Clicking photos on the iPhone 16 is a lot more fun now thanks to Photographic Styles. The feature offers a ton of customization and can change the way your photos look. This guide helps you utilize Photographic Styles to take the best photos on your iPhone 16.
Content
- What Are Photographic Styles?
- How to Use Photographic Styles
- Modifying Photographic Styles
- The Best Photographic Styles
- How to Change Photographic Styles After Snapping a Photo
- Make Photos Fun Again
What Are Photographic Styles?
Photographic Styles are similar to Instagram filters, except they are applied at an image processing level and do not alter the quality of photos. When the feature was first introduced on the iPhone 13, it was quite basic and didn’t offer much control to the user. Moreover, there were only five presets, and once you took a picture, the style couldn’t be changed.
The second iteration of Photographic Styles addresses these concerns with a complete overhaul. In fact, I would say it’s the best new feature added to the iPhone 16 series – it’s miles ahead of Camera Control.
How to Use Photographic Styles
The iPhone camera app offers a simple, no-frills experience. Apple has gone with the same approach for Photographic Styles. It’s super-easy to switch between styles and modify them to your liking.
In the Camera app, tap on the Styles icon in the top-right corner, then swipe between different Photographic Styles before snapping the photo.
When you open the Camera app on your iPhone 16 for the first time, you’re greeted with a menu that familiarizes you with the different styles.
Modifying Photographic Styles
Apart from selecting a style, Apple gives you the option to modify the look of each style. There’s a touchpad at the bottom with two axes. The X-axis represents the degree of color, while the Y-axis is mapped to the tone. There’s also a slider at the bottom to adjust the Palette. Let’s go over each of these options.
Color
The Color axis is similar to the degree of saturation in a photo. Dragging it to the right increases the saturation levels, while pulling it to the left decreases them. If you like your pictures to pop, I would recommend setting the Color slide between 30 and 80.
Tone
The Tone axis changes the level of shadows in an image. Dragging the slider up decreases the shadows and offers a flatter look, with the highlights and shadows appearing at a similar level. When pulled down, you’ll get darker shadows, giving your picture a more contrasty look. Personally, I don’t like all parts of my picture to appear bright, so I prefer keeping the Tone levels between -50 and -70. However, do note that this can make your photo appear a bit dark if there are many shadows and fewer highlights.
Palette
I feel that the Palette slider could be more or less equated to the hue of a photo. In some styles, it adds a cyan or magenta tint while in others, it varies the intensity of the effect. For example, dragging it to the right in the Gold style adds more warmth, emphasizing the golden undertones. For Black and White styles, it varies the level of highlights to make the white portions appear brighter or darker.
These three parameters work in tandem to create a plethora of unique looks to make your photos more fun.
The Best Photographic Styles
After much tinkering, I realized there’s no one-size-fits-all with Photographic Styles. However, I’ve figured out a few settings that I feel capture moments in the best possible manner.
Many of these styles that I modified are based on Leica’s color science on the Xiaomi 14 series and the Zeiss look produced by Vivo’s flagships, as Xiaomi and Vivo are currently some of the best in the industry in terms of image processing, with the Xiaomi 14 Ultra and the Vivo X 100 Pro being among the best camera phones you can buy.
Note: slide your finger below each style to vary Tone, Color, and Palette values.
1. Best Photographic Style for most situations
It’s not practical to switch between multiple styles on the fly, and you may end up missing a moment because you were busy deciding which Photographic Style to choose instead of pointing to your subject and hitting the shutter button. This makes it important to have a default style that you can use for all your photos.
What worked for me here is the Standard profile, with a few tweaks to increase the contrast and shadows. I set the Tone to -65 and the Color to 75. I achieved a look that suits pretty much any scenario. The colors are slightly more saturated than real life, so if you want a more natural look, you can tone down the Color value.
