iPhone 18 pro max applying soft skin/facial blurring even when not selected?

After you take a photo, you can further refine the Photographic Style values in the Photos app. See Edit the Photographic Style of a photo.

Remove or reset a Photographic Style

You can remove your Photographic Style or set a new one.

1. Go to the Settings app  on your iPhone.
2. Tap Camera, tap Photographic Styles, then select Use Standard or choose a different style.

On models that support Photographic Styles 2 and Photographic Styles 3, tap Customise, then do any of the following:

1. Adjust the tone and color: Drag your finger on . On iPhone 18 Pro models, tap Palette first.
2. Control the intensity of the style: Drag the slider.
3. Change the texture: Tap Texture, then choose a texture such as Soft Skin, Glow, or Film. Drag the slider to adjust the intensity, or choose Standard to apply no texture. Tap Grain to add film grain to any texture. (Available on iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max).

Are you using the front facing camera (selfie) in adequate light? In low light levels the automatic noise reduction increases. This can have a softening effect on detail and in particular fine detail such as skin texture. The fix is to film in brighter light conditions. Open curtains, turn room lights or purchase auxiliary lights.

Have you tried choosing a different style and experimenting with skin softening and then returning to standard and confirming softening is off? What I’m trying to get you to do is enabling and disabling softening in different styles and then going back to standard and checking to see if it’s off.

I’ve tried HEIF files and I can definitely see when softening is applied in other styles but when I return to standard, if softening is off, none is being applied. If you’re still observing softening the next step will be a backup, erase and restore.

The other option is returning your device and replacing it with another iPhone 18 PM. Apple allows 14 day return privilege, but you purchased from another merchant please review their return policy.

Currently set to JPEG lossless (most compatible).

Flipping to raw format on the camera app seems to fix the auto-editing issue but takes away some of the features I want - like Live Photo

Even if no Photographic Style is selected, Apple says Standard Style is applied to both HEIF and JPEG files. Apple ProRAW does not apply specific styles and has no skin softening feature.

HEIF allows you to select a Photographic Style after an image is created. If you have an HEIF available try using the Photos app to change the style and turn off skin softening. That will give us a clue as to what is happening.

Yes I've flipped between styles, when I go back to standard with softening off it's still airbrushing faces in the photos. When I take a picture in RAW format, doesn't happen. Will try erasing and restoring next

The same happens to me I "upgraded" from 16 pro max to 18 pro max and when taking the exact same picture same lighting and same distance the face in the 18 pro max is noticeably fuzzier/smooth and less detailed than the 16 pro max. even when I take the picture in raw 48 MP with standard on photographic styles the same issue happens. same thing when camera is set to high efficiency and to most compatible its consistently less detailed than the exact same picture from and iphone 16 when you view it in gallery and zoom in to see the face its less sharp and smoothing out the face is there no way around it?

I really hate this camera and I hope Apple reads this. It's my first upgrade since the 12Pro which seemingly took real photos. The 18 autoadjusts everything once the photo is taken, making one's face look more orange, flat, and wide, even with all settings turned off. Exhausting and distressing that at this price point we have no choice but to take AI photos that look uncanny and unattractive. I might honestly trade it back in for a new battery on my 12Pro since there is no option to turn off all the processing. It should not be this hard; most people are literally just using the camera for regular pictures of themselves and their friends / fam / pets.

Same here, and I hate it. I recently upgraded from my 12 Pro to an 18 Pro Max for a better camera, but I was so disappointed when I saw my selfie. Why do I look like I'm using some Xiaomi phone from 2014? 🫠😭😭

Please bring back normal, sharp images. Why is it blurring my face everywhere when in preview it looks so good?

(And yes, of course I turned off the soft skin effect and glow EVERYWHERE I could, and it's still post-processing it)

apple please give us back the original look

so sad:(

Thanks, but I have no photographic style selected and soft skin not on. Still it's blurring and retouching the photo

Hi, what format are the photos being saved in, HEIF, ProRAW, or JPEG (most compatible)?

Yes I have HEIFs available, and skin softening is not on. Yet it's blurring and airbrushing the skin in the photo

Would you like support articles on the procedure?

This is happening to me too whenever I take a selfie. It does this weird image processing and blurs my face even in raw mode. This needs to be fixed asap!