iPhone set for AI photo editing upgrade to match Google Pixel, but does anyone want it?
iOS 27 will bring new Apple intelligence tools to photo editing and *sigh* can't we just try to get the capture right before making the photo fake?
Apple is planning to debut a trio of AI-based iPhone photo editing tools within iOS 27, according to a new report from the most credible Apple watcher, on Tuesday.
The Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman says the next crop of Apple Intelligence features will include options to Extend, Enhance and Reframe photos.
Enhance is the most noteworthy as it will work to generate new content beyond the frame of the original photo. This is similar to the Auto Frame technology available on Google Pixel devices, essentially generating a fake extension to the image you have captured.
Enhance doesn’t sound all that different to the current Auto Enhance feature. It’ll tweak lighting, colours and other elements with AI instead of good old fashioned computational tech that does a decent enough job while still keeping the image looking like it was taken by a fella with a phone.
Reframe is designed for Spatial Photos. Apple Intelligence will be used here to change the perspective of an image after it’s taken. That might be the most impressive feature, but considering Spatial Photos can only be viewed in all their glory on the Vision Pro, it will have the most limited appeal.
The features are likely to be greeted with a mixed reception. Whether by design or poor design, Apple has largely kept AI out of the iPhone photography experience until now.
The only existing feature is Clean Up, which is designed to help users remove unwanted objects from their image. As MacRumors points out in its report, this doesn’t work as well as similar features on Samsung and Google phones.
If Apple does launch these features, we’re likely to see them previewed at WWDC in June. However, Gurman says Apple is still working out the kinks and the features might end up being delayed until later in the release cycle.
Chris Smith
