iPhone Photos Suck (and how I fixed them)

No Fusion Complete Guide - https://youtu.be/Lq_odmG3pYw
Image Galleries and raw download: http://alexarmitage.com/blog/2025/11/16/-how-to-take-great-iphone-photos-without-editing
My iPhone 17 Pro Review - https://www.alexarmitage.com/blog/2025/10/8/iphone17pro-review-for-photography

Apps Used:
No Fusion - https://www.nofusion.app/en/
Halide Process Zero - https://halide.cam/
Mood Camera App - https://www.mood.camera/
ProCam - https://www.procamapp.com/
Adobe Project Indigo - https://research.adobe.com/articles/indigo/indigo.html

Whether you’re a photographer or someone’s grandma (or both), you can identify “phone” photos. These are the photos that have no shadows or highlights, overly sharpened gritty details, and always make colors a bit more saturated than they are. For the masses, phone photos are great. They allow us to capture snapshots and memories with all the details we want, like our silly faces regardless if we are shooting directly into the light or not. The problem is, these photos suck for photography.

Photography can be simplified down into painting with light. Phone photos don’t really allow you to paint with any light; typically making even the most contrasted scene into a flat lifeless snapshot. There are ways around this, but they require work.

Over the past year or so I’ve been exploring different camera systems that allow you to take reasonably stylized images without editing. I’ve written about the Nikon Zf, the Fujifilm X100VI, and a few others that accomplish this using film simulations or recipes. This got me wondering; it’s clear that modern phone cameras are fully capable of capturing beautiful images but can we do so without spending hours behind another screen editing? Is it possible to get photos straight from your phone that don’t look anything like “phone” photos?

The answer is yes and it's in this video!

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0:00 Why iPhone Photos Suck
1:50 What We'll Be Testing
4:16 Introduction to each Camera App
7:46 Apple iPhone's Photographic Styles
12:02 My Love and Hate for Mood.camera
14:50 The Clear Winner
20:23 Adobe Project Indigo (iPhone 17 Pro)
22:00 Whats the Catch/Cost?