Customizing Your iPhone 16 Images With Photographic Styles

One of the major new software-based camera features in the iPhone 16 models is support for a wider range of Photographic Styles, complete with more granular controls to make for a setup where you can create a customized look for all of your images.

photographic styles iphone 16
Photographic Styles isn't a feature that's quite as easy to use as something as simple as a filter, so we thought we'd delve into how it works and how to get the most from it.

Available Photographic Styles

Photographic Styles aren't new, but with prior iPhone models, there were only four options: Rich Contrast, Vibrant, Warm, and Cool. On the ‌iPhone 16‌, there are several more pre-set styles to choose from.

  • Cool Rose
  • Neutral
  • Rose Gold
  • Gold
  • Amber
  • Standard (No edits)
  • Vibrant
  • Natural
  • Luminous
  • Dramatic
  • Quiet
  • Cozy
  • Ethereal
  • Muted Black and White
  • Stark Black and White

All of the styles have varying Tone, Color, and Palette settings, that correspond to brightness, saturation, and effect intensity.

How Photographic Styles Work

According to Apple, on the ‌iPhone 16‌ models, Photographic Styles adjust specific colors in select parts of your photos to adjust the overall look.

The first five Photographic Styles are tuned for skin undertones, including Cool Rose, Neutral, Amber, Rose Gold, and Gold. Cool Rose accentuates cool pinkish undertones, while neutral neutralizes warm undertones. Amber, Rose Gold, and Gold accentuate those specific tones. These can be fairly subtle, depending on the settings you choose.

Other Styles are closer to what you get with a filter, adding more dramatic effects that impact the mood of the image.

Setting Up and Customizing Your Style

When you've taken at least four photos with the ‌iPhone 16‌ camera, you can go to Settings > Camera > Photographic Styles to set the base tone that you want to use for all of your images.

You can pick from the skin tone-focused options, which include Cool Rose, Neutral, Amber, Rose Gold, and Gold. You'll see the different effects across four images, and you can adjust the intensity to begin with.

After you've selected a favorite undertone, you can further refine the look by dragging a finger over the touchpad, which changes the brightness and saturation. The slider changes the overall intensity.

Once you've set your Photographic Style, it's automatically applied to all of your images and it is the default value for your photos.

If you want to turn it off, you can go to Settings > Camera > Photographic Styles > Reset to Standard.

Real-Time Previews

In the Camera app when you go take a photo, if you tap on the touchpad icon, you can select a different undertone or mood style. Swiping changes the Photographic Style, and the controls below can be used to customize the look.

The option to use customized Photographic Styles in real-time lets you preview what an image will look like with different effects before you even take it.

You can access Photographic Styles from the Camera Control button too. Press Camera Control once to open the Camera app, then light press to bring up the Camera Control menu. Swipe until you get to Styles or Tone, then light press again to select it. From there, you can make adjustments by swiping. To get back to the menu to select another option, use a light double press.

Editing After a Shot

You can add or adjust a Photographic Style after an image has been captured, so it's not something that you need to do in the moment. This is the first time that Apple has allowed Photographic Styles to be edited after the fact - earlier versions of this feature only allowed the Style to be applied when taking an image.

To edit a Photographic Style, go to the Photos app, tap on the three bars to enter the editing interface, and then tap on Styles. You can select any of the styles and then adjust it using the touchpad.

The touchpad's X axis adjusts color, while the Y axis adjusts tone. The slider adjusts overall intensity or Palette. A Tone setting of 0, a Color setting of 0, and a Palette setting of 0 result in a "Standard" photo that has no Photographic Style applied, so that's a good starting point to better understand exactly what each style is changing.

Adjusting the Color to the left desaturates, while dragging it to the right deepens color. Dragging Tone up makes the image brighter, while dragging it down makes it darker.

You can change the Photographic Style setting at any point, and it is a non-destructive edit so it's not permanent. If you want to get back to a normal, unedited photo, choose the Standard setting.

