Review Recommends Gloam, Project Indigo and Native Camera for iPhone 18 Pro

Gloam is a film simulation app that ifanr said produced strong results in daylight, overcast conditions, indoors and at night. It reads iPhone RAW data, performs color mapping, tonal adjustment and grain processing, and outputs a JPG. The review praised its grain as appropriately sized and strong enough for direct use. Because the app keeps a kind of digital negative data, users can change presets or adjust tone and white balance after capture. It also offers a rangefinder-style framing view on the 1x main camera that shows area outside the frame. ifanr said the processing can help the iPhone 18 Pro's telephoto camera, since film images do not seek absolute sharpness. The app is not suited to continuous high-speed shooting because processing takes time, and ifanr noted incomplete adaptation: focal length parameters for the three lenses are still wrong, and there is no manual aperture option. Its lifetime purchase price is 58 yuan, or $7.99.

Project Indigo takes the opposite approach, according to the review. The free app, available in App Store regions including the United States and Hong Kong, follows a strong capture, weak rendering principle. It still relies on computational photography, but uses more computation for multi-frame capture, alignment and fusion, and less for aggressive HDR, sharpening and local tone changes. ifanr said the result has a clear DSLR-like feel: it preserves the natural brightness gap between subjects and backgrounds, including indoor and outdoor scenes, instead of lifting shadows and pulling down highlights. It allows some detail to disappear rather than sharpening leaves, hair and wall textures into a plastic look, producing what the review described as oily, rich color and texture. The multi-frame approach also helps 8x digital zoom by reconstructing detail from slight shifts between frames, and helps in low light by aligning and merging multiple RAW frames so random noise can cancel out. ifanr said early versions heated up and processed slowly, but updates have improved this. It recommended shooting JPG rather than keeping every RAW file, and noted that users who dislike HDR display can turn off View Full HDR in Settings-Photos-Display Options.

The native Camera app remains the most reliable option, ifanr said, partly because the Camera Control button provides a stable way to launch it. Users can set the button to open the camera whether or not the screen is on. HEIF is the preferred format for most daily shooting. With third-generation Photographic Styles, a photo can still be changed after capture, including texture adjustments and beauty, soft light, film and grain effects; shooting JPEG removes that later adjustment space. ifanr's most-used combinations were Pearl plus Soft Skin for portraits, with Soft Skin around 50 percent; Black & White Contrast plus Film for street scenes; and Natural plus Glow for everyday records. The review also described cross-device editing limits: unedited photos from an iPhone 18 Pro can be AirDropped to an iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17e or another 18 Pro and still be adjusted, but if the photo is first edited in the 18 Pro's Photos app, the Photographic Styles options disappear after transfer. Older phones cannot use the Texture option even after updating to iOS 27, though they can use the palette with intensity from 0 to 100.

The iPhone 18 Pro adds manual controls to the native camera. ifanr said locking white balance can preserve the color of a sunset, while locking shutter speed at 1 second and setting aperture to f/2.8 can capture car light trails and starbursts. The Verge's testing found that manual shutter uses a single-frame exposure rather than the multi-frame capture and compositing of automatic mode, sacrificing some dynamic range but reducing traces of multi-frame computation. Aperture is not only for background blur: when photographing books in sufficient light, the iPhone automatically stops down to f/4 so every character stays clear. Pro Control adds focus and histogram. Focus allows users to select the 4x telephoto lens instead of relying on a main-camera crop, though it requires manual focus. The histogram can switch among brightness, RGB overlay and RGB separate modes and be dragged to any corner. ifanr recommended placing shutter, aperture and white balance at the top, with Live Photos and histogram toggles, for a simple layout.

ifanr concluded that the same iPhone and the same three lenses can produce completely different results with different apps, and that software is now part of a phone camera's character. It described the native camera as both easy to use and professional, and said it remains the foundation of iPhone photography.