Apple’s improvements to the camera capabilities on the iPhone 18 Pro range could go beyond what the company had previously announced for iOS 27 back at WWDC in June.
According to the eagle-eyed code-scanner posting on the MacRumours forums under the name ‘pdfu’, Apple has at least six more improvements to share. They could bring the iOS Camera app in line with popular manual photography apps on the App Store.
Those improvements, according to lines spied within the iOS 27 beta, include:
- Waveforms and histograms for helping to fine tune exposure
- Focus peaking to help users learn which parts of the image are most “clearly defined”
- Highlight clipping to help users determine which elements of the photo are over-exposed
- Repeated self-timer captures that would give uses more control over how often and how many photos are taken via the timer
- Manual focus locking, which would allow users to choose where the camera focuses and hold that position.
- Aperture-dependent optical processing – a post production feature potentially related to camera hardware with a variable physical aperture, something rumoured for the iPhone 18 Pro range.
“The final change affects image processing and may be relevant to a device with a variable physical aperture,” pdfu writes in a deep dive. “iOS 27 can choose and blend lens correction data based on the aperture value. These corrections are meant to compensate for differences in light distribution across the image.”
While some of these features are hinted at in code only, it’s possible Apple hasn’t revealed them yet because they will be part of a presentation for the iPhone 18 Pro handset set to be announced tomorrow during Apple’s surprise and shine event. It’s possible we see these roll out over time, during the iOS 27 life-cycle.
Those third-party apps that have been dining out on Apple’s desire to keep its stock camera app user-friendly might see some of their appeal to more advanced photographers eroded by iOS 27.
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