[Open in Vibe Cam · Right from Photos] A new "Vibe Cam" entry in the iOS Photos share sheet — send any shot straight into the editor in one tap. · Top of the share sheet: Tap Share on a photo and you'll find Vibe Cam right there in the first row of full-color app icons — one tap hands the image off to the app. · Smart format routing: DNG / Apple ProRAW open in the RAW Editor; HEIF / JPG open in the Photo Editor. [Leica Moment · Flavor Tuned] A comprehensive refresh of the "Leica M9" film preset, bringing you closer to the original feel of that legendary CCD. · Cooler default white balance: 5500K → 4600K, with a more restrained tint (13 → 2) — recapturing the cool atmosphere unique to the CCD era. · Brighter overall: EV moved from -0.5 to -0.3 — the image breathes more, shadows feel less crushed. · Refined warm tones: Orange hue subtly adjusted; skin tones become smoother and more natural — especially flattering for street portraits. · Smarter white-balance lock: Shooting and the RAW Editor now share the same adaptive convergence — colors stay consistent between out-of-camera and post.

[Open in Vibe Cam · Right from Photos] A new "Vibe Cam" entry in the iOS Photos share sheet — send any shot straight into the editor in one tap. · Top of the share sheet: Tap Share on a photo and you'll find Vibe Cam right there in the first row of full-color app icons — one tap hands the image off to the app. · Smart format routing: DNG / Apple ProRAW open in the RAW Editor; HEIF / JPG open in the Photo Editor. [Leica Moment · Flavor Tuned] A comprehensive refresh of the "Leica M9" film preset, bringing you closer to the original feel of that legendary CCD. · Cooler default white balance: 5500K → 4600K, with a more restrained tint (13 → 2) — recapturing the cool atmosphere unique to the CCD era. · Brighter overall: EV moved from -0.5 to -0.3 — the image breathes more, shadows feel less crushed. · Refined warm tones: Orange hue subtly adjusted; skin tones become smoother and more natural — especially flattering for street portraits. · Smarter white-balance lock: Shooting and the RAW Editor now share the same adaptive convergence — colors stay consistent between out-of-camera and post.

This update centers on highlights — photography's most demanding dimension — and introduces a four-pillar rendering suite: Hala (Film Halation), Bloom (Highlight Glow), AgX (Film Look) and HDR (True Light). The four operate independently along halo, glow, color and brightness, usable individually or stacked. The RAW editor, color pipeline and capture parameters have been refactored alongside. I. Hala (Film Halation) — New Simulates the red-orange halo formed when intense light scatters in a film's emulsion layer. Built on a three-stage Metal GPU pipeline: bright-region extraction → isotropic Gaussian diffusion → screen-mode compositing. Threshold transition, dark-background gain gating and blue compensation are tuned to avoid common artifacts such as a fully reddened sky or white sources turning pink. Backlit silhouettes, sunset contours, neon and night-time lights — bright edges bathe in a soft warm glow, lending the image film's signature warmth. Not available at 48MP for stability reasons. II. Bloom (Highlight Glow) — New A highlight-glow solution built on the mip-pyramid multi-scale scattering algorithm from Bevy v0.15.3, on par with implementations in professional engines like Unity and Unreal. At its core is a Metal dual-filter pyramid — 13-tap COD downsampling + 9-tap tent upsampling, augmented by Karis averaging to suppress single-pixel fireflies, a soft-knee threshold for smooth highlight transitions, and an SDR soft-shoulder rolloff at composite to prevent highlights "blowing out". Eight mip levels at 512×512 16F take only ~2 MB of VRAM and stay imperceptible on mid-range devices. Strong light diffuses outward as if through a physical lens, with light mist floating across the image. Unlike traditional Bloom that merely "makes highlights brighter", this approach layers near-field halos and far-field soft mist across multiple frequency bands, recreating the filmic atmosphere of "light breathing in air". Chained with Hala, Bloom is deliberately placed downstream — Hala's tinting forms first at the emulsion scale, then is softened by Bloom's overall glow; the two layers complement rather than cancel each other. Not available at 48MP for stability reasons. III. AgX (Film Look) — New Brings in the AgX color-processing engine widely adopted by Blender, Filament and other professional rendering software, focused on one core question: how to fit the strong light of a real scene gracefully onto a screen. Unlike the "hard clipping" of traditional tone mapping, AgX rolls highlights off naturally — bright light is no longer cut into pure white. It also features highlight desaturation: a face lit by sunset fades from orange-red toward off-white as exposure rises, restoring film's distinctive light gradations. The overall look is cinematic, easy on the eyes, never harsh, never "digital". When AgX and Hala work together, dedicated parameter compensation kicks in: AgX's sigmoid compresses EDR highlights into the midtones, which would weaken Hala's perceived intensity, so in AgX mode Hala's threshold and strength are auto-adjusted to keep the halo's visual presence consistent. IV. HDR (True Light) High dynamic range. On EDR-capable devices it unleashes the display's full brightness headroom — making highlights brighter, the image more luminous, restoring the immersive sensation of real physical light. This update establishes EDR signal flow under AgX and recalibrates extendedDynamicRangeAmount for the RAW main-image pipeline, aligning AgX's sigmoid working zone with the super-1.0 headroom actually available on iPhone sensors. This eliminates "midtones dropping a stop into gray, image losing luminance".

