RAW Power Gets Big 2.0 Update

Today, Gentlemen Coders released RAW Power 2.0 for iOS and macOS. RAW Power unlocks the power of Apple’s RAW engine with simple, easy-to-use controls. More than just an image editor, it is a full photo application that lets you organize and manage your iOS Photo Library. If you use iCloud Photo Library, all changes are also synced to iCloud, where every image you take and every change you make is instantly available to every app on your iPhone or iPad. You can use it for more than RAWs — it’s great with JPEGs too, with White Balance, Curves, Sharpen, and other tools missing from the built-in Photos app. The app also includes an innovative new Depth Effect for photos shot on iPhones with a dual camera system. The Mac app is on sale for a limited time. App Store: RAW Power – US$2.99 | Mac App Store: RAW Power – US$26.99

The End of 'Beautygate'

The iPhone XS and XS Max came with a feature called SmartHDR that increased the dynamic range of photos.  It also reduced the local contrast and the phone’s performance in low light. The lowlight issues were fixed by decreasing noise reduction, which, when combined with the lack of contrast created a smoothing effect. This was particularly noticeable in selfies and came to be known as ‘Beautygate’. With iOS 12.1 Apple tried to fix the problem. Did they succeed? A video from AppleInsider takes a look.

TMO Background Mode Encore #2 Interview with Tidbits Managing Editor Josh Centers

Josh Centers is the Managing Editor of Tidbits.com and has published several Take Control (TC) books. He’s the author of Take Control of Apple TV and Take Control of Home Automation. He’s been writing the Take Control books for iOS since version 8, and his latest book is Take Control of iOS 12. I invited Josh to return to Background Mode to chat about this latest iOS version that has many new features. After a brief story about how Josh got started in his tech writing career, we had a very interesting chat about the creation and editing process of the TC books. We moved on to a discussion of the new 2018 iPhones. After the break, we dug into the details iOS 12. Finally, we finished with a cool story about his latest 4K TV adventure.

Here's How to Edit Depth Control on your iPhone XS/XS Max/XR

Apple put out a neat video over the weekend demonstrating how you can edit the Depth Control feature now available on the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR. It shows the 4 simple steps needed to apply the effect – choose a portrait, tap edit, slide to adjust the depth, tap done. The functionality works in portrait mode and adjusts the amount of blur in the background of a picture. This Depth Control effect can be applied to photos you have already taken, and iOS 12.1 will also have a real time Depth Control feature.

TunnelBear Gets Password Autofill, Easy iOS 12 Siri Shortcut Setup

The iPhone and iPad version of the VPN app TunnelBear got an update this week that adds in support for autofilling passwords from RememBear, plus a new button for adding TunnelBear to Siri for voice control. Tapping the button creates a Siri Shortcut to connect to the last used TunnelBear server, and lets you record your own Siri trigger phrase. The TunnelBear app is free, and the VPN service is free for up to 500MB usage a month. The unlimited data plan costs US$9.99 a month, or $49.99 a year.