A big new feature for iPhone 16 is called Photographic Styles, and it’s an improvement over the previous styles you used to have access to for photos. As you can see, I’m in the Camera app here, and I’m simply going to double-tap the new Camera Control button to bring up the main editing menu, and then I’m going to swipe sideways until I reach Styles. A single tap here will let me go into the style settings and choose a style. From here, as I swipe through the styles, you’ll see the scene immediately change in the viewfinder as those different styles get previewed. And of course, I can take a photo at any stage by pressing the Camera Control button firmly.

The clever thing about these styles is that they aren’t just a colour filter on top of your image. Rather, they’re making edits during the photo processing pipeline, which essentially means it’s doing the edits as your phone takes the picture. That means these Photographic Styles can apply differently to different scenes, using some clever processing. For example, they can preserve skin tones and make sure shadows and highlights still look good.

But even more clever is that these styles don’t have to be set in stone, even once you’ve taken the photo. Let me get a quick shot of Smeaton’s Tower here with this really bold, stark black and white style. I’m going to open that image in the Photos app. As I zoom in, you’ll see the quality of that photo is stunning, and the Photographic Style I chose has really made that black and white pop on the screen.

But – and this blows my mind a bit – if I press the Edit icon and then tap back onto Styles, I can change it completely, even back into colour! As I swipe through, you can see exactly the same styles that we had in the Camera app viewfinder earlier, but now they’re available on the photo I’ve already taken in post-production. I’m going to pick the Dramatic style this time, and now I’ve got the option to edit it further by tapping that grid icon in the middle here. I can use the white dot to adjust the effect more, changing the tone by moving up and down and changing the colour by moving left and right. I can even use the slider below to choose how strong the Photographic Style should be, and all of this is using the data captured when the photograph was first taken. It’s really, really cool.

Of course, you can fine-tune all of the styles while in the Camera app as well, using that same grid system. Just tap in the top corner here, and you’ll be able to make changes on the fly to get the perfect style, and the camera is going to remember your preferences too, meaning they’ll be available next time you open the app.

Photographic Styles are one of the reasons I started this YouTube channel – they’re a really cool feature built into your phone that I bet a lot of people don’t even know is there. My channel is all about these iPhone QuickTips, helping you make the most of the device you already own by showing you lots of cool and useful features built into your phone. If you’d like to see more, please do subscribe down below. And if you want to see what’s new in iOS 18 this year along these same lines, you can buy my ebook down below. I’ll see you next time!