This update centers on highlights — photography's most demanding dimension — and introduces a four-pillar rendering suite: Hala (Film Halation), Bloom (Highlight Glow), AgX (Film Look) and HDR (True Light). The four operate independently along halo, glow, color and brightness, usable individually or stacked. The RAW editor, color pipeline and capture parameters have been refactored alongside. I. Hala (Film Halation) — New Simulates the red-orange halo formed when intense light scatters in a film's emulsion layer. Built on a three-stage Metal GPU pipeline: bright-region extraction → isotropic Gaussian diffusion → screen-mode compositing. Threshold transition, dark-background gain gating and blue compensation are tuned to avoid common artifacts such as a fully reddened sky or white sources turning pink. Backlit silhouettes, sunset contours, neon and night-time lights — bright edges bathe in a soft warm glow, lending the image film's signature warmth. Not available at 48MP for stability reasons. II. Bloom (Highlight Glow) — New A highlight-glow solution built on the mip-pyramid multi-scale scattering algorithm from Bevy v0.15.3, on par with implementations in professional engines like Unity and Unreal. At its core is a Metal dual-filter pyramid — 13-tap COD downsampling + 9-tap tent upsampling, augmented by Karis averaging to suppress single-pixel fireflies, a soft-knee threshold for smooth highlight transitions, and an SDR soft-shoulder rolloff at composite to prevent highlights "blowing out". Eight mip levels at 512×512 16F take only ~2 MB of VRAM and stay imperceptible on mid-range devices. Strong light diffuses outward as if through a physical lens, with light mist floating across the image. Unlike traditional Bloom that merely "makes highlights brighter", this approach layers near-field halos and far-field soft mist across multiple frequency bands, recreating the filmic atmosphere of "light breathing in air". Chained with Hala, Bloom is deliberately placed downstream — Hala's tinting forms first at the emulsion scale, then is softened by Bloom's overall glow; the two layers complement rather than cancel each other. Not available at 48MP for stability reasons. III. AgX (Film Look) — New Brings in the AgX color-processing engine widely adopted by Blender, Filament and other professional rendering software, focused on one core question: how to fit the strong light of a real scene gracefully onto a screen. Unlike the "hard clipping" of traditional tone mapping, AgX rolls highlights off naturally — bright light is no longer cut into pure white. It also features highlight desaturation: a face lit by sunset fades from orange-red toward off-white as exposure rises, restoring film's distinctive light gradations. The overall look is cinematic, easy on the eyes, never harsh, never "digital". When AgX and Hala work together, dedicated parameter compensation kicks in: AgX's sigmoid compresses EDR highlights into the midtones, which would weaken Hala's perceived intensity, so in AgX mode Hala's threshold and strength are auto-adjusted to keep the halo's visual presence consistent. IV. HDR (True Light) High dynamic range. On EDR-capable devices it unleashes the display's full brightness headroom — making highlights brighter, the image more luminous, restoring the immersive sensation of real physical light. This update establishes EDR signal flow under AgX and recalibrates extendedDynamicRangeAmount for the RAW main-image pipeline, aligning AgX's sigmoid working zone with the super-1.0 headroom actually available on iPhone sensors. This eliminates "midtones dropping a stop into gray, image losing luminance".

This update centers on highlights — photography's most demanding dimension — and introduces a four-pillar rendering suite: Hala (Film Halation), Bloom (Highlight Glow), AgX (Film Look) and HDR (True Light). The four operate independently along halo, glow, color and brightness, usable individually or stacked. The RAW editor, color pipeline and capture parameters have been refactored alongside. I. Hala (Film Halation) — New Simulates the red-orange halo formed when intense light scatters in a film's emulsion layer. Built on a three-stage Metal GPU pipeline: bright-region extraction → isotropic Gaussian diffusion → screen-mode compositing. Threshold transition, dark-background gain gating and blue compensation are tuned to avoid common artifacts such as a fully reddened sky or white sources turning pink. Backlit silhouettes, sunset contours, neon and night-time lights — bright edges bathe in a soft warm glow, lending the image film's signature warmth. Not available at 48MP for stability reasons. II. Bloom (Highlight Glow) — New A highlight-glow solution built on the mip-pyramid multi-scale scattering algorithm from Bevy v0.15.3, on par with implementations in professional engines like Unity and Unreal. At its core is a Metal dual-filter pyramid — 13-tap COD downsampling + 9-tap tent upsampling, augmented by Karis averaging to suppress single-pixel fireflies, a soft-knee threshold for smooth highlight transitions, and an SDR soft-shoulder rolloff at composite to prevent highlights "blowing out". Eight mip levels at 512×512 16F take only ~2 MB of VRAM and stay imperceptible on mid-range devices. Strong light diffuses outward as if through a physical lens, with light mist floating across the image. Unlike traditional Bloom that merely "makes highlights brighter", this approach layers near-field halos and far-field soft mist across multiple frequency bands, recreating the filmic atmosphere of "light breathing in air". Chained with Hala, Bloom is deliberately placed downstream — Hala's tinting forms first at the emulsion scale, then is softened by Bloom's overall glow; the two layers complement rather than cancel each other. Not available at 48MP for stability reasons. III. AgX (Film Look) — New Brings in the AgX color-processing engine widely adopted by Blender, Filament and other professional rendering software, focused on one core question: how to fit the strong light of a real scene gracefully onto a screen. Unlike the "hard clipping" of traditional tone mapping, AgX rolls highlights off naturally — bright light is no longer cut into pure white. It also features highlight desaturation: a face lit by sunset fades from orange-red toward off-white as exposure rises, restoring film's distinctive light gradations. The overall look is cinematic, easy on the eyes, never harsh, never "digital". When AgX and Hala work together, dedicated parameter compensation kicks in: AgX's sigmoid compresses EDR highlights into the midtones, which would weaken Hala's perceived intensity, so in AgX mode Hala's threshold and strength are auto-adjusted to keep the halo's visual presence consistent. IV. HDR (True Light) High dynamic range. On EDR-capable devices it unleashes the display's full brightness headroom — making highlights brighter, the image more luminous, restoring the immersive sensation of real physical light. This update establishes EDR signal flow under AgX and recalibrates extendedDynamicRangeAmount for the RAW main-image pipeline, aligning AgX's sigmoid working zone with the super-1.0 headroom actually available on iPhone sensors. This eliminates "midtones dropping a stop into gray, image losing luminance".