Photographic Styles are entirely distinct from the ‌Photos‌ app Adjust section where you can tweak exposure, brilliance, highlights and shadows, contrast, brightness, saturation, vibrance, warmth, tint, and more.

HEIF Only

If you have your ‌iPhone‌ set to take JPG images instead of HEIF, you won't be able to use Photographic Styles. You need to have HEIF turned on. In the Camera section of the Settings app, HEIF can be enabled by going to Formats and choosing "High Efficiency" instead of "Most Compatible."

Preserve Settings

By default, the Photographic Style that you set up using the Settings app will be used automatically. If you select a different Photographic Style when you're taking a photo, it will use that only until you close the Camera app.

If you want the Photographic Style you selected in the Camera app to be the new default, you need to go to Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings and toggle on Photographic Style. With this turned on, your ‌iPhone‌ will preserve your last used Photographic Style rather than reset to your default.

Photographic Styles and Older iPhones

Older iPhones do not support the new touchpad and adjustment settings for Photographic Styles, but if you take an image on an ‌iPhone 16‌ and then edit it on an older phone, you can see the touchpad to make further adjustments.

Related Roundup: iPhone 16
Related Forum: iPhone

Popular Stories

M5 MacBook Pro

Apple Announces New 14-Inch MacBook Pro With M5 Chip

Wednesday October 15, 2025 6:07 am PDT by
Apple today updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, which is also available in updated iPad Pro and Vision Pro models. In addition, the base 14-inch MacBook Pro can now be configured with up to 4TB of storage on Apple's online store, whereas the previous model maxed out at 2TB. However, the maximum amount of unified RAM available for this model remains 32GB. Like...
Apple iPad Pro hero M5

Apple Debuts New iPad Pro With M5 Chip, Faster Charging, and More

Wednesday October 15, 2025 6:16 am PDT by
Apple today announced the next-generation iPad Pro, featuring the custom-designed M5, C1X, and N1 chips. The M5 chip has up to a 10-core CPU, with four performance cores and six efficiency cores. It features a next-generation GPU with Neural Accelerator in each core, allowing the new iPad Pro to deliver up to 3.5x the AI performance than the previous model, and a third-generation ray-tracing ...
maxresdefault

Here's Everything Apple Announced Today

Wednesday October 15, 2025 3:54 pm PDT by
We didn't get a second fall event this year, but Apple did unveil updated products with a series of press releases that went out today. The M5 chip made an appearance in new MacBook Pro, Vision Pro, and iPad Pro models. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. We've rounded up our coverage and highlighted the main feature changes for each device below. MacBook Pro M5...
iphone air thickness

Apple Said to Cut iPhone Air Production Amid Underwhelming Sales

Friday October 17, 2025 8:29 am PDT by
Apple plans to cut production of the iPhone Air amid underwhelming sales performance, Japan's Mizuho Securities believes (via The Elec). The Japanese investment banking and securities firm claims that the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are seeing higher sales than their predecessors during the same period last year, while the standard iPhone 17 is a major success, performing...
HomePod mini and Apple TV

Apple's Next Rumored Products: New HomePod Mini, Apple TV, and More

Thursday October 16, 2025 9:13 am PDT by
Apple on Wednesday updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro with its next-generation M5 chip, but previous rumors have indicated that the company still plans to announce at least a few additional products before the end of the year. The following Apple products have at one point been rumored to be updated in 2025, although it is unclear if the timeframe for any of them has...
Vision Pro M5 Announcement

Apple Updates Vision Pro With M5 Chip, Dual Knit Band, and 120Hz Support

Wednesday October 15, 2025 6:14 am PDT by
Apple today updated the Vision Pro headset with its next-generation M5 chip for faster performance, and a more comfortable Dual Knit Band. The M5 chip has a 10-core CPU, a 10-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, and a 16-core Neural Engine, and we have confirmed the Vision Pro still has 16GB of RAM. With the M5 chip, the Vision Pro offers faster performance and longer battery life compared...
14 inch MacBook Pro Keyboard

