iPhone 7 Plus Camera - Pictures are bad

I am using lightroom with DNG activated. Besides that it's more complex to use than the apple camera, I'm quite happy with the outcome. However, with my phone the image detail only comes out once some kind of processing has been done in Lightroom, even if it's just the lens correction. With out processing of any kind the watercolor effect is still visible, also in lightroom.

This is quite a long and active thread by now. Hopefully some influential person at apple will notice it soon.

The senior adviser sent me an email that i can upload photos and it will be reviewed by engineers. I would suggest everyone do the same. If no one contacts Apple, they will have no reason to at least try to fix it.

I uploaded about 10 bad photos and waiting to see what they say.

I have been using Camera+ since the update with JPG High and the quality is markedly better compared to what I had. I can't use live photos or portrait mode but there you go, better than nothing until I either get a refund or give up and Pixel it...

I am using camera+ now with raw enabled as it is a little less cumbersome than Lightroom.

after having compared many photos taken with different apps and different settings and effects I noticed that when taking standard photos with the standard camera app the skin is smeary and water colour like which makes the photo unusable. However when in portrait mode (7plus) the skin of the forground object has similar grain as in the photos taken in Lightroom with DNG enabled and some kind of correction enabled. Even in poor lighting conditions.

The whole Photo thing is becoming more and more mysterious. What the heck did apple engineers think when programing the photo app. I like most people want to quickly take a nice picture like I used to with the iPhone 5 and 5s. Now taking pictures has become a real task due to being stuck with third party apps to get good quality photos.

Today I took different shots in my work's warehouse from: iphone app, iphone app hdr, lightroom jpg and lightroom dng.

iphone app & lightroom jpg = bad detailed photo, saturated - lightroom's jpg is very similar with less saturation.

lightroom dng = better detailed, more noisy and not saturated

iphone app hdr = better detailed than non-hdr, not as detailed as DNG and saturated.

Pick your poison, one tweak they should do is enable hdr by default or have it under saved camera settings.

Restting will make no difference as the problem lies in the way Apple is processing the image. There is way too much noise reduction, resulting in the loss of fine details. The problem is made worse by the high compression applied to photos

I have no doubt that if Apple tweaked their JPEG engine, the quality of images would be vastly improved.

I Wanted to add my experience regarding the photo quality of my iPhone 7 Plus. I received my 7 plus it just before my daughter's birthday partyand couldn't wait to see the quality of the 7's photos vs. my 6. Well, like people here mentioned, the quality of the photos were disappointing. I found it to be overly-digitized. Someone on this thread used the word "smeary." Good way to describe how faces look in pictures. No real definition seen In people's aces. A vast majority of the pics I've taken are in 1x.

I called Apple. They had me do the reset all settings. That didn't help. then I went to target to take a photo of the 7plus on display. Same bad results as mine. I dropped the subject for a bit figuring maybe all the 7s had the same issue. But I kept comparing a couple close ups I had taken with my 6 of my kids and compared it to the 7 plus. It was such a stark difference. I much prefer the quality of the 6.

I Followed up at an Apple Store. The genius guy didn't really admit he saw much of a difference, but eventually my phone was replaced. unfortunately, the quality of the pics are the same as my original 7 plus.

Here is another forum that I was following before I returned my iPhone 6s last year:iPhone 6 poor picture quality

I was one of the ones who was seeing the terrible watercoloring effect on the 6s and went back to my 5s.

Thousands can't be wrong: Suppose 20% don't care how the photos came out, that leaves 80% of the people checking their photos on their large screen or monitors at home, and do not see any issues. They are saying that their 6, 6s, 6s+, 7 or 7+ phones are taking amazing pictures no matter what. I am dead sure they are right, their cameras must be taking great photos. But I am also sure there are hundreds out there (like me) that are definitely seeing issues with the watercoloring effect. I also am one of the people who think this may be firmware related, but it has been going on for a long time now (it is not a iOS 10 vs 11 issue). When the issues came up with the 6 and 6s, some people started using Camera+ and other software (RAW) and reported that the issues were gone. I just didn't have the patience. But the question that I can't answer is, why would the same firmware have an issue on the same phone that thousands are using and reporting great photos? Something tells me that this is not the end of it. Hope this issues gets resolved with the phones that are coming out tomorrow.

Hi, just took over 2000 pics overseas with 7 Plus and most of my pics are terrible. I am very disappointed as my iPhone 6 took fantastic pics. One problem I have found is that it simply does not work in low level light inside or outside. But here is the real clincher, which they say they have just fixed. If for some reason your camera goes into LIVE format, the pics are even worse. Grainy and blurry, just out of focus. My 7 Plus would just go inot this mode because I think I breathed on it. Out of 2000 pics, 400 or so were shot live. I will never use that function as long as I live. It will destroy your pics. Another problem whern it is in LIVE mode is that you never know when the actual still pic will be taken. And you can frequently MOVER so you pic is even blurrier than normal. My sound is turned up all the way. And I never could figure out when it actually went from video mode to still pic mode by listening to the click. According to 2 Apple support people you can not just pull the "still" pic out. Apple just updated camera so you can supposedly LOCK it in the last configuration used. Mine is going to Apple Store next week to figure out why it will not work. But even Apple finally realized that this LOCK function will be a God Send to many casual photographers, like myself. I just wish mine worked as stated in Apple Support.

Veefinder, I take a range of photo types including animals, people, and landscapes.

One of the advantages of ACDSee – and other 3rd party camera apps – is that you can choose both a point of focus and a separate exposure point. This helps correctly expose all areas of the picture. I'll try to post some samples tomorrow if I have time.

ACDSee is unique (as far as I know) in that you can make adjustments, and see the results, before you take the photo.

By checking out various sites that list apps that have become temporarily free, I was able to install both ACDSee Camera Pro and ACDSee Pro completely free. I would certainly be willing to pay for either of them, too.

Same problem here in Germany. My 5s took WAY better pics. Apple Support checked the Camera Hardware, everything fine. My solution is - thanks to the many answers here - taking photos in a RAW data format with Adobe Lightroom. Still unsatisfying - I didn't bought a phone to use the camera with a third party app.

Would be good if everyone who has that problem report it on apple.com/feedback - so we can raise Apple's attention for that.

By the way, I've read some articles that iPhone 8 / X users have the same issue; so perhaps they will fix that soon.

Hi again. I've just tried to change some settings. Go to settings, camera and turn off optimised storage. That did it for me. Now my pictures look great again.

basically in camera zooming option for takeing a photo

but that zoom spoil your phot quality

and faded type photos are takes.

This is NOT a hardware issue, it's all software.

Let's not confuse everyone here, if you are shooing RAW and pictures come out excellent without any heavy noise reduction what does that tell you?

Try using Lightroom app to take pic. For now I'm using that until the issue is resolved.