This update centers on highlights — photography's most demanding dimension — and introduces a four-pillar rendering suite: Hala (Film Halation), Bloom (Highlight Glow), AgX (Film Look) and HDR (True Light). The four operate independently along halo, glow, color and brightness, usable individually or stacked. The RAW editor, color pipeline and capture parameters have been refactored alongside. I. Hala (Film Halation) — New Simulates the red-orange halo formed when intense light scatters in a film's emulsion layer. Built on a three-stage Metal GPU pipeline: bright-region extraction → isotropic Gaussian diffusion → screen-mode compositing. Threshold transition, dark-background gain gating and blue compensation are tuned to avoid common artifacts such as a fully reddened sky or white sources turning pink. Backlit silhouettes, sunset contours, neon and night-time lights — bright edges bathe in a soft warm glow, lending the image film's signature warmth. Not available at 48MP for stability reasons. II. Bloom (Highlight Glow) — New A highlight-glow solution built on the mip-pyramid multi-scale scattering algorithm from Bevy v0.15.3, on par with implementations in professional engines like Unity and Unreal. At its core is a Metal dual-filter pyramid — 13-tap COD downsampling + 9-tap tent upsampling, augmented by Karis averaging to suppress single-pixel fireflies, a soft-knee threshold for smooth highlight transitions, and an SDR soft-shoulder rolloff at composite to prevent highlights "blowing out". Eight mip levels at 512×512 16F take only ~2 MB of VRAM and stay imperceptible on mid-range devices. Strong light diffuses outward as if through a physical lens, with light mist floating across the image. Unlike traditional Bloom that merely "makes highlights brighter", this approach layers near-field halos and far-field soft mist across multiple frequency bands, recreating the filmic atmosphere of "light breathing in air". Chained with Hala, Bloom is deliberately placed downstream — Hala's tinting forms first at the emulsion scale, then is softened by Bloom's overall glow; the two layers complement rather than cancel each other. Not available at 48MP for stability reasons. III. AgX (Film Look) — New Brings in the AgX color-processing engine widely adopted by Blender, Filament and other professional rendering software, focused on one core question: how to fit the strong light of a real scene gracefully onto a screen. Unlike the "hard clipping" of traditional tone mapping, AgX rolls highlights off naturally — bright light is no longer cut into pure white. It also features highlight desaturation: a face lit by sunset fades from orange-red toward off-white as exposure rises, restoring film's distinctive light gradations. The overall look is cinematic, easy on the eyes, never harsh, never "digital". When AgX and Hala work together, dedicated parameter compensation kicks in: AgX's sigmoid compresses EDR highlights into the midtones, which would weaken Hala's perceived intensity, so in AgX mode Hala's threshold and strength are auto-adjusted to keep the halo's visual presence consistent. IV. HDR (True Light) High dynamic range. On EDR-capable devices it unleashes the display's full brightness headroom — making highlights brighter, the image more luminous, restoring the immersive sensation of real physical light. This update establishes EDR signal flow under AgX and recalibrates extendedDynamicRangeAmount for the RAW main-image pipeline, aligning AgX's sigmoid working zone with the super-1.0 headroom actually available on iPhone sensors. This eliminates "midtones dropping a stop into gray, image losing luminance".

This update is built around highlights — the single most challenging dimension in photography — and introduces a brand-new triadic rendering scheme: Hala (film halation), AgX (film-like color), and HDR (lifelike luminance). The three modules operate independently along three distinct axes — halo, color, and brightness — and can be enabled individually or stacked together. Alongside this, we have systematically rebuilt the RAW editor, the color pipeline, and the capture parameters. I. Hala (Film Halation) — New Hala simulates the red-orange halo formed when strong light scatters through a film's emulsion layer. It is powered by a three-stage GPU pipeline implemented in Metal: high-luminance extraction → isotropic Gaussian diffusion → screen-mode compositing. The threshold transition, dark-background gain gating, and blue-channel compensation are all carefully tuned to suppress common side effects such as the entire sky turning red or white light sources being miscolored as pink. Backlit silhouettes, sunset contours, neon signs, and night-time lights — the edges of bright sources are bathed in a soft warm glow, lending the image film's signature warmth and recognizability. For performance and stability reasons, the effect is currently unavailable at 48MP. II. AgX (Film-Like Color) — New We have integrated the AgX color-processing engine, widely adopted by professional rendering software such as Blender and Filament. Its single-minded thesis: how to fit the strong light of a real scene gracefully onto a screen. Unlike the hard clipping of conventional tone mapping, AgX rolls highlights off smoothly so they no longer collapse into pure white in one cut. It also exhibits a "highlight desaturation" behavior — a face lit by sunset gradually fades from orange-red toward off-white as exposure rises, recreating film's signature tonal sensation of light. The overall feel is a long-watchable cinematic tone — never harsh, never digital. When AgX and Hala are used together, we apply targeted parameter compensation. Because AgX's sigmoid pushes EDR highlights down into the mid-range, Hala's perceived intensity would otherwise be attenuated. To prevent this, Hala's threshold and strength are auto-adjusted under AgX, so that toggling AgX on or off does not visibly change the halo. III. HDR (Lifelike Luminance) High Dynamic Range technology. On EDR-capable devices it unlocks the display's full brightness headroom, making highlights more brilliant and the image more luminous, restoring an immersive, true-to-life sense of physical light. This update wires EDR signal flow through the AgX path and recalibrates extendedDynamicRangeAmount specifically for the RAW main link. As a result, the core working zone of the AgX sigmoid is aligned with the super-1.0 headroom that an iPhone sensor can actually deliver, eliminating the side effect of "mid-tones sinking by a stop into gray and the image losing its transparency."

