WWDC25 Camera & Photos group lab summary (Part 1 of 3)

(Note: this is part 1 of a 3 part posting. See Part 2 or Part 3)

At WWDC25 we launched a new type of Lab event for the developer community - Group Labs. A Group Lab is a panel Q&A designed for a large audience of developers. Group Labs are a unique opportunity for the community to submit questions directly to a panel of Apple engineers and designers. Here are the highlights from the WWDC25 Group Lab for Camera & Photos.

WWDC25 Camera & Photos group lab ran for one hour at 6 PM PST on Tuesday June 10th, 2025

Introductory kick-off questions

Question 1

Tell us a little about the new AVFoundation Capture APIs we've made available in the new iOS 26 developer preview?

• Cinematic Capture API (strong/weak focus, tracking focus)(scene monitoring)(simulated aperture)(dog/cat heads/groupIDs)
• Camera Controls and AirPod Stem Clicks
• Spatial Audio and Studio Quality AirPod Mics in Camera
• Lens Smudge Detection
• Exposure and Focus Rect of Interest

Question 2

I built QR code scanning into my app, but on newer iPhones I have to hold the phone very far away from the QR code, otherwise the image is blurry and it doesn't scan. Why is this happening and how can I fix it?

• Every year, the cameras get better and better as we push the state of the art on iPhone photography and videography. This sometimes results in changes to the characteristics of the lenses.
• min focus distance
• newer phones have multiple lenses
• automatic switching behavior
• Use virtual device like the builtInDualWide or built in Triple, rather than just the builtInWide
• Set the videoZoomFactor to 2. You're done.

Question 3

Last year, we saw some exciting new APIs introduced in AVFoundation in the health space. With Constant Color photography, developers can take pictures that have constant color regardless of ambient lighting. There are some further advancements this year. Davide, could you tell us about them?

• constant color photography is mean to remove the "tone mapping" applied to photograph captured with camera app, usually incldsuing artistic intent, and instead try to be a close as possible to the real color of the scene, regardless of the illumination
• constant color images could be captured in HEIF anf JPEG laste year. this year we are adding Support for the DICOM medical imaging photo format. It is a fomrat used by the health industry to store images related to medical subjects like MRI, skin problems, xray and so on.
• It's writable and also readable format on all OS26, supported through AVCapturePhotoOutput APIs and through the coregraphics api.
• for coregrapphics there is a new DICOM entry in the property dictionary which includes all the dicom availbale and defined propertie in a file. finder will also display all those in the info panel
• (Address why a developer would want to use it) - not for regualr picture taking apps. for those HEIF and JPEG are the preferred delivery format. use dicom if your app produces output that are health related, that you can also share with health providers or your doctors

Main session developer questions

Question 1

LiDAR vs. Dual Camera depth generation: Which resolution does the LiDAR sensor natively have (iPhone 16 Pro) and when to prefer LiDAR over Dual Camera?

• Both report formats with output resolutions (we don't advertise sensor resolution)
• Lidar vs Dual, etc:
• Lidar: Best for absolute depth, real world scale and computer vision
• Dual, etc: relative, disparity-based, less power, photo effects
• Also see: 2022 WWDC session "Discovery advancements in iOS camera capture: Depth, focus and multitasking"

Question 2

Can true depth and lidar camera run at 60fps?

• Lidar can do 30fps (edited)
• Front true depth can do 60fps.

Question 3

What’s the first class way to use PhotoKit to reimplement a high performance photo grid? We’ve been using a LazyVGrid and the photos caching manager, but are never able to hit the holy trinity (60hz, efficient memory footprint, minimal flashes of placeholder/empty cells)

• use the PHCachingImageManager to get media content delivered before you need to display it
• specify the size you need for grid sized display
• set the options PHVideoRequestOptionsDeliveryModeFastFormat, PHImageRequestOptionsDeliveryModeFastFormat and PHImageRequestOptionsResizeModeFast

Question 4

For rending live preview of video stream, Is there performance overhead from using async and Swift UI for image updates vs UIViewRepresentable + AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer.self?

• AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer is the most efficient display path
• Use VDO + AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer if you need to modify the image data
• Swift UI image is optimized for static image content

Question 5

Is there a way to configure the AVFoundation BuiltInLiDarDepthCamera mode to provide a depth map as accurate as ARKit at close range?

• The AVCaptureDepthDataOutput supports filtering that reduces noise and fills in invalid values. Consider using this for smoother depth maps

Question 6

Pyramid-based photo editing in core image (such as adobe camera raw highlights and shadows)?

• First off you may want to look a the builtin filter called CIHighlightShadowAdjust
• Also the noise reduction in the CIRawFilter uses a pyramid-based algorithm.
• You can also write your own pyramid-based algorithms by taking an input image:
  • down sample it by two multiply times using imageByApplyingAffineTransform
  • apply additional CIKernels to each downsampled image as needed.
  • use a custom CIKernel to combine the results.

Question 7

Is the best way to integrate an in-app camera for a “non-camera” app UIImagePickerController?

• Yes, UIImagePickerController provides system-provided UI for capturing photos and movies.

Question 8

Hello, my question is on Deferred Photo Processing? Say I have a photo capture app that adds a CIFilter to the capture. How can I take advantage of Deferred Photo Processing? Since I don’t know how to detect when the deferred captured photo is ready

• CIFilter can be called on the final at that point
• Photo will have to be re-inserted into the Photo library as adjustment

Question 9

For shipping photo style assets in the app that need transparency what is the best format to use? JPEG2000? will moving to this save a lot of space comapred to PNG or other options?

• If you want lossless compression PNG is good and supports unpremutiplied alpha
• If you want lossy compression HEIF supports premutiplied or unpremutiplied alpha

(Note: this is part 1 of a 3 part posting. See Part 2 or Part 3)