The new Photographic Styles feature on iPhone 16 has a really powerful tool called Tone. While that doesn’t sound very exciting, what it essentially does is reduce the amount of high dynamic range (HDR) processing the iPhone camera applies to your images. So, what does that mean?

Well, sometimes photos you take can look a little bit flat because the shadows have been brightened, and the highlights have been darkened to ensure that everything is exposed properly. However, in doing so, it can create an almost dull and not-quite-lifelike image that appears very flat.

Tone allows us to change this. All I need to do is tap the Styles button in the top corner of the Camera app and open up the editing grid at the bottom for whichever style I’m using. From here, I can move the white dot up or down to adjust the tone setting. Moving it up will brighten everything and reduce the amount of shadows, whereas moving it down will do the opposite, darkening the shadows and midtones.

As you experiment with this, you’ll likely find a position on that grid you prefer, and you can simply tap back into the middle of the viewfinder to return to the main Camera mode. Your settings will be remembered, and photos taken from this point on will have a different style of processing applied to them.

Incredibly, you can also change this after you’ve taken the photo without reducing the image quality. Simply edit a photo from the Photos app, tap Styles at the bottom, and from there, you can tap onto your chosen style. You’ll get that same grid back up, allowing you to fine-tune the tone of your photo.

I’ve been exploring this feature for a couple of hours now while sitting on the seafront in Plymouth, and it really does have a noticeable impact on how my iPhone processes the photos I take. I can see myself using this feature much more in the future to get more realistic and less processed images from my iPhone camera.

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