Version 5.3.0 brings HDR through the full pipeline — capture, browsing, and editing. On the capture side, the embedded preview format of ProRAW has been restructured so that the system Photos app can parse HDR information in full. On the browsing side, thumbnail loading has been reworked to preserve scrolling smoothness while decoding HDR. The editor, for the first time, natively supports HEIF HDR, keeping the source image's HDR highlights intact after exposure, filter, and frame adjustments. 1. HDR Image Editing HEIF HDR preview and editing. Photos open in the editor with their HDR look intact rather than downgraded to SDR. Adjustments to exposure, contrast, saturation, color temperature, and filters all preserve the source gain map, without weakening the highlight boost. Dual pipeline for preview and save. During editing, HDR preview frames are recomposited with a 150 ms debounce, balancing touch responsiveness with display consistency. On save, the original auxiliary gain map is reused directly, avoiding the information loss that comes with pixel-level re-synthesis. MakerApple metadata preservation. The original MakerApple 33 / 48 fields (which govern HDR headroom and the luminance scale) are preserved in full, so the edited export matches the brightness of the source. 2. Capture and Saving HDR gain map enabled for ProRAW. The embedded preview in ProRAW 12MP and 48MP has been upgraded to full-resolution HEVC (4032×3024 / 8064×6048), allowing the system to attach an HDR gain map. Photos, the album, and Quick Look can now all render HDR on these files. Bayer RAW retains its runtime RAW-decoding render path unchanged. Aligned HDR for framed photos. When a frame is composited over a photo, the gain map is regenerated to match the final canvas: the photo region keeps the original HDR boost while the frame and mat regions are zeroed out. This fixes the long-standing issue of frame edges retaining residual glow in HDR mode. Refined RAW shadow exposure. The baseline exposure curve for RAW has been recalibrated, so shadow areas in low-light scenes read more naturally to the eye. Calibrated HDR synthesis curve. The luminance curve and glow radius of hdrGainMapLinear have been re-tuned so the linear-synthesis path produces HDR brightness closer to that physically extracted from RAW, avoiding over-bright highlights. 3. Album and Performance Smoother album scrolling. Thumbnail loading now uses the opportunistic delivery strategy, filtering out degraded / canceled / error intermediate callbacks to reduce main-thread wakeups. The orientation separately returned by PhotoKit is applied explicitly, preventing redundant processing. 48MP ProRAW stutter fix. A TLPhotoPicker patch removes the requestImageData fallback for 48MP ProRAW — a path that forced ImageIO to fully decode a 48MP image and was the main cause of scroll stutter. 4. Stability and Details Resilient metadata writing. Before HEIF / JPEG encoding, NSNull / CFNull values in EXIF are filtered recursively, removing the occasional "bad parameter" warning emitted by ImageIO during encoding. Revised live-preview notice. The notice now clearly distinguishes "preview as filter reference" from "final image through an independent pipeline", and explains potential divergences under RAW tone mapping and with the film-mode white-balance lock. Localized into 18 languages. "HDR (Film Mode)" renamed to "HDR (HEIF Format)". The new label more accurately reflects the container that currently carries HDR. 5. Compatibility HDR display requires an EDR-capable device (visible on iPhone 12 Pro and later) HDR image editing requires iOS 17.0 or later

Version 5.3.0 brings HDR through the full pipeline — capture, browsing, and editing. On the capture side, the embedded preview format of ProRAW has been restructured so that the system Photos app can parse HDR information in full. On the browsing side, thumbnail loading has been reworked to preserve scrolling smoothness while decoding HDR. The editor, for the first time, natively supports HEIF HDR, keeping the source image's HDR highlights intact after exposure, filter, and frame adjustments. 1. HDR Image Editing HEIF HDR preview and editing. Photos open in the editor with their HDR look intact rather than downgraded to SDR. Adjustments to exposure, contrast, saturation, color temperature, and filters all preserve the source gain map, without weakening the highlight boost. Dual pipeline for preview and save. During editing, HDR preview frames are recomposited with a 150 ms debounce, balancing touch responsiveness with display consistency. On save, the original auxiliary gain map is reused directly, avoiding the information loss that comes with pixel-level re-synthesis. MakerApple metadata preservation. The original MakerApple 33 / 48 fields (which govern HDR headroom and the luminance scale) are preserved in full, so the edited export matches the brightness of the source. 2. Capture and Saving HDR gain map enabled for ProRAW. The embedded preview in ProRAW 12MP and 48MP has been upgraded to full-resolution HEVC (4032×3024 / 8064×6048), allowing the system to attach an HDR gain map. Photos, the album, and Quick Look can now all render HDR on these files. Bayer RAW retains its runtime RAW-decoding render path unchanged. Aligned HDR for framed photos. When a frame is composited over a photo, the gain map is regenerated to match the final canvas: the photo region keeps the original HDR boost while the frame and mat regions are zeroed out. This fixes the long-standing issue of frame edges retaining residual glow in HDR mode. Refined RAW shadow exposure. The baseline exposure curve for RAW has been recalibrated, so shadow areas in low-light scenes read more naturally to the eye. Calibrated HDR synthesis curve. The luminance curve and glow radius of hdrGainMapLinear have been re-tuned so the linear-synthesis path produces HDR brightness closer to that physically extracted from RAW, avoiding over-bright highlights. 3. Album and Performance Smoother album scrolling. Thumbnail loading now uses the opportunistic delivery strategy, filtering out degraded / canceled / error intermediate callbacks to reduce main-thread wakeups. The orientation separately returned by PhotoKit is applied explicitly, preventing redundant processing. 48MP ProRAW stutter fix. A TLPhotoPicker patch removes the requestImageData fallback for 48MP ProRAW — a path that forced ImageIO to fully decode a 48MP image and was the main cause of scroll stutter. 4. Stability and Details Resilient metadata writing. Before HEIF / JPEG encoding, NSNull / CFNull values in EXIF are filtered recursively, removing the occasional "bad parameter" warning emitted by ImageIO during encoding. Revised live-preview notice. The notice now clearly distinguishes "preview as filter reference" from "final image through an independent pipeline", and explains potential divergences under RAW tone mapping and with the film-mode white-balance lock. Localized into 18 languages. "HDR (Film Mode)" renamed to "HDR (HEIF Format)". The new label more accurately reflects the container that currently carries HDR. 5. Compatibility HDR display requires an EDR-capable device (visible on iPhone 12 Pro and later) HDR image editing requires iOS 17.0 or later

