Like clockwork, last month welcomed the start of fall, a season of changing colors, coziness, and all-new iPhones. Since debuting the iPhone in 2007, Apple has released a refreshed model each year, often in September, and last month saw the introduction of the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro that marked the eighteenth-generation of the Cupertino-based brand’s best-selling product – in fact, as reported by Forbes, the iPhone is the world’s best selling smartphone.
Apple’s success with the iPhone is in part down to the way it has consistently evolved its product through design, software and hardware updates. One of these, Photographic Styles, is an entirely new feature that just launched with the iPhone 16 series. It’s clear that Apple is doubling down on photography on iPhone, but what exactly are Photographic Styles and why is Apple so excited about them? And… aren’t they just filters?
The short answer to that last question is no. A longer one would be to say that, before now, it simply wouldn’t have been possible for a phone to run a something like Photographic Styles as the technology needed for such a complex computational model wasn’t ready. It is now, though, so we asked Pamela Chen, Apple’s Chief Aesthetics Scientist for Camera and Photos, to explain the distinction between filters and Photographic Styles. She told us there are three key distinctions between the two, “The first is that [Photographic Styles] are semantically adaptive,” meaning that the feature is powered by AI that has been trained to understand contextual information (such as the difference between skin tones and skies, and being able to then apply effects to these individual elements of a photo) and has the ability to learn and adjust as it goes. “It’s really different from a filter, which is essentially not semantically aware,” Chen added, giving the example that filters are applied to an image in its entirety without consideration for any nuance. The second and third reasons Photographic Styles differs from filters, Chen said, was that users can both “see the style applied in real time” before they take a photo, as well as having the ability to “make intensity adjustments” on screen, and they apply changes to photos in a totally reversible non-destructive way.
An ultra-wide shot with the ‘Stark B&W’ style applied. (Photo: Felix Young)
A fall photo with the ‘Cozy’ style applied. (Photo: Felix Young)
We’ve been using an iPhone 16 Pro Max for the past few weeks, putting the new camera features through their paces. There are 15 different Photographic Styles to pick from ranging from the subtle ‘Cool Rose’ to the deeply contrasty ‘Stark B&W’. The user interface is well designed and easy to use, requiring a simple swipe to jump between the different styles, and users are able to make adjustments to both tone and color on a per style basis – there’s also a slider that allow users to holistically dial up or down the intensity of any given style. All in all, Apple has made what is no doubt an incredibly complex machine on the inside seem incredibly simple and easy to use. And Chen, who has been “diving deep into the history of photography” as part of her job at Apple, confirms this, telling us she believes in “making sure that it’s easy and fun to use for people who may not actually know or even care about the history of photography.”
Apple has also tapped various artists to highlight the new camera features on the iPhone 16 series, including fashion photographer Sarah Silver who said Ethereal – one of the 15 Photographic Styles – “brought out the joy” on set during a recent shoot in New York.
It’s fair to say that this year’s iPhones look just like last year’s iPhones, and that the breadth of change between models has narrowed in recent years. Updates have become more iterative and focused on specific areas. That said, though we’ve come a long way since the very first iPhone and its solitary two-megapixel camera – which, by the way, is selling for six-figures if you happen to have a sealed one stashed somewhere – we’ve only really scratched the surface in this new age of AI-driven photography and Apple is leading the charge when it comes to mobile photography.
With smartphones becoming more and more advanced, we asked Pamela Chen what she thinks the future holds for traditional cameras. She remembered something somebody once told her and said: “The best camera is the one you have on you.”
