I am having a frustrating issue with no solution so I'm pretty much here to complain and see if anyone else notices this or thinks this is unacceptable. So, the picture refining issue: You take a picture, look in the Gallery right after, and see a loading icon on the picture. Then, BAM! It changes to a "refined," brightened, saturated, almost filtered look. You can't undo it, you can't turn the feature off. It saves as something different than what you actually took.
It's clear to me that what I see on my screen and how the picture shows up is quite different than the original, with unwanted changes that are often ugly and irrevocably change the photo. Faces in perfectly fine daylight turn different colours (e.g., reddening and sometimes orangey hues), auto brightening everything when I don't want that, smoothing objects out, light halos and "mist," sometimes moving the framing around, heightening the saturation and contrast, sometimes making subjects blurrier(?), among other things. One time I noticed it change my jawline (and I really don't like how smartphones automatically distort and change faces to be more "beautiful" or "smooth"). All of these changes occur within a few seconds of a photo being taken and there is NO WAY to turn this feature off. I am frustrated and disappointed.
I have changed Pro image format to RAW, Intelligent Optimization is at minimum, there are no Gallery settings about HDR so there's nothing I can do there... This even occurs in the Expert RAW app and there is no difference between Auto settings (ISO, EV, or shutter speed) and manually selecting/changing these - the auto post-processing still occurs regardless. It's clear that no matter what, these pictures are not truly RAW. They automatically apply the above mentioned "corrections" to the photos. The only thing that somewhat works is using 12mp camera in Expert RAW with Multiple Exposure turned to 2+ and set to Avg. overlay. Also, Portrait mode and selfies dont seem to go through the *same* automatic over-processing, but I'm sure there is some - I don't use these modes that much so I'm not sure. The auto-refining seems to occur regardless of Photo mode, Pro mode, or using the Expert RAW app.
I would really like to be able to have just normal actual raw picture data instead of having an AI (that you can't turn off!) do a bunch of stuff to my photos that I desperately do not want it to do. I don't want to have to do arduous post-editing just to remove unwanted AI optimization after I take pictures. I want to take photos as I see them on my screen and edit them myself if I want to. Sometimes I want a heavily saturated, bright photo, yeah! But not all the dang time, for every single picture I take. I would much rather use an editing program to edit my pictures myself. Just give me the raw photo!
I really do hope that they can fix this or make this feature an opt-in kind of thing, like HDR or other settings for example, because one reason I invested in this phone (S23 Ultra) is so I could take great pictures with this small device. It's convenient and really cool to think that these large MP cameras and good capture customization with Pro and Expert RAW can fit into this small of a device. But it's all pointless if the photo gets absolutely wrecked automatically by unwanted processing with no way to truly fix it or turn it off!
I just want a solution. Here's to hoping that there's some kind of update that works to address this.
EDIT: I added before and after photos of auto-processing of some indoor plants to show what happens to simple photos like this. (Taken with 50mp standard Photo mode in the Camera app.)
Before ^
After ^
Again, this wasn't edited by me! I took the picture, I could see the raw image for a few seconds, and then it brightened, saturated, and smoothed everything. Imo, it's waayyy too much processing. It looks like it's been edited and filtered, and it saves to the Gallery like that, as if that's how it really looked through the viewfinder. But I didnt take that picture that saved to the camera roll. That's not what the real photo looks like. I want to take, see, and save my real photos that are taken with the physical camera lens. PLEASE fix this. Let me know if you are also having this issue and what you think about this. I am beyond disappointed in Samsung for this feature.
I have this issue too with my brand new S24 Ultra. I bought it specifically because I had heard amazing things about the camera, and I have to say the intensely horrible change to my photos is completely uncalled for....I can't believe how poor the quality is of the "changed" photos!! I was wondering what the camera was doing after I took photos today and when I looked at the photos, they looked almost painted, not real at all, and certainly NOT what I had taken a picture of. Horrible blurring and smudging of detail, changing the whole quality of the photo, the character, the fineness of detail. So disappointing! I've done all the things to try to improve this, or disable this feature. It is atrocious! I really want to like this phone but this has been a MAJOR TURN OFF because I use my phone mainly as a camera!
Samsung, I really want to ask you why on earth you think this is what people want? The results are absolutely ugly and not Representative of what you are actually taking a picture of. I've included a couple pictures I took today, if you zoom in, you can see how crappy the detail is. I was lucky if I got one good photo today. It was a beautiful sunny day and I was not even using my zoom. This feature is even WORSE if I do use the zoom and I wonder what is the point? Useless garbage. Thoroughly disappointing and NOT worth the almost 2000 dollars. I am thinking of reactivating my 5 year old LG or my old S20, or even my old S10 because the camera on those phones was far superior. I am completely disappointed. What a waste of money.
Same problems here. I was using a Samsung A5, kept stealing my husband's S21 b/c the camera was better, finally decided to not be so cheap fork out the money for the S23 Ultra b/c it was 200mp camera and I could take such amazing pictures of my new puppy!!! NOT. Your post sounds just like me, my husband has been trying everything to find a way to shut it off, but nothing works, and for me it's not just the colour edits, if the dog moves, it's like it shows that I caught some cute picture, but then it changes to slightly later and ruins it! I've just started to panick and take a screen shot before it refines and the picture is lost. So disappointed that I wasted all this money for this amazing camera and it turn out like this.
Example of my problem, taking a picture of my pup with the peony flowers, she got tired of posing, sprung for the treats. I took a screen shot of the picture I took, then it refined it to her blurry butt leaving the frame. 😡