Version 5.3.0 brings HDR through the full pipeline — capture, browsing, and editing. On the capture side, the embedded preview format of ProRAW has been restructured so that the system Photos app can parse HDR information in full. On the browsing side, thumbnail loading has been reworked to preserve scrolling smoothness while decoding HDR. The editor, for the first time, natively supports HEIF HDR, keeping the source image's HDR highlights intact after exposure, filter, and frame adjustments. 1. HDR Image Editing HEIF HDR preview and editing. Photos open in the editor with their HDR look intact rather than downgraded to SDR. Adjustments to exposure, contrast, saturation, color temperature, and filters all preserve the source gain map, without weakening the highlight boost. Dual pipeline for preview and save. During editing, HDR preview frames are recomposited with a 150 ms debounce, balancing touch responsiveness with display consistency. On save, the original auxiliary gain map is reused directly, avoiding the information loss that comes with pixel-level re-synthesis. MakerApple metadata preservation. The original MakerApple 33 / 48 fields (which govern HDR headroom and the luminance scale) are preserved in full, so the edited export matches the brightness of the source. 2. Capture and Saving HDR gain map enabled for ProRAW. The embedded preview in ProRAW 12MP and 48MP has been upgraded to full-resolution HEVC (4032×3024 / 8064×6048), allowing the system to attach an HDR gain map. Photos, the album, and Quick Look can now all render HDR on these files. Bayer RAW retains its runtime RAW-decoding render path unchanged. Aligned HDR for framed photos. When a frame is composited over a photo, the gain map is regenerated to match the final canvas: the photo region keeps the original HDR boost while the frame and mat regions are zeroed out. This fixes the long-standing issue of frame edges retaining residual glow in HDR mode. Refined RAW shadow exposure. The baseline exposure curve for RAW has been recalibrated, so shadow areas in low-light scenes read more naturally to the eye. Calibrated HDR synthesis curve. The luminance curve and glow radius of hdrGainMapLinear have been re-tuned so the linear-synthesis path produces HDR brightness closer to that physically extracted from RAW, avoiding over-bright highlights. 3. Album and Performance Smoother album scrolling. Thumbnail loading now uses the opportunistic delivery strategy, filtering out degraded / canceled / error intermediate callbacks to reduce main-thread wakeups. The orientation separately returned by PhotoKit is applied explicitly, preventing redundant processing. 48MP ProRAW stutter fix. A TLPhotoPicker patch removes the requestImageData fallback for 48MP ProRAW — a path that forced ImageIO to fully decode a 48MP image and was the main cause of scroll stutter. 4. Stability and Details Resilient metadata writing. Before HEIF / JPEG encoding, NSNull / CFNull values in EXIF are filtered recursively, removing the occasional "bad parameter" warning emitted by ImageIO during encoding. Revised live-preview notice. The notice now clearly distinguishes "preview as filter reference" from "final image through an independent pipeline", and explains potential divergences under RAW tone mapping and with the film-mode white-balance lock. Localized into 18 languages. "HDR (Film Mode)" renamed to "HDR (HEIF Format)". The new label more accurately reflects the container that currently carries HDR. 5. Compatibility HDR display requires an EDR-capable device (visible on iPhone 12 Pro and later) HDR image editing requires iOS 17.0 or later

The iPhone features multiple physical cameras, each with distinct hardware capabilities in resolution, frame rate, and encoding format support. In previous versions, video parameters were uniformly reset when switching cameras, requiring users to reconfigure them each time. This update redesigns the parameter persistence strategy — giving every camera its own "memory." Per-Camera Video Parameter Persistence Ultra Wide, Main, Telephoto, Dual Fusion, Triple Fusion, Front — all six cameras independently save their video frame size and rate, video file type, and other parameter settings. When switching cameras, the parameters last configured for that specific camera are automatically restored. Unified Photo Format Across Cameras Unlike video parameters, photo size and format follow a global strategy. When selecting Optical Negative (BayerRAW) or Standard RAW, the system automatically matches a compatible camera — since multi-camera fusion does not support these formats due to hardware limitations, it automatically switches to the corresponding single camera. Each camera's photo format configuration is also independently remembered. Setting Panel Contextual Guidance The descriptive text across four setting panels — "Switch Camera," "Video Frame Size & Rate," "Video File Type," and "Image Size & Format" — has been completely rewritten. Key improvements: Active camera identification: The title area of video-related setting panels now explicitly displays the name of the currently active camera (e.g., "Main," "Ultra Wide"), helping users confirm which camera the parameters belong to. Hardware constraint notices: Capability differences between cameras are clearly documented — for example, multi-camera fusion does not support M-mode exposure, manual white balance, manual focus, or Optical Negative / Standard RAW formats. Terminology unification: "Switch Lens" has been uniformly corrected to "Switch Camera," more accurately reflecting that the operation targets the complete camera module rather than the optical lens element.

