Turn off Auto-Enhance / edit on iPhone

The auto enhancement is aweful. Apple PLEASE add an option to turn it of or at least make it possible to drastically decrease the effect. The only solution I’ve found for now is to turn off auto HDR in Photos and use Burst mode and take at least 2 pics and use one of those. This is not acceptable!

This article doesn’t tell you how to turn off the auto enhancement. I want my photos natural, I want to turn off the dang auto enhancement! Im mad that the iphone 13 takes the best photos but turns them into the worst of all the iphone pictures due to the horrible auto editing.

They are absolutely 101% aware of this happening. I used to work as a teir 2 tech and trainer for Apple. The second a tech hears “Deep Fusion” they should know exactly what that means. Also, “mosaic photo issue”. I have spoken with multiple techs and what comes out of some of their mouths is unbelievable.

I’m not sure actually where Apple gets off “automatically” blanket applying “enhancement” filters to every single photo, including RAW format but the goal is very simple and much like music recording. When recording music you want to start with a clean flat EQ uncolored signal that is gained properly. THEN you may choose to add color, efx, etc.

It’s like being handed a flattened photoshop file.. no way to make layer edits now.

So Apple makes home repairs impossible, cannot access the inside without voiding the warranty, can’t replace a battery, can’t upgrade memory, and now….. they’re choosing how all of your photos look for you.

The last rep I spoke with offered up this genius piece of advice.. “Sir you are welcome to go to apple.com/feedback and voice your concerns.”

Yeah lady, if I were going to take it that route I’d draft a well written open letter to Apple and see how many thousands of people to sign it, see how many tech and photo publications would run my letter for the love of what’s right.

Here’s all Apple has to do to fix this woeful business: Create an update.. hardware/firmware/software? to update the current version of ios and make this auto enhancement algorithm able to TURN OFF.

C’mon Apple jeez!!

Let me tell you its not a feature iam using my first iphone 13 pro at first i too annoyed about this then I studied about it and i have a solution its not a inbuilt camera feature or any algorithm just go to settings > photos> turn off view full hdr. Thats it your all photos will show normally so its not the issue of camera its the issue of photos app. Thank you

I have this issue too, it's terrible! I take a photo with perfect manual settings, then tap on it to see it and after one second of seeing the original it automatically gets enhanced, you're not able to undo this

UPDATE: I found an answer: https://appletoolbox.com/disable-photo-auto-enhance-iphone/

Basically it's a "feature" built into to phone chip by Apple and you can't undo it. All you can do is shoot in RAW (and have every single pic be 20 -30 MB). Congrats, Apple. Way to go. This is the worst scenario for photographers.

[Edited by Moderator]

I changed it to Raw and the highlights are still blown after the auto enhance. The only solution I’ve found is to use a third party camera app. When I do the pics are beautiful. The camera is obviously capable of taking beautiful photos when the horrendous software is hobbled. But you have to use a third party app? Ridiculous.

Let us turn off this trash auto HDR.

All the solutions people suggest are only ways to somehow by-pass the problem, but they aren’t solutions.

I tried

1. Using burst mode on the louder button
2. RAW
3. Portrait mode which always has been terrible - people look like puppets
4. Using another frame of a Live Photo. This works but a blurry photo shouldn’t be the solution.

Example: I made a picture of a fruit shake, which naturally looks soft. The post-processing enhanced all the shadows, highlights, and details like bubbles and grains so much that it looks like a glass of pink concrete. Like a very bad HDR. The “auto-enhance” enhances details in people’s faces so much, that they end up looking older (as every soft detail like soft wrinkles are enhanced) and the photo just doesn’t look natural (as every contour is strongly enhanced).

I am thinking of returning the phone, but if the issue isn’t fixed I won’t ever decide for Apple again. I am a hobby photographer, and like to use my phone in situations in which I don’t have my DSLR. I really regret deciding for Apple and not android.

Apple, please let your users turn off the post-processing! The post-processed photos look like an amateur tried to use photoshop, to create an HDR. In case this is done to compete in camera tests, it’s not an user-focused approach.

I found a solution for me. I have found if you take off live. And enable “burst” on your phone it won’t alter the photo. The only downside is the burst option you have to take multiple photos instead of just 1. But it works. I have also found if you use the front flash it won’t alter it.

You can find the burst option in settings, go to camera and enable the option “Use Volume Up for Burst.”

When you take your photos make sure you’re using the volume up button on the side of your phone and not the button on the screen. Hold it down for at least 2 seconds and that’s it! I also show below the effects of using burst vs no burst with no editing.

Please vote that this was helpful if it solved your problem

This is still an issue with the 14’s (which I had no idea it was a thing before upgrading from my XR)

my kids don’t even look like themselves in the photos thanks to these adjustments

please considering submitting a ‘report a problem’ to apple engineers maybe they’ll finally listen and update software to exclude this

Feedback - Camera - Apple

Hey guys, so I have the exact same issue. Pretty infuriating that apple haven’t yet provided a fix. One thing I do as a temporary fix is I downloaded this app called pro camera by moment which is free and well rated on the App Store. If you take photos through this instead of apples native camera app it will solve this issue. (This isn’t a plug) hope this helps.

Apple knows there’s a problem. Apple’s unfortunate propaganda that garish colors with automatic irreversible post editing looks great is bad karma. Customers should not have to get a third party app to fix the deficit.

We all paid for an expensive phone with a flawed camera.

if it is a chip problem then a recall for replacement could be a financial tipping point(?) There is no reason to delay a software fix. I really dislike the situation. I’ve been an IPhone loyalist for years.

Using the 13 pro camera is tedious with dismal results . Apple is showing us that they have weighed the situation and it’s not profitable to fix the problems right now.

For me it’s: “Oh so Pro must Go”

So this is to force ppl to buy the IPhone 13 Pro? Absolute garbage auto enhance.. My photos from iPhone 4 and 7 looked far better. These photos look like someone who just discovered HDR and turned it all the way up. Or like if you max out the brightness editing control. This os enraging especially when this phone is sold for its amazing photos!

if this is a software issue please fix it!

Enraging. Returning this phone. I’ll wait for the next one I guess.

Oh man.....Thank you for finding and posting this. This problem was driving me nuts using the stock Apple camera app and the Photos app! I resorted mostly to using the ProCamera app from Cocologics, but there are some features in the Apple camera app that I still like and use so I bounce back to it often, and then see that crazy result in the Photos app with the auto-brightened photos. Finally, with this setting off, freedom! :)

upset that we cant undo this, but if you take photos using Live, you can hit edit and click the live icon and choose a different “key photo”. it will look regular and not dark and grainy like the auto enhancement!

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.