Apple to fix iPhone XS selfie smoothing with iOS 12.1
After the beauty-gate brouhaha, Apple's tweaking the Smart HDR algorithm for selfies in the forthcoming update to iOS.
If you're among those distressed by the new Apple iPhone XS' propensity for plastic-skinning your high-contrast selfies, you can relax now: The fix for beauty-gate is in. Or will be in, once the current beta of iOS 12.1 goes live.
The facial smoothing, first thought of as an unwanted "beauty mode" by some users on Reddit and YouTube, turned out to be isolated to the front camera's new Smart HDR mode. HDR modes shoot multiple frames at different exposures and then merge them to create a single frame with an optimized exposure.
Now Apple has confirmed the Smart HDR algorithm wasn't choosing the sharpest image to anchor its HDR merges, resulting in a loss of texture detail. iOS 12.1 will fix the issue by picking a sharper base frame. The Verge earlier reported the update.
The company has tweaked the algorithm in the current beta of iOS 12.1, and separately confirmed to us that a future software update will allow previews of the portrait mode's depth effect before shooting on the iPhone XR.