The iPhone features multiple physical cameras, each with distinct hardware capabilities in resolution, frame rate, and encoding format support. In previous versions, video parameters were uniformly reset when switching cameras, requiring users to reconfigure them each time. This update redesigns the parameter persistence strategy — giving every camera its own "memory." Per-Camera Video Parameter Persistence Ultra Wide, Main, Telephoto, Dual Fusion, Triple Fusion, Front — all six cameras independently save their video frame size and rate, video file type, and other parameter settings. When switching cameras, the parameters last configured for that specific camera are automatically restored. Unified Photo Format Across Cameras Unlike video parameters, photo size and format follow a global strategy. When selecting Optical Negative (BayerRAW) or Standard RAW, the system automatically matches a compatible camera — since multi-camera fusion does not support these formats due to hardware limitations, it automatically switches to the corresponding single camera. Each camera's photo format configuration is also independently remembered. Setting Panel Contextual Guidance The descriptive text across four setting panels — "Switch Camera," "Video Frame Size & Rate," "Video File Type," and "Image Size & Format" — has been completely rewritten. Key improvements: Active camera identification: The title area of video-related setting panels now explicitly displays the name of the currently active camera (e.g., "Main," "Ultra Wide"), helping users confirm which camera the parameters belong to. Hardware constraint notices: Capability differences between cameras are clearly documented — for example, multi-camera fusion does not support M-mode exposure, manual white balance, manual focus, or Optical Negative / Standard RAW formats. Terminology unification: "Switch Lens" has been uniformly corrected to "Switch Camera," more accurately reflecting that the operation targets the complete camera module rather than the optical lens element.

5.1 HDR Imaging Engine: Unleash Every Highlight Beyond the Screen Mobile HDR photography has long been stuck in crude global brightening or post-capture algorithmic compositing. In 5.1, we chose to build a complete Gain Map HDR imaging pipeline from scratch — enabling every ProRAW / BayerRAW photo captured by Gleam Camera to carry true Extended Dynamic Range data, identical in origin to Apple's system camera, lighting up precisely on EDR-capable displays. In this version, HDR is available exclusively in Film Mode shooting and the RAW Editor. Photos taken in Film Mode with ProRAW / BayerRAW automatically embed Gain Map HDR data; in the RAW Editor, you can toggle HDR on and off in real time via the HDR button, previewing highlight effects as you edit. Future versions will gradually expand HDR support to more shooting and editing scenarios. Native EDR Gain Map Extraction Rather than "guessing" highlights on an SDR image, we go straight back to the physical origin of the RAW data: Full-power CIRAWFilter EDR decoding: Extracts the linear-space highlight information that conventional pipelines clip away, precisely mapping the super-bright range into Gain Map grayscale values. Apple-Native HDR Metadata Injection Making the system Photos app and third-party apps truly "understand" our HDR — not just a brighter picture: MakerApple private tag injection: During HEIF encoding, we precisely inject Apple's private EXIF tags 33 (HDR Gain Map Version) and 48 (Display Headroom), enabling the system Photos app to natively recognize and render HDR highlights — identical to the system camera. 10-bit HEIF + Gain Map unified packaging: Using Core Image's hdrGainMapImage option, the Gain Map auxiliary image is embedded directly into the HEIF container — no extra files needed, losslessly preserving Extended Dynamic Range data. Real-Time EDR Preview in RAW Editor From "editing blind" to "what you see is what you get" — feel the highlights glow at every step of your edit: HEIF Round-Trip + UIImageReader true EDR rendering: Preview frames are encoded in real time as 10-bit HEIF carrying a Gain Map, then decoded back to UIImage via iOS 17 UIImageReader in prefersHighDynamicRange mode, paired with preferredImageDynamicRange to deliver true Extended Dynamic Range display on screen. Smart Gain Map caching: The Gain Map extracted from RAW on the first pass is cached as concrete pixel data (rather than a lazy CIImage chain), so subsequent adjustments only re-encode the base layer — avoiding repeated RAW decoding that causes lag and memory overflow. 5.1 is not simply about "making photos brighter." It is a complete HDR pathway built on mobile — from RAW physical signals to EDR pixels on screen. Every highlight, faithful to the light at the moment you pressed the shutter.

5.1 HDR Imaging Engine: Unleash Every Highlight Beyond the Screen Mobile HDR photography has long been stuck in crude global brightening or post-capture algorithmic compositing. In 5.1, we chose to build a complete Gain Map HDR imaging pipeline from scratch — enabling every ProRAW / BayerRAW photo captured by Gleam Camera to carry true Extended Dynamic Range data, identical in origin to Apple's system camera, lighting up precisely on EDR-capable displays. In this version, HDR is available exclusively in Film Mode shooting and the RAW Editor. Photos taken in Film Mode with ProRAW / BayerRAW automatically embed Gain Map HDR data; in the RAW Editor, you can toggle HDR on and off in real time via the HDR button, previewing highlight effects as you edit. Future versions will gradually expand HDR support to more shooting and editing scenarios. Native EDR Gain Map Extraction Rather than "guessing" highlights on an SDR image, we go straight back to the physical origin of the RAW data: Full-power CIRAWFilter EDR decoding: Extracts the linear-space highlight information that conventional pipelines clip away, precisely mapping the super-bright range into Gain Map grayscale values. Apple-Native HDR Metadata Injection Making the system Photos app and third-party apps truly "understand" our HDR — not just a brighter picture: MakerApple private tag injection: During HEIF encoding, we precisely inject Apple's private EXIF tags 33 (HDR Gain Map Version) and 48 (Display Headroom), enabling the system Photos app to natively recognize and render HDR highlights — identical to the system camera. 10-bit HEIF + Gain Map unified packaging: Using Core Image's hdrGainMapImage option, the Gain Map auxiliary image is embedded directly into the HEIF container — no extra files needed, losslessly preserving Extended Dynamic Range data. Real-Time EDR Preview in RAW Editor From "editing blind" to "what you see is what you get" — feel the highlights glow at every step of your edit: HEIF Round-Trip + UIImageReader true EDR rendering: Preview frames are encoded in real time as 10-bit HEIF carrying a Gain Map, then decoded back to UIImage via iOS 17 UIImageReader in prefersHighDynamicRange mode, paired with preferredImageDynamicRange to deliver true Extended Dynamic Range display on screen. Smart Gain Map caching: The Gain Map extracted from RAW on the first pass is cached as concrete pixel data (rather than a lazy CIImage chain), so subsequent adjustments only re-encode the base layer — avoiding repeated RAW decoding that causes lag and memory overflow. 5.1 is not simply about "making photos brighter." It is a complete HDR pathway built on mobile — from RAW physical signals to EDR pixels on screen. Every highlight, faithful to the light at the moment you pressed the shutter.

