iPhone 7 Plus Camera - Pictures are bad

Hi,

I had the same issue with my iPhone 7 camera,

Go to: settings>Photos&camera>HDR>keep normal photo - switch it to "off"

Now I have great photo quality even with zooming in.

Hope this will help you!

I have bought iPhone 7 256gb in Finland (Phone did cost 999 euros ~1000 US dollars

) to my wife as a present because she takes lot a pictures. Think it was among with the first phones delivered in here. Her old phone was 6 plus 64gb and the images were brilliant compared to her new phone images! Also my old iPhone 5s take so much better images:/

Have tried every solutions on this thread and nothing have helped. Images are missing all the detail and look so compressed (watercolor-effect /viewed phones display).

Now the phone is changed under warranty to a new one (hopefully get it in the end of the week). I'll report it here, that it helped or not.

I am livid.

Just had a call back from Apple Support, the guy on the phone was relaying the message from an "engineer" essentially saying I have to take the phone into an apple store and take photos with an iPhone 7 Plus and compare. If the images look the same then this will prove it's not an hardware issue, there is nothing they can do as the opinions of people on photo quality "differ" and in this case feedback to Apple using the feedback site.

I argued with the guy the logic that if the compared photos are the same then this might not be a hardware issue, it's an iOS one what do I do about that. He talked some rubbish about the software downloaded is the latest and to feedback.

I finished expressing dismay that this phone cannot produce an image out-of-the-box that is useable. Unless I take a RAW image and edit it, which required time for and loses the live-photo ability as well not to mention the amout of storage required to hive off thousands of photos. I shouldn't have to use RAW as my defacto option.

This is my last iPhone, I'm on the Apple upgrade program will pay that off ahead of time and get a phone that produces better photos with a secondary RAW option.

I also believe this is the case. DNG from LR look good — it's almost certainly not hardware or camera-module related. I feel bad for the people wasting so much time trying to get repairs done or phones replaced. It's not going to change (unless you were having a different problem). This is Apple software crushing the **** out of a JPEG with insane noise-reduction and/or sharpness enhancement. I think what happened is they were trying to please "the masses" who want fast, sharp, clean photos, and went WAY too far processing the JPEGs for that purpose.

If anyone uses Lightroom on the desktop, you can replicate this easily. Take a picture straight from camera, and jack the sharpening slider and luminance noise reduction slider all the way up. Voila, a painting. The only difference is on the iPhone you don't have a choice...

I took my 7+ to the Apple Store for this. They looked up the serial number and handed me a new phone in the store no questions asked. This is a hardware problem on some phones and Apple is well aware of it. The new 7+ takes great pictures. Take yours before your one year warranty ends.

https://plus.google.com/photos/photo/115397020389997734277/6473711403291907394?i cm=false&iso=true

I took more test pictures, here is side by side iP7+ RAW and JPG cropped pictures (from 4032x3024 12.2MP and the cropped area is 924x441 0.4MP), you can see that iPhone own software make's this blurry watercolour FX to the pictures, and that's not good to look at bigger screen like 4K monitor.

You can clearly see that RAW (dng) picture is far more superior what comes to details and sharpness.

So it's not a hardware problem for me, it's heavy compressed pictures whats bothers me.

Some where here is my picture samples, but yeah it’s clearly software problem than hardware, iPhone makes heavy compression for pictures and that’s why we see (water color) effect. I took raw pictures and no watercolor FX to be seen, all lines are straightforward in pictures and sharp, of course we get low light noise at RAW, but this is phone still. But I started to take pictures at Procam5 app, as I get JPG or HEIC and RAW from same frame, I can still send JPG from iMessage, but inside phone I have better RAW version at the same frame (picture). Selfies can be only taken Uncompressed TIFF format, as I think front camera can’t take RAW ones.

I own an iPhone 7 which has the same ugly watercolour over contrast effect. I just discovered a trick of some sort that can recover a less compressed image. Take your photo in live format, then hit edit. Slide the bar along the different screen shots and there is always a less compressed image in the mix somewhere. I’ve managed to get photos from the stock app this way that look much more natural than a regular one frame shot. Other than this, I use Microsoft pix and Adobe Lightroom with good results. It’s unfortunate this issue doesn’t have an easy fix.

Hello;

I did switch to ProCam with much better results. By that I mean that I get grain in the pictures instead of that dreadful watercolor effect. Not all third party camera apps seem to do well. Be warned: if you view ProCam pictures with the photos app, the watercolor effect shows up. So I take the pictures with ProCam, import and edit them in Snapseed and only then I'll export the JPEG to the Camera Roll. I wish I didn't have to do all this song and dance to get a proper image, especially knowing that this wasn't an issue even with my old 5s.

I am also experiencing the same issue. Pictures appear to be smudged and people seem like they have makeup on. Borderlines look uneven and very poor quality.

Just phoned Apple and a case was opened, yet they claim they have no records of this issue. However for me it seems like a software one, since all RAW images appear much better.

Example 1: iPhone 6 Plus on the left, iPhone 7 Plus on the right

Example 2: iPhone 7 Plus, RAW on the left, jpg on the right (same image)

In example 1 if you zoom in on the right image, you can see heavy watercolour effects which do not appear on the iPhone 6 Plus photo. In example 2 you can see the same effect.

There's definitely something wrong with the iPhone 7 Plus OIS/compression/image processing. Unfortunately I don't have the iPhone 6 Plus anymore to test further. Hope this gets resolved soon.

Here are some pictures taken of the same scene using a iphone 6 plus, 6s plus and my 7 plus.

iP6P : http://www.image-share.com/ijpg-3376-295.html

iP6sP : http://www.image-share.com/ijpg-3376-296.html

iP7P : http://www.image-share.com/ijpg-3376-297.html

These were taken indoors. No zoom, no editing or color adjustments. Taken using the default camera app. Notice the color saturation differences.

Here's a cropped at 100% comparison image between the ip6 plus and ip7 plus versions.

http://www.image-share.com/ijpg-3376-298.html

I don't know what to say. Some says its a non-issue, some report this is not wide spread, some of us (including me) thinks its in all the ip7.

As mentioned by one comment above I disabled HDR in the camera settings and as well in the camera app. Since then both sharpness increased and the watercolor effect decreased noticeably - don't know if its just my impression but perhaps you give it a try and let us know if this worked. Perhaps its a bad algorithm linked to the HDR function?!

Despite what was said in an earlier post, I don't believe this watercolour effect is caused by optical image stabilisation. As I understand it, OIS works by employing an articulated lens that moves in such a way as to counter any *fine* hand movements. There is no overlaying of images, and it works the same way for photos as for video. This being the case, OIS does not explain the watercolour effect.

Furthermore, it was stated that the RAW image doesn't display the artefacts because the sensor does not receive a stabilised image. I call BS on that! OPTICAL implies that the lens system is performing the stabilisation, and where does the sensor gather light from... yes, from the lens system.

Like others, I'd says its a software issue, easily resolved if Apple would tweak the JPG algorithm.

OK, I just got off the phone with Apple.

Very helpful.

I emailed him a copy of my grainy photo and he had me do a restart of my phone, which was holding down the volume fown button and side button until Ibsaw the Apple logo.

After the restart, the grainy-ness of my images around my house was better. Not in low light though.

He said there were other steps to take which would totally reset my phone so I chise to try this out for a few days. I have his direct email address so if I continue havingva problem, I can get to hom firectly and not have to explain my issue to soneone new.

Apple Support is VERY good!!

Carol