Don't be scared to use filters on your iPhone – you are not as committed to the look as you might think

IPhone Camera app filters.

I do have a soft spot for iPhone filters – the ones included in the regular Camera app. The color filters I can take or leave, but I’m a big black and white fan and I do love the iPhone’s Noir and Silvertone filters in particular.

But my worry has always been that if I go out and shoot a lot of pictures with the Noir filter, then I’m stuck with a high-contrast black and white look that may be perfect but, sometimes, may not actually be the best treatment.

But I’m stuck with it, right? That’s what you might think, but it’s not actually the case. And I’m not talking about shooting raw images instead – I’m talking about the iPhone’s regular JPEG/HEIF mode, where the camera processes images on the spot.

You CAN change your iPhone Camera app filters later

I thought these vintage plant labels would look great with the iPhone Camera app's Silvertone filter – but what if I decide later I've made a mistake? No problem, because the iPhone actually recorded a regular color image and applied the filter on top. (Image credit: Rod Lawton)

Try it! Go back through your iPhone Photos and find an image shot with a filter – or take one specially just to try this out. Choose a black and white one if you can because then the demonstration will be more obvious. Now go into Edit mode and tap on the Filter icon at the bottom of the screen. You should see all the different filter options – but they’re all variations on your mono image. That’s not good.

Ah, but then if you tap the Revert button at the top right of the screen, something different happens – your photo goes back to full color and you can use any of the Camera app filters you want to. From now on, all the filter choices are there whenever you re-edit that photo.

(It looks like if you took the picture with no filter and added one in the app, then you don’t need to Revert your image – you only need this if you actually took the shot with the filter active. I think.)

So what’s happening here? It looks like the Camera app shoots a regular color photo whatever filter you choose, but then applies your chosen filter effect to save it. But what it’s actually doing is applying the filter AFTER it’s captured the image – which means you can un-apply it later!

So just remember – if you took a photo with a filter you want to change later, open it to edit it in the iOS Photos app and use the Revert button (‘Revert to Original’ in the macOS Photos app) to get back to the original color capture, and then choose the filter you want.