5.1 HDR Imaging Engine: Unleash Every Highlight Beyond the Screen Mobile HDR photography has long been stuck in crude global brightening or post-capture algorithmic compositing. In 5.1, we chose to build a complete Gain Map HDR imaging pipeline from scratch — enabling every ProRAW / BayerRAW photo captured by Gleam Camera to carry true Extended Dynamic Range data, identical in origin to Apple's system camera, lighting up precisely on EDR-capable displays. In this version, HDR is available exclusively in Film Mode shooting and the RAW Editor. Photos taken in Film Mode with ProRAW / BayerRAW automatically embed Gain Map HDR data; in the RAW Editor, you can toggle HDR on and off in real time via the HDR button, previewing highlight effects as you edit. Future versions will gradually expand HDR support to more shooting and editing scenarios. Native EDR Gain Map Extraction Rather than "guessing" highlights on an SDR image, we go straight back to the physical origin of the RAW data: Full-power CIRAWFilter EDR decoding: Extracts the linear-space highlight information that conventional pipelines clip away, precisely mapping the super-bright range into Gain Map grayscale values. Apple-Native HDR Metadata Injection Making the system Photos app and third-party apps truly "understand" our HDR — not just a brighter picture: MakerApple private tag injection: During HEIF encoding, we precisely inject Apple's private EXIF tags 33 (HDR Gain Map Version) and 48 (Display Headroom), enabling the system Photos app to natively recognize and render HDR highlights — identical to the system camera. 10-bit HEIF + Gain Map unified packaging: Using Core Image's hdrGainMapImage option, the Gain Map auxiliary image is embedded directly into the HEIF container — no extra files needed, losslessly preserving Extended Dynamic Range data. Real-Time EDR Preview in RAW Editor From "editing blind" to "what you see is what you get" — feel the highlights glow at every step of your edit: HEIF Round-Trip + UIImageReader true EDR rendering: Preview frames are encoded in real time as 10-bit HEIF carrying a Gain Map, then decoded back to UIImage via iOS 17 UIImageReader in prefersHighDynamicRange mode, paired with preferredImageDynamicRange to deliver true Extended Dynamic Range display on screen. Smart Gain Map caching: The Gain Map extracted from RAW on the first pass is cached as concrete pixel data (rather than a lazy CIImage chain), so subsequent adjustments only re-encode the base layer — avoiding repeated RAW decoding that causes lag and memory overflow. 5.1 is not simply about "making photos brighter." It is a complete HDR pathway built on mobile — from RAW physical signals to EDR pixels on screen. Every highlight, faithful to the light at the moment you pressed the shutter.

Version 5.0: Industrial-Grade Imaging Engine Rebuilt We completely rebuilt the underlying image and A/V engine for unprecedented pro-level quality: 1. 16-bit Floating-Point Pipeline: Abandoning 8-bit for full-link high-precision rendering, preserving ultimate light/shadow details. 2. 16-bit LUT Mapping: Eliminates color banding in skies for silky-smooth gradients. 3. 10-bit HEIF & Wide Color: Supports Display P3 and lossless EXIF metadata retention. 4. Zero-Copy Video Architecture: Enables 4K 120fps recording; rebuilt audio engine prevents popping. 5. Hardware-Level Optimization: Global GPU scheduling optimization with lightning-fast native RAW parsing. Vibe Cam 5.0: Our most solid step towards absolute professionalism.

Version 5.0: Industrial-Grade Imaging Engine Rebuilt We completely rebuilt the underlying image and A/V engine for unprecedented pro-level quality: 1. 16-bit Floating-Point Pipeline: Abandoning 8-bit for full-link high-precision rendering, preserving ultimate light/shadow details. 2. 16-bit LUT Mapping: Eliminates color banding in skies for silky-smooth gradients. 3. 10-bit HEIF & Wide Color: Supports Display P3 and lossless EXIF metadata retention. 4. Zero-Copy Video Architecture: Enables 4K 120fps recording; rebuilt audio engine prevents popping. 5. Hardware-Level Optimization: Global GPU scheduling optimization with lightning-fast native RAW parsing. Vibe Cam 5.0: Our most solid step towards absolute professionalism.

Version 5.0: Industrial-Grade Imaging Engine Rebuilt We completely rebuilt the underlying image and A/V engine for unprecedented pro-level quality: 1. 16-bit Floating-Point Pipeline: Abandoning 8-bit for full-link high-precision rendering, preserving ultimate light/shadow details. 2. 16-bit LUT Mapping: Eliminates color banding in skies for silky-smooth gradients. 3. 10-bit HEIF & Wide Color: Supports Display P3 and lossless EXIF metadata retention. 4. Zero-Copy Video Architecture: Enables 4K 120fps recording; rebuilt audio engine prevents popping. 5. Hardware-Level Optimization: Global GPU scheduling optimization with lightning-fast native RAW parsing. Vibe Cam 5.0: Our most solid step towards absolute professionalism.

