What is HDR?
HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. When you use HDR, your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Camera automatically blends the best parts of three photos taken quickly at different exposures—one at normal exposure, then one each of the brightest and darkest parts of the scene. The result is a single photo with better color and detail.
Underexposed
An exposure balanced for the sky makes the subject underexposed or too dark.
Overexposed
An exposure balanced for the subject results in a sky that's overexposed or too bright.
With HDR
When you use HDR, you get a beautifully lit and detailed photo.
Take an HDR photo
- Open the Camera app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
- Tap HDR and make sure it's set to Auto or On.
- Frame the photo.
- Tap
.
When you take an HDR photo, your device saves two versions of the image to the Photos app. One with HDR and one without. That way you can compare the two and use the one that you like most. To save space, you can turn off this feature and keep just the HDR version in your library. Go to Settings > Camera > Keep Normal Photo and swipe to turn off.
If you set HDR to On, your device captures an HDR image every time you take a photo. If you set HDR to Auto, your device determines whether or not each photo would look better with or without HDR.
Learn more
- Take and edit photos on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
- See your photos come to life with Live Photos on your iPhone 6s and later.
- Get all of your photos and videos on all of your devices with iCloud Photo Library.
- Choose the right camera mode for your photo or video.