Last week, when I packed for a short Caribbean vacation, I forgot my sunglasses. It’s still winter in Connecticut, more dark than light, and it just wasn’t top of mind.
But it served as a great excuse to buy a brand new unscratched/fashion forward/state-of-the-art pair on the trip. And wouldn’t you know, they were waiting for me right there on the shelf of the resort gift shop. Cash? Credit?
If you’ve gone without sunglasses for a time, the first thing you notice is how cool they make the world look. It’s your world as remembered by your mind’s eye. A richer, deeper, more dramatic world than reality. And good sunglasses provide a real-time preview of those memories.
The ocean is bluer. Foliage is greener. It’s like stepping into a movie.
Apple Photos offers Styles settings to do the same thing.
If you go into Settings > Camera > Photographic Styles you get the option to tweak the basic camera settings for a slightly different look, like putting sunglasses over your lens.
You can also find the setting in the Camera app itself, right next to Live Photos or in the dropdown above the shutter.
In addition to Standard, the basic look we’ve always had, Styles offers Rich Contrast, Vibrant, Warm, and Cool. Not sunglasses cool but cool as in a slightly blue cast.
Back in the day we chose different types of film to do the same thing. Some photographers liked a warm tone to their pictures that skewed the image toward a golden sunset glow. Cool films made photos a little more stark and edgy. And so on. It gave photographers’ pictures a certain ‘look,’ often tied to their preferred subject matter, that became part of the photographer’s brand identity.
You might be wondering how Styles and Filters differ. Good question.
Apple has offered several image filters for years. You can choose them either right in the Camera app, before the picture or video is captured, or later in the edit window. Filters are also non-destructive which means you can change them or remove them on a photo at any time and revert it back to its pre-filtered look.
Styles, on the other hand have to be selected before the photo is taken and they actually modify the image file itself, in the same way that film did. You can also modify them yourself, so if you like a Vibrant + Warm look, you can create that look on your own. So, although Styles are much more subtle than Filters, and you can customize Styles, the basic look you create using Styles is baked into the image and can’t be removed after the fact.
If you want to start playing with the look of your images, Styles is a good place to start. You’ll learn how warm or cold bias changes the look of a photo and what contrast does. Then, like painters, when we find a look that we like, we can save it to use on picture after picture going forward.
And your Style will always be with you, unlike a pair of sunglasses.