Version 5.0: Industrial-Grade Imaging Engine Rebuilt We completely rebuilt the underlying image and A/V engine for unprecedented pro-level quality: 1. 16-bit Floating-Point Pipeline: Abandoning 8-bit for full-link high-precision rendering, preserving ultimate light/shadow details. 2. 16-bit LUT Mapping: Eliminates color banding in skies for silky-smooth gradients. 3. 10-bit HEIF & Wide Color: Supports Display P3 and lossless EXIF metadata retention. 4. Zero-Copy Video Architecture: Enables 4K 120fps recording; rebuilt audio engine prevents popping. 5. Hardware-Level Optimization: Global GPU scheduling optimization with lightning-fast native RAW parsing. Vibe Cam 5.0: Our most solid step towards absolute professionalism.

Version 5.0: Industrial-Grade Imaging Engine Rebuilt We completely rebuilt the underlying image and A/V engine for unprecedented pro-level quality: 1. 16-bit Floating-Point Pipeline: Abandoning 8-bit for full-link high-precision rendering, preserving ultimate light/shadow details. 2. 16-bit LUT Mapping: Eliminates color banding in skies for silky-smooth gradients. 3. 10-bit HEIF & Wide Color: Supports Display P3 and lossless EXIF metadata retention. 4. Zero-Copy Video Architecture: Enables 4K 120fps recording; rebuilt audio engine prevents popping. 5. Hardware-Level Optimization: Global GPU scheduling optimization with lightning-fast native RAW parsing. Vibe Cam 5.0: Our most solid step towards absolute professionalism.

Version 5.0: Industrial-Grade Imaging Engine Rebuilt We completely rebuilt the underlying image and A/V engine for unprecedented pro-level quality: 1. 16-bit Floating-Point Pipeline: Abandoning 8-bit for full-link high-precision rendering, preserving ultimate light/shadow details. 2. 16-bit LUT Mapping: Eliminates color banding in skies for silky-smooth gradients. 3. 10-bit HEIF & Wide Color: Supports Display P3 and lossless EXIF metadata retention. 4. Zero-Copy Video Architecture: Enables 4K 120fps recording; rebuilt audio engine prevents popping. 5. Hardware-Level Optimization: Global GPU scheduling optimization with lightning-fast native RAW parsing. Vibe Cam 5.0: Our most solid step towards absolute professionalism.

Version 5.0: Industrial-Grade Imaging Engine Rebuilt We completely rebuilt the underlying image and A/V engine for unprecedented pro-level quality: 1. 16-bit Floating-Point Pipeline: Abandoning 8-bit for full-link high-precision rendering, preserving ultimate light/shadow details. 2. 16-bit LUT Mapping: Eliminates color banding in skies for silky-smooth gradients. 3. 10-bit HEIF & Wide Color: Supports Display P3 and lossless EXIF metadata retention. 4. Zero-Copy Video Architecture: Enables 4K 120fps recording; rebuilt audio engine prevents popping. 5. Hardware-Level Optimization: Global GPU scheduling optimization with lightning-fast native RAW parsing. Vibe Cam 5.0: Our most solid step towards absolute professionalism.

To achieve the ultimate "analog film look," we have completely overhauled our previous noise rendering logic and launched a brand-new, cinematic-grade film grain engine: 1. Luma Modulation Blend: Abandoned the hue-destructive RGB additive blending in favor of a more scientific luminance modulation. This ensures "red grain on red, green grain on green," completely solving the issue of muddy or grayish grain in solid color areas. The overall image clarity has been significantly enhanced. 2. Pink Noise & Clumping Simulation: Eliminated harsh high-frequency white noise, replacing it with a Gaussian approximation using 3-pass micro-offset sampling. The grain edges are now much softer, perfectly replicating the organic "clumping" texture of real silver halide crystals on film. 3. Dynamic Shadow/Highlight Protection: Rewrote the luminance response curve. Added unidirectional base noise compensation for shadows and an anti-clipping mechanism for highlights. This ensures that even at maximum grain intensity, you will never see "pitch-black spots" or "blown-out highlights."

To achieve the ultimate "analog film look," we have completely overhauled our previous noise rendering logic and launched a brand-new, cinematic-grade film grain engine: 1. Luma Modulation Blend: Abandoned the hue-destructive RGB additive blending in favor of a more scientific luminance modulation. This ensures "red grain on red, green grain on green," completely solving the issue of muddy or grayish grain in solid color areas. The overall image clarity has been significantly enhanced. 2. Pink Noise & Clumping Simulation: Eliminated harsh high-frequency white noise, replacing it with a Gaussian approximation using 3-pass micro-offset sampling. The grain edges are now much softer, perfectly replicating the organic "clumping" texture of real silver halide crystals on film. 3. Dynamic Shadow/Highlight Protection: Rewrote the luminance response curve. Added unidirectional base noise compensation for shadows and an anti-clipping mechanism for highlights. This ensures that even at maximum grain intensity, you will never see "pitch-black spots" or "blown-out highlights."

To achieve the ultimate "analog film look," we have completely overhauled our previous noise rendering logic and launched a brand-new, cinematic-grade film grain engine: 1. Luma Modulation Blend: Abandoned the hue-destructive RGB additive blending in favor of a more scientific luminance modulation. This ensures "red grain on red, green grain on green," completely solving the issue of muddy or grayish grain in solid color areas. The overall image clarity has been significantly enhanced. 2. Pink Noise & Clumping Simulation: Eliminated harsh high-frequency white noise, replacing it with a Gaussian approximation using 3-pass micro-offset sampling. The grain edges are now much softer, perfectly replicating the organic "clumping" texture of real silver halide crystals on film. 3. Dynamic Shadow/Highlight Protection: Rewrote the luminance response curve. Added unidirectional base noise compensation for shadows and an anti-clipping mechanism for highlights. This ensures that even at maximum grain intensity, you will never see "pitch-black spots" or "blown-out highlights."