Some cool new features are coming to Google Photos for iOS, including Portrait mode bokeh editing and changing the focal point of the blur, as well as leaving the subject of your photograph in color whilst changing the background to black and white.
You just arrived home after a long day and your iPhone could use some recharging. And when a guy needs some juice, what better way to juice up your iPhone than drop it on an elegant picture frame that's sitting on the table? That's right, Twelve South has created an amazing gadget that looks and behaves like a regular 5x7 picture frame but also happens to wirelessly charge your phone quickly because there's a 10-watt Qi charger hidden inside the frame.
Apple today issued a press release to share a bunch of user-submitted Portrait mode photographs with Depth Control that were shot with an iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max.
Portrait photography on iPhone XR yields surprisingly good results in some low light situations where it’s unusable on the costlier iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max devices.
Although Apple advertises in support documents and elsewhere on its website that the new iPhone XR series features HDR10 and Dolby Vision support, these colorful smartphones in reality do not have a display compliant with the high dynamic range (HDR) specification.
Apple has confirmed it’s fixing the controversial “beauty mode” process when taking selfies on the 2018 iPhones. The Verge has learned the feature, which smooths a subject’s skin automatically in selfies, will be no more in the upcoming iOS 12.1 update.
The Facebook-owned WhatsApp for iPhone app has been refreshed on App Store with several new features, including an overhauled interface for the quick bubble actions, support for the iPhone XS Max display resolution and a consecutive voice messaging feature.
Apple has announced that more countries are getting the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max in the coming weeks. The news comes as the company prepares to launch the iPhone XR on Friday, Oct. 26.
As fall creeps into the northern hemisphere, the leaves begin to change into oranges, reds, and browns. Pumpkins begin to ripen. The landscape begins to take a much more colorful hue. As we prepare for Halloween and Thanksgiving in the US, decorate your iPhone with these orange pumpkin wallpapers.
In the market for a thin, minimal case for your new iPhone XS or XS Max? iDB has you covered. We've put together a roundup of what we believe are the best ultra-thin cases available for Apple's new handsets with options that are inexpensive, feature very little branding, and are so thin you'll forget they're there.
DxOMark last week published their full-on review of the iPhone XS camera. We originally skipped it because DxOMark scores can be very misleading or just meaningless, but have decided to pull some choice quotes that best describe why, in many areas, Apple's new flagship phone offers noticeable improvements over last year’s iPhone X.
Having pitted his iPhone XS versus Canon's C200 cinema camera that sells for $10,000, filmmaker Ed Gregory came away impressed by the quality of video capture on Apple's smartphone and was “quite shocked” at how good the new Apple phone is at shooting video.
Can you spot the difference?Writing on his blog yesterday, Ed explained he basically took a bunch of videos with both cameras over the course of a few days. He shot everything in the stock Camera app on the XS.
On the Canon side, he used the Canon RAW lite codec and set a similar focal length to the wide lens on his iPhone XS (f1.8). He then attached the phone to the top of the Canon camera and placed them both on the DJI Ronin-S stabilizer.
You can see the results for yourself on the comparison images and the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2CJoR3F2t0
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Follow along for a few notable observations.
The best smartphone camera there isEd was “actually shocked” at how good the iPhone footage looked on the phone itself—he'd also watch videos shot on his Canon and questioned which one he liked more. No surprises there because any piece of content displayed on that OLED panel with wide color (the P3 cinema profile), one to million contrast ratio and native HDR support looks great.
PRIMER: How Smart HDR takes iPhone photography to the next level
The iPhone footage took almost no work to color-grade in the Color Studios app, but Canon's required a lot of heavy lifting because the C200 camera was shooting in RAW. The iPhone footage “fell apart” when viewed in fullscreen on a 27-inch iMac due to too much sharpening.
“The details just got lost and all the leaves with details just got smushed together,” he observed, while the Canon footage “still looked great.” He could have gotten rid of sharpening by shooting on his iPhone in RAW using a third-party app, like the excellent FiLMiC Pro.
The dynamic range is “super impressive” on the iPhone XS camera.
Smart HDR steps into the limelightThanks to the new A12 Bionic chip powering computational photography advancements such as Smart HDR and real-time processing, Apple's smartphone keeps the highlights on the bright sun while keeping details in the shadows.
TUTORIAL: How to reenable manual HDR on iPhone 8/X/XS/XS Max/XR
“This is some crazy multiple exposure processing thats been done,” he notes. “Considering this is all being done in real time in the palm of your hand. It’s super impressive.”
From the conclusion:
The iPhone camera is a smartphone camera and always will be. It is incredibly small but to be honest give completely mind-blowing results. If you are shooting to video that is intended to be viewed on a smartphone and you don’t want to do any post processing then the files strait from the app are impressive. Apple has done a great job of optimizing the output to make the files look great instantly.
“Is it as good as a cinema camera, not at all,” he summed it up nicely. “Is it the best camera I have ever seen on a smartphone? Hundred percent!”
Thoughts?