The iPhone camera is a top choice for mobile photography, delivering sharp details, lovely tones, and insanely good quality. But with a few quick tweaks, you can make your mobile photos look even more pro. Apple has a few hidden settings — and I’m here to show you five easy steps to get there.
Once you've mastered photos, check out our guide on the top iPhone settings for better-looking videos.
With an iPhone 12 Pro or later running iOS 14.3 or newer, you can shoot in Apple ProRAW for your photos. ProRAW gives you the creative freedom of a traditional RAW format while still benefiting from the iPhone's high-brow image processing. This means you get more control over exposure, color, and white balance, allowing for richer edits in the Photos app, or in your favorite 3rd party editing apps, likeVSCO or Lightroom Mobile.
Note: ProRAW isn’t available with Live Photos, Portrait Mode, or video recording.
Go to Settings > Camera > Formats and toggle on Apple ProRAW & Resolution Control under Photo Capture.
When you're ready to shoot in ProRAW, open the Camera app and tap the RAW button before taking your photo.
If you turn off RAW in the Camera app, your photos will default to the format selected under Camera Capture in Settings > Camera > Formats — which are typically either High Efficiency (HEIF) or Most Compatible (JPEG).
With the iPhone 14 Pro and later, you can shoot ProRAW photos in either 12 megapixels or 48 megapixels. The 48 MP option gives you more detail and more flexibility for zooming in and cropping creatively, while 12 MP photos offer a smaller file size and, therefore, less detail.
To choose your resolution:
Note: Remember, RAW files are much larger file sizes than JPEGs! Double check to make sure you have enough storage.
A good photo is only as good as the light — remember this! While your iPhone does a solid job automatically, sometimes you need a little tweak to make your shot just right. Adjusting the exposure lets you brighten or darken your image, enhancing details and skin tones exactly how you want them.
Before you take a photo, the iPhone camera automatically sets the focus and exposure, and face detection balances the exposure across many faces. If you want to adjust the focus and exposure manually, do the following:
If you're using one of the newer iPhone 16 models, there's an even smoother way:
Note: Want to lock your focus and exposure settings? Press and hold on to the focus area until you see AE/AF Lock at the top of the screen. This keeps your settings consistent for multiple shots. To unlock, just tap the screen again.
Macro control on the latest iPhone devices allows users to capture really detailed and sharp up-close images of subjects. It's specifically engineered to be as close as 2cm away with a precise focus range and zero vignetting. This is great, but sometimes you don’t want the camera to switch to the ultra-wide lens automatically. Turning Macro Control off in your camera settings gives you more control.
When you tweaked a few settings, took a perfect shot, and wanted to recreate it later? Only to realize the camera had reverted to its default settings? Luckily, there's a way to preserve all your previous settings, so it always opens to your preference.
Pro Tip: Use this if you often switch between specific modes. It’ll save you time and keep you from missing a shot.
The latest iPhone 16 devices have “Camera Controls,” which allow you to open your iPhone camera and access your most common camera settings on the fly. You can quickly plug and play certain adjustments, such as file type or HDR settings, and set them as the default settings whenever you open the camera app.
Prefer a single tap instead of a double tap to access settings?
You can also modify how the Camera Control responds to your touch:
To customize these, go to Settings > Accessibility > Camera Control.