2. Best Photographic Style to shoot outdoors
If you’re primarily shooting outdoors, especially in the daylight, you’re going to love the Gold Photographic Style. As the name suggests, it adds a warm tinge of gold to your images. This accentuates the look of the scene when you’re capturing a sunset or pretty much anything that has the sun.
I captured a scene at the airport, where the sunlight was peeking through the glass windows and was getting reflected and projected onto multiple surfaces. Switching to the Gold profile made the image come to life by adding a golden hue. I found that setting the Tone to -77, Color to 17, and Palette to 100 produced the best results here.
If you feel the pictures appear too warm, try lowering the Palette value, or switch to the Amber style.
3. Best Photographic Style for portraits
I find portrait shots to always be extremely personal, as we generally click portraits of friends, family, kids, pets, etc, so modifying them in a way that appeals to everyone is rather challenging. However, having used the Xiaomi 14 Ultra for a long time before switching to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, I fell in love with Leica’s monochrome portraits. I tried to replicate the same look with the Stark B&W style and was successful to a large extent.
Set the Tone to -100, Color to 60, and Palette to 80. This creates a high-contrast monochrome look similar to Leica’s processing. Outdoor portraits look absolutely stunning with this particular style!
Not a fan of black-and-white photos? Switch to the Vibrant style. Setting the Tone to -30, Color to 33, and Palette to 77 produced the best results. In my opinion, the Vibrant profile brings portraits to life by making the colors pop. It produces a very Google Pixel-like image.
If you’re looking to add a vintage look to your portraits, the Quiet style with Tone set to 5, Color to 55, and Palette to 100 provides a washed-out look that adds a certain character to images. I love the effect.
4. Best Photographic Style to use at night
When the lights go down, the same set of Styles that can be used in daylight don’t add the same effect, mostly because there are fewer highlights and more shadows when shooting in the dark. However, you can continue to use the Standard profile with the modifications mentioned above for most situations.
If you want to add some flair, though, the Cozy style, with Tone set to -80, Color to 64, and Palette to 100, gives a moody look with a pinkish hue. If your night shot has the sky and some clouds, this profile will surely add a unique touch.
If your low-light image has a lot of blue undertones, switch to the Cool Rose style, and set the Tone to -58, Color to 50, and Palette to 100 to make the blues stand out and reduce warmth.
Use the Dramatic style to add a tinge of cyan or orange to your low-light shots. Set the Tone to -76, Color to 19, and vary the Palette slider depending on your desired hue. I like keeping it at 100 most of the time, but if you want to enhance the warmth with an orange tinge, pull it down all the way to 0 to 10.
How to Change Photographic Styles After Snapping a Photo
The best part about the new Photographic Styles is how you can change them even after you’ve captured a photo. If you’ve taken a picture with the Standard style, you can change it to Gold or Amber afterward.
Open the picture in the Photos app, and tap Edit -> Styles. Select the desired style. You can also modify the parameters of the style at this point.
Make Photos Fun Again
The fact that I can now capture photos from an iPhone that look similar to those shot on a Xiaomi or Vivo phone is what makes the camera experience so much more fun. I can quickly switch between a moody look and a monochrome portrait with just a couple of taps – something that wasn’t possible on older iPhones.
Generally, photos taken on smartphone cameras had started looking flat with no real character. Photographic Styles break that monotony by letting you play around with your photos. You can now make a picture taken on your iPhone camera look the way you want it to with a few taps. You don’t need an image editor or prior knowledge of color grading. Leave it to Apple to make complex features accessible to the masses!
All images and screenshots by Sumukh Rao.
Sumukh Rao –
Contributor
Sumukh has a knack for simplifying tech for the masses and helping consumers pick the right gadgets with his in-depth insights and reviews. He decided to hide his engineering degree in the closet to pursue his passion for writing. Over the past 6 years, he has contributed with guides, reviews, and detailed opinions to notable publications like TechPP, XDA-Developers, and Guiding Tech.
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