New 14-Inch MacBook Pro Has Two Key Upgrades Beyond the M5 Chip

Thursday October 16, 2025 8:31 am PDT by
Apple on Wednesday updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with an M5 chip, and there are two key storage-related upgrades beyond that chip bump. First, Apple says the new 14-inch MacBook Pro offers up to 2× faster SSD performance than the equivalent previous-generation model, so read and write speeds should get a significant boost. Apple says it is using "the latest storage technology," ...
MacBook Pro M5 Screen

New MacBook Pro Does Not Include a Charger in the Box in Europe

Wednesday October 15, 2025 6:59 am PDT by
The new 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 chip does not include a charger in the box in European countries, including the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, and others, according to Apple's online store. In the U.S. and all other countries outside of Europe, the new MacBook Pro comes with Apple's 70W USB-C Power Adapter, but European customers miss out....
airpods max 2024 colors

AirPods Max 2: Everything We Know So Far

Tuesday October 14, 2025 8:43 am PDT by
Apple's AirPods Max have now been available for almost five years, so what do we know about the second-generation version? According to Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the new AirPods Max will be lighter than the current ones, but exactly how much is as yet known. The current AirPods Max weigh 0.85 pounds (386.2 grams), excluding the charging case, making it one of the heavier...
macbook pro blue

Apple's M5 MacBook Pro Imminent: What to Expect

Tuesday October 14, 2025 4:35 pm PDT by
Apple is going to launch a new version of the MacBook Pro as soon as tomorrow, so we thought we'd go over what to expect from Apple's upcoming Mac. M5 Chip The MacBook Pro will be one of the first new devices to use the next-generation M5 chip, which will replace the M4 chip. The M5 is built on TSMC's more advanced 3-nanometer process, and it will bring speed and efficiency improvements. ...

Top Rated Comments

rotvaldi Avatar
14 months ago
Software that could be easily added to older phones… pass for greedys
Score: 37 Votes (Like | Disagree)
McWetty Avatar
14 months ago
These software locked features are starting to erode my Apple love. I won’t go Google, but I’m becoming indifferent to the Think Different…
Score: 30 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Noctilux.95 Avatar
14 months ago
Much rather have better sensor/optics than cheesy filters.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Mark_Twain Avatar
14 months ago

Software that could be easily added to older phones… pass for greedys
If these new features were available via a paid software update, would you pay for it?
I'm just happy that my Apple devices get free software updates for at least 7 years and, for the most part, are able to run the latest software versions.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rotvaldi Avatar
14 months ago

These software locked features are starting to erode my Apple love. I won’t go Google, but I’m becoming indifferent to the Think Different…
the point is that already a sideloader could activate them all MikasaX Sideloader and that makes you think that they actually are Software locked with no reason to justify the locking to old generations.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
monstermash Avatar
14 months ago

Imagine being an iPhone 15 Pro user, 12 months ($1000) after buying it, with a chipset that runs at just under 7% of the iPhone 16 Pro or 3% of the iPhone 16 and being told that your phone isn't powerful enough to run some live filters. Imagine believing that. This is a massive kick in the teeth for iPhone 15 Pro users. Let's be frank, this is money grabbing/planned obsolescence at its worst.
So what if it is money grabbing? The purpose of a corporation is to make as much money as it can.

Today, an iPhone 15 does everything it did when you bought it. Nobody is forcing you to buy a new phone and spend that money. Just don't do it! I generally wait 3 years between phones. I didn't this time only because I expect to be dead before the next one comes out.

A new device having more features than your current one hardly makes yours obsolete. The 15 will be a perfectly good and supported phone for MANY years. You could EASILY be just fine using it another 4 years, if you can resist the urge to feel unhappy because you don't have the latest and greatest.

Hell, my MacBook Pro is from 2012. Coming up on 13 years old! It works just great! My 2007 Jeep and 2009 Yamaha TMAX (motorcycle) are also old but just fine.

It's all about mental attitude. Choose to be unhappy with your current phone, or not. It's up to you, not Apple.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)