Today’s mobile photography infuriates me without exception. I was able to analyze the best mobile phones on the market: Google Pixel 8 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, iPhone 15 Pro Max. Everyone, without exception, has the same problem: excessive over-processing of images.

Although the high-end results look good to us, just take a look at the RAW file to see what the sensor can actually do and what it ends up doing. Luckily, iPhones have a little trick. Take a photo that isn’t actually a photo.

Say goodbye to rendering with this trick for iOS

Your iPhone makes decisions before you take the photo. Processes pre- and post-information to render the final file. phone ends make a series of decisions about color, white balance, exposure, sharpness and all the parameters that make up the photo. The problem is that most of the time These decisions are questionable..

Here’s a trick I always use to avoid having to constantly shoot in .RAW and edit later: Shoot with Live Photo mode enabled. Live Photo mode, despite its name, what it actually does is record a short piece of video. The goal is that we can save the best shot of the scene and turn it into the main photo.

What is the advantage of this? For now, Live Photo frames are video frames, not highly processed photos. Something you will immediately understand with the example you will find below.

Live Photo | His own photo.

Look at both photos. In the former, information about shadow areas is perfectly appreciated. In the latter, the shadows are completely opaque. There’s also a slight overall oversaturation of the scene, accompanied by completely unnecessary extra contrast. You might think this is a necessary evil of HDR, but Live Photo shows it’s not: it is possible to achieve even greater dynamic range.

At the color level, you can appreciate it perfectly. increase The iPhone added the photo after taking it. In some cases, like this orange one, the braking is quite heavy. It is possible to recover the original color using Live Photo.

Live Photo | His own photo.

Not everything that glitters is gold. Photo post-processing has its meaning and Loss of quality when enlarged It is quite striking compared to the original photo. It’s not something we need to be overly concerned about unless we enlarge it, and the photo has no greater purpose than recording the memory of that precise, pure moment we chose with Live Photo.

If we want to recover accurate information from our camera, the only alternative is to use RAW mode, but not even Apple’s ProRAW, but “raw” RAW from applications like Halide. The latter is the only way to get rid of phone operations and get a file that, yes, we need to devote time to. Meanwhile, live photos will always have their trick.

Image | Xataka

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