Give your photos style!

How to use iPhone's Photographic Styles to make your pix shine.

Author

Leander Kahney
March 26, 2025

In partnership with

My 25-year-old son is an avid photographer and digital native par excellence, but he hates iPhone photography.

iPhone pictures are way too clean and perfect for him. He much prefers the look of film cameras and early digital point-and-shoots.

His favorite camera — which he carries everywhere — is an old Nikon F3, circa 1980, loaded with Kodak Portra 400 film.

Many people share this sentiment about photography, but don’t go quite as far. Instead, they spend a lot of time tweaking pics in Instagram or a dedicated photo-editing app.

Which is why Apple cleverly introduced Photographic Styles, a Camera app feature that lets you change how your phone processes images.

If you don’t like how Apple’s computational photography mutes skin tones or makes everything look bland, Photographic Styles puts the controls back in your hands.

Some styles apply a cooler or more vibrant look; more comprehensive ones mimic the look of specific film stocks, with strong sepia tones or ethereal blue hues.

And if this sounds not great — because maybe you don’t want to apply filters to all your pics — well, on newer iPhones, it can be reversed (or revised) afterward.

If you regularly edit your photos before posting your snaps to the socials, Photographic Styles may be for you — here’s everything you need to know about using the handy feature.

Also in today’s newsletter:

  • Two of the most prominent Apple leakers are battling each other over the purported glassy new look of iOS 19, due to be unveiled in June at WWDC25. YouTuber Jon Prosser claims to nail it in a new video, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman pooh-poohs the leak! See what the fuss is about.

  • Amazon’s Big Spring Sale brings some meaty discounts on a lot of Apple’s latest products, including the M4 MacBook Pros, M4 iPad Pros, the M3 iPad Air and Apple Watch.

  • Apple published an interesting video today showing how the hit show Severance is edited on the Mac. Curiously, the video showcases the Avid Media Composer editing suite rather than Apple’s own Final Cut Pro.

  • We hands-on review an interesting new charging station with a retractable charging cable. But that’s just one of several unique features of this beefy charger, which also has a built-in wireless charging pad, adjustable power output to individual ports, and a built-in screen to tell you what’s going on.

  • And this GaN travel charger comes with a built-in HDMI port, making it a hybrid charger/hub. This new category of device (we reviewed a similar gadget last month) means one less thing to carry. Plus, this one’s on sale.

  • I love today’s Mac mini setup — that clock front and center is crazy — but perhaps the best thing about it is the reasonably priced, near-studio-quality sound system.

— Leander Kahney, EIC.

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Lmao. I can't stop laughing at this stupid meme.. just sharing for lulz

— nixCraft (@cyberciti.biz)2025-03-26T09:12:31.335Z

Wallpaper of the day

One more thing ...

❝

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

— Steve Jobs, 2005.

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