSLR as phone cameras improved so I was very excited about the buzz around the 13. But this HDR situation has me shooting less with it, not more. So disappointing, to say the least.

Thanks I’m well aware of Apples return policy. I disagree, the photo looks fake. The sunset colours were a lot softer in person and I prefer natural shots over what looks to be highly edited, over saturated shots. I agree with most others, Apple definitely need to sort this issue out with their next IPhone.

So you’re saying we should ignore our lyin’ eyes? I hardly think it matters what photo bloggers think. We (who are displeased) beg to differ.

As per my previous post, I’m not bothered by any perceived over-saturation. Yes, that can be processed out. What can’t be processed out is what’s bugging me. Highlights are knocked back and shadows lightened—just as what would happen with any other HDR process: as what happened on an iPhone back <when we had a choice>—and I, for one, find that disturbing. I know my way around photoshop and any attempts to rectify that particular issue results in a decidedly inferior product.

Anyway, I don’t think the issue is whether the end results are acceptable or not. The crux of the problem is that they took away our ability to choose.

Point by point:

—I do use RAW. Exclusively.

—I didn’t spend all this money on a purportedly excellent camera to have to turn around and get (pay for?) another app to fix what I feel needs fixing.

—To reiterate, IMO the HDR processing renders certain aspects unfixable, e.g. the flattened highlights/goosed shadows. Any attempts to deepen the shadows to recreate the look (most often the human face) originally observed creates unacceptable color saturation in that shadow and deepens other shadows to an undesirable level.

—I’m sure you’re right about the Insta effect. But this “forced populism” is what I find unacceptable. I see no reason for Apple to summarily deprive those who want it the ability to turn off the HDR processing. The technology already existed so it’s not like they had to reinvent the wheel here.

—Face detection is not comparable. It can be enabled and disabled at will.

I'm in a lot of trouble with the 13 Pro Max's camera. When I take a selfie or a normal picture, the extra color adjusts and makes my face silver. When i make a video, everyone's face becomes ugly by adjusting the color. I can't get rid of this problem at all. I'm very disappointed. 😭😭😭

Me too. It never occurred for me that Apple would ruin their previously great camera and photo app like this. They advertise the enhancements of the new camera capabilities but this is a huge step backwards.

People buy the phone for other reasons and take the good with the bad. It doesn't mean they love every aspect of the phone. Particularly when they are locked into the ecosystem. I for one, bought the 13 mini because it is the smallest iPhone available, but chose the 13 mini over the 12 mini because the sales pitch was the improved camera. So I'm doubly disappointed that the images are so bad. But I took your advice and downloaded Halide and so far so good, but I will have to use it under more conditions to see whether it is easy enough to use as the default camera software. But when I've paid a premium price for the latest iPhone it is not what you expect to have the native camera software downgraded like this.

As a helpful heads up to potential iPhone 13 buyers out there reading this thread and considering which iPhone to buy, two of my posts were deleted in which I was agreeing with EJFlags and others who don't like the fake over processing of images that can't be reversed back to a natural look any more in the iPhone 13 camera software, and I regret not buying an earlier iPhone model. So where some commenters on this thread are stating that most people are happy with the iPhone 13 camera software because they are not complaining, it is impossible to know how many other comments are being deleted as well. My previous iPhone SE 1st gen took much more natural looking images which could be easily oversaturated in the app if that is what people prefer and the excellent sliders I used on it all the time did not remove image quality with every manipulation as they do in the iPhone 13 mini. There was also no necessity to have to manipulate the images to make them look natural (mostly! Although I was never happy with the over saturation of reds it used to do as the reds were harder to tone down without ruining the rest of the image even with the iPhone SE 1st gen). So my constructive advice is if you prefer a natural looking scenery photo or skin colouring, choose an earlier model iPhone.

Well at least I now know why my posts have been removed, apart from them containing a detailed critique, as they were certainly not any less conversational than many other posts here, and that is that I cannot mention a certain company's policies.

It is not reasonable to expect users of a premium phone to know they have to rush out and do a hike so they can photograph scenery in low light, at sunset and in a variety of shadow and other lighting situations within a 14 day period in order to get a refund if the selling point of the phone is the supposedly improved camera software, especially when the user loved the old software and does not interpret the terms “improved” or “advanced” to indicate the software would actually go backwards from the situation they know they liked.