A small portion back, my workfellow Mitchell Clark and I challenged each different to usage our aged iPhones for the play — excavation was an archetypal iPhone SE, and they had an iPhone 5S. I bailed a fewer hours successful aft my wireless transportation flaked out, and I watched the telephone artillery driblet 10 percent successful a substance of minutes. (Mitchell saw the situation through.)

But it wasn’t a wholly futile exercise. When I looked backmost astatine the photos I took during those fewer fleeting hours, I noticed thing I hadn’t seen overmuch of successful photos from newer phones — thing I hadn’t adjacent realized I’d been missing. That thing? Contrast. It’s been retired of favour successful smartphone representation processing lately, but determination are immoderate casual ways to bring it backmost to your photos. I deliberation it’s precocious clip we did.

I’ve seen capable of this Thomas Kinkade Painter of Light nonsense from my smartphone. Taken with the Motorola Edge (2022).

Remember contrast? Dark shadows with affluent blacks? Highlight tones that are genuinely agleam white? It’s astir apt been a portion since you saw any, truthful here’s a refresher. Contrast comes from a clip mode backmost earlier the operation “computational photography” was batted astir tech websites similar this one, erstwhile integer representation processing was overmuch little blase than it is now.

You’ll spot a batch of opposition successful a country with truly agleam highlights and heavy shadows, similar idiosyncratic backlit successful beforehand of a window. Traditionally, if you weren’t utilizing flash oregon doing a batch of fancy post-processing, you’d person to determine whether you wanted to exposure for the highlights oregon the shadows due to the fact that you couldn’t person both. Then, computational photography came on and asked “why not both?” By combining aggregate frames with antithetic vulnerability levels, we could person a last representation with details some successful acheronian shadows and successful agleam skies. It was great! Until it wasn’t.

This benignant of computational photography — precocious dynamic range, oregon HDR, photography, to beryllium circumstantial — is immensely useful. The quality oculus tin spot a wider scope of brights and shadows than an representation sensor, truthful HDR brings integer images person to what we really see. It besides saves america the embarrassment of utilizing our camera’s flash and giving everyone successful your photograph that classical deer-in-headlights look. But with large powerfulness comes large responsibility, and I deliberation we’ve collectively abused our power.

Most of the time, the effect isn’t excessively egregious, but erstwhile it goes disconnected the rails, it’s ugly. We’ve each seen atrocious HDR. It flattens the crisp quality betwixt lights and darks, pushing these tones toward a benignant of milquetoast, washed-out mediate ground. It’s the happening that won’t fto shadows beryllium shadows and makes your representation of a sunset look similar a Thomas Kinkade painting. No portion of your representation is genuinely achromatic oregon genuinely white. It sucks.

But it doesn’t person to beryllium similar this! In my case, I switched my iPhone’s “Photographic Style” — a diagnostic Apple introduced with the iPhone 13 — to “Rich Contrast.” I changeable with it implicit a weekend, and I don’t deliberation I’m ever going backmost to the modular profile. It’s everything I liked astir those iPhone SE shots, with heavy blacks and highlights that are inactive agleam achromatic and the benefits of a modern representation sensor and amended optics.

But you don’t request a caller iPhone to bring a small opposition backmost to your photos. If you person an iPhone 12 oregon older, effort retired the “dramatic” filter successful the autochthonal camera app — it applies a high-contrast look that’s akin to Rich Contrast.

In the Samsung camera app, you tin pat the wand icon connected the apical of the surface to use different filters. You tin download further filters close successful the main camera app, and you tin alteration the spot of immoderate filter to code down the effect. On a Galaxy S22 Plus, I downloaded the “Classic” filter by Candy Camera and turned the spot down astir halfway, and I similar the look of it. You tin effort third-party camera apps, too. Halide is simply a fashionable iOS option, though you’ll request to wage 99 cents per period to usage it aft a escaped seven-day trial. And immoderate basal photograph editing app volition besides fto you boost opposition aft the fact.

Embrace the shadows: changeable connected the iPhone 13 Pro Max with Rich Contrast.

Your photograph duty for the week is to crook up the opposition a small and find retired what you’ve been missing successful our HDR-saturated world. You conscionable mightiness similar what you see.