iPhone owners can look forward to a major upgrade to their Photos app, which Apple has called the “biggest redesign ever.”
There are a whopping 11 new photography features in iOS 18, the software update that is set to hit iPhones in a few weeks.
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Six of the eleven new photo features are based exclusively on Apple Intelligence – the company’s brand new AI offering.
- Here’s The Sun’s iOS 18 launch date prediction
Photo Boost
iPhone owners who are eligible for the iOS 18 update can enjoy five features immediately, including:
Smarter collections – Apple’s Collections—automatically generated mini photo albums—organize your library by themes like Recent Days, Travel, and People & Pets.
Pinned collections – These allow iPhone owners to quickly access their favorite collections or albums in the Photos app.
Image carousel – A new swipe-through snapshot selection widget that displays hand-picked photos in a poster-like view.
Locked photos – Lock the Photos app with Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode.
Send higher resolution photos more easily – With the long-awaited RCS support, iPhone owners can send photos to Android owners over Wi-Fi or 5G/4G.
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RCS support is expected to enable eight iMessage-like features for text messaging between iPhone and Android users, including:
- Higher resolution photos and videos
- Audio messages
- Typing indicators
- Read receipts
- Wi-Fi messaging between iPhones and Android devices
- Improved group chats, including the ability for iPhone users to leave a conversation with Android users
- Improved encryption compared to SMS
- Share your location with people in text threads
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Apple Intelligence
Features that require Apple Intelligence are expected to be available a little later than the first iOS 18 features. These include:
Clean up – A new AI-powered photo editing tool that allows users to remove unwanted objects or people from photos.
Photo editing with Siri – The voice assistant can adjust the hue, brightness and contrast of a photo based on spoken instructions.
And that’s not the only way Siri is getting smarter.
Picture playground – This feature allows users to create images using text-based prompts.
The AI can create personalized sketch, illustration and animation style images based on the people in your photo album.
You can see how this feature works in the video above.
Search in natural language – This allows users to search for photos and videos with phrases like “Katie with stickers on her face” or “Mom on her birthday.”
Search in videos – iPhone owners can also search for scenes in the middle of the video, such as “When Katie takes her first steps” or “When Mom blows out the birthday candles.”
Memory films – This automatically creates personalized videos based on custom prompts, such as “Dinner party in Brooklyn” or “Weekend in Edinburgh.”
Although their introduction will be somewhat delayed, Apple CEO Tim Cook is confident that Apple Intelligence features will be available “by the end of the calendar year.”
iPhone Tricks You Should Try Today
Here are some of the best…
- Input cursor – Hold down the spacebar while typing to turn your keyboard into a trackpad, making it easier to move around words and sentences
- Close all Safari tabs – To do this in one go, just hold down the overlapping squares in the bottom right corner and press “Close all tabs”
- Delete lots of photos quickly – Press and hold a photo, then drag your finger diagonally in Photos to select multiple images at once, then press the Delete key
- Convert currency quickly – Swipe down from the top of your Home screen (or swipe left to right on an iPhone X or newer model), then tap the bar and enter a currency (e.g. $200). The amount will then automatically be converted to your local currency.
- Check if a battery upgrade is due – Batteries in smartphones degrade over time. Simply go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health and look at the maximum capacity indicator. Generally, a battery is considered worn out when it has only 80% of its capacity left. If it has less than that, you can buy a replacement battery from Apple.
- Move apps faster – Press and hold an app until it starts to wiggle, then tap (while holding) other apps, which will stack them and make them easier to move.
