Ever since the iPhone XS came out, there’s been a criticism of its front camera — specifically, that it overly smoothen the skin. This, of course, was dubbed “Beautygate” in reference to Samsung-style beautification filters, which Apple has always insisted it doesn’t use. That problem will soon be solved as Apple is rolling out an update that will stop the skin smoothing effect on XS’ front-facing camera when it releases iOS 12.1 to the public in the future.
The release of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max was greeted by complaints from users discovering an issue when they took self-portraits. The iPhone appeared to smooth out the subject’s skin. The effect seemed like a purpose-made beauty filter or “really poor Photoshopping” according to user comments, with some instances causing a person’s skin to change to an unnatural color.
Poor HDR performance:
Essentially, Smart HDR was choosing the wrong base frame for HDR processing when you took a selfie. Instead of choosing a frame with a short shutter speed to freeze motion and preserve detail, it would sometimes choose a frame with longer shutter speed. The front camera also does not have optical image stabilization, so it takes blurrier shots at the same shutter speed as the rear, stabilized camera. The result is a loss of detail that looks like smoothing on the front camera. Apple will be rolling out a fix for this ‘beautygate’ problem in iOS 12.1 update. Apple said the problem lies in the ‘Smart HDR’ camera system on the front camera. Smart HDR on the 7-megapixel front camera offers “more highlight and shadow detail” to photos. According to The Verge, Smart HDR was flawed with choosing frames with longer shutter speed and the absence of OIS resulted in the selfies appearing smoother.
This should all be fixed in iOS 12.1, which will pick the sharpest base frame for the HDR merge when taking selfies. Currently, iOS 12.1 is in beta testing and will be released in the coming weeks.
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