Apple Inc. is known for making the best smartphone cameras and their latest devices the iPhone XS and XS Max takes smartphone photography to a new level thanks to the massive improvement in terms of both hardware and software. The camera module on the new phones features a bigger sensor along with larger pixels and advanced processing algorithms. Although some users are complaining about the new processing algorithm, particularly when using the front camera a number of users noticed an unusual feature which is basically applying some sort of beauty filter on its own which removes skin imperfections, smooths the skin giving an artificial look and also kills details in the skin texture.
The complains were posted on a Reddit forum and some people also shared side by side selfies to show how facial skin looks on iPhone X’s front camera compared to iPhone XS and XS Max’s front camera. This beauty effect is also applied on photos shot with the back camera but is a less noticeable cause of the better sensor. The main problem here is that Apple has not provided any toggle to turn off this effect which really bugging out the users. Other manufacturers like Samsung, Huawei, LG, Oppo etc also offer this same ‘beauty effect’ feature but they also provide with an option to increase or decrease the effect and also have the toggle to completely disable it.
According to ‘Unbox Therapy‘ which is a youtube channel, this effect can be minimized to some extent if you go into the settings and turn the Smart HDR off in the iPhone XS or XS Max but it still lacks all the texture details and images look washed out. You might be thinking that this might be a problem in iOS 12 but that is not the case as iPhone X and 8 running iOS 12 are not facing this problem.
For now, this beauty effect seems to be a side effect of Apple’s post-processing algorithms which aggressively reduces noise and ends up killing the details and texture. This is the most likely explanation for the beauty mode-like effect as it is present across all pictures irrespective of whether it is a selfie or not. If this is the case then Apple will surely disable it in future with iOS 12.1 update or will at least add a switch to turn it on or off.
Do you own the latest iPhone? Are you also facing the same problem and are annoyed? Tell us what you think about it in the comments section below.