In its latest iOS 15 developer beta, Apple has added a new feature that automatically removes the signature ‘green orb’ lens flare sometimes seen in photographs captured on iPhone camera systems.
As reported by Reddit user Doubleluckstur in the iOSBeta subreddit, iOS 15 Beta 4 will remove lens flares using some kind of software trickery. ‘Whilst out and about I took this photo and thought it was ruined / needing to be edited later due to the lens flare,’ said Doubleluckstur. ‘However, I got home and noticed the lens flare has automatically gone in the original photo despite it being obviously there still in the live photo, meaning the automatic post processing has gotten smart enough to remove lens flares now!’
Below are the photographs Doubleluckstur used as an example in his post. Note how the second image has the small ‘green orb’ flare in the middle-left section of the image.
Big news: the latest iOS 15 beta automatically removes the famous 'green orb' lens flares we are so used to on iPhones. Thoughts? https://t. co/l6OQ3vRVRR pic. twitter. com/4wtorXaZxt
— Halide (@halidecamera) August 4, 2021
It appears though that this trick won’t work on all images, however. As noted by Reddit user ‘-DementedAvenger-’ in response to the original post, some images where the flare falls over more complicated surface areas, such as through screens and trees, doesn’t have this new feature applied. This suggests Apple has some sort of detection system it’s using to determine how successful it believes its flare-removal feature will fare depending on the complexity of the scene.
Considering this is an iOS Beta, there’s no knowing whether or not this will make it into the first public release of iOS 15. That said, it seems like a fairly straightforward solution to mitigating lens flares on iPhones, which aren’t often used with physical means of flare mitigation, such as lens hoods and filters.
. dpreview.com2021-8-5 14:48
