The iPhone 14 Pro will also get a HEIF Max option for taking 48MP photos in the Camera app.

iPhone 15 features a new 48-megapixel wide-angle lens that was previously only available on iPhone 14 Pro models. To take advantage of the new lens, Apple has introduced new “HEIF Max” technology. an option in the Camera app that allows users to take photos at full 48 megapixel resolution. Interestingly, this option will also appear on the iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 17.

HEIF Max photos coming to iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 17

Until now, users only had three photography options on the iPhone 14 Pro Max: regular 12-megapixel JPEG or HEIF, 12-megapixel ProRAW, and 48-megapixel ProRAW. In iOS 17, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 15 users will find a new option for capturing images: HEIF Max.

While the ability to shoot 48-megapixel photos isn't exactly new, users could only do so with the ProRAW format, which is essentially a raw image. Although the resulting images look much better, a single photo in ProRAW can result in a 75MB file. This is where HEIF Max comes in.

With HEIF Max, users can take 48-megapixel photos and save them as a compressed file. By comparison, a HEIF Max photo is about 5MB, so it still contains more detail than a regular 12MP photo, but takes up much less space than a ProRAW image.

Last year I wrote about how the iPhone 14 Pro should be able to take non-RAW photos at 48MP, since the higher resolution adds more detail to the image, not to mention Smart HDR is much less aggressive on images with very high resolution. That's exactly what HEIF Max does in the Camera app.

Apple has also added a cool new shortcut for switching between formats in the Camera app. All you have to do is press and hold the HEIF Max/RAW button to cycle through the options available for your phone. It's available for iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 15, and iPhone 15 Pro.

Learn more about the update

Unfortunately, HEIF Max photos are not compatible with Live Photos, so keep that in mind before enabling this option. However, it's nice to see that Apple has decided to make HEIF Max available to iPhone 14 Pro users as well, rather than making it exclusive to the new iPhones.

iOS 17 will be available to iPhone 14 Pro users.

iOS 17 will be available for iPhone 14 Pro users. download Monday, September 18th. The update is compatible with iPhone XR and later. Developers and beta testers can now download the RC build.