Technologies

Give Your Phone Photos a Warm, Dreamy Analog Film Look With These 3 Tricks

Whether you have the latest iPhone or Samsung phone, or even an older handset, you can take some beautiful nostalgic images with a bit of help. Here’s how.

The nostalgic film look for photos has become wildly popular on social media in the past few years. Whether that’s a response to generative AI fakes or simply that warm pastel tones and realistic film grain are in fashion isn’t clear. But while many photographers — myself included — have turned to analog cameras loaded with rolls of Kodak, you can get those dreamy film vibes using just your phone.

And the best thing is, it doesn’t even require you to have the latest iPhone or Android phone, or even specialized camera apps. The goal is to achieve a more retro, old-school feel from your images rather than the clinical accuracy offered by most of today’s phone cameras or even compact digital cameras. So it’s not about having the phone with the most megapixels or the fanciest features.

You can transform your photos with little more than your phone’s default camera app and a few minutes in a free editing app. Let’s dive in and get shooting.

Taking your photos

While most of today’s phone cameras can take vibrant, well-exposed images, they all rely on image processing software to squeeze the most out of their relatively tiny image sensors. Unfortunately, it’s not always done effectively, with many phones going overboard on the processing, resulting in fake-looking images with unnatural-looking highlights and shadows and crunchy details.

This process aims to strip back some of that digital oversharpening and HDR toning to produce an image that’s closer in feel to what you might expect to get from a real film camera. There’s a lot you can do to help that.

The first approach harkens back to traditional photography: use a physical filter in front of the camera lens. Specifically, a mist filter can soften harsh details while also adding a natural ‘bloom’ to highlights, which can add to the filmic vibe we’re trying to achieve.

I use mist filters in most of my photography, especially PolarPro’s CineGold filter, which adds a warm glow to images, and the CineBlack which subtly deepens shadows while adding highlight bloom. I use these with my Leica Q3 43 but they work just the same on your phone — you just need an adapter like Moment’s QuickLock filter mount that lets you slap any 63mm threaded photo filter onto your phone. PolarPro does make filters specifically for the iPhone (seen above) but my advice would be to buy regular circular threaded filters that you can use on any phone or camera.

Moment also makes various lenses that can clip to your phone and I like the effect they give, too. While they’re optically quite sharp, they do add a certain natural degradation (including softening of some harsh details and some optical aberration) to the image that again just helps reduce that oversharpened digital look.

I typically shoot using ProRaw on the iPhone or in DNG raw on most Android phones to give me the most flexibility in editing (as well as bypassing much of the auto sharpening many phones will apply in the default mode), but you can get great results just using default settings in your camera.

I do find I get the best results when I slightly over-expose the image (usually by tapping and pulling up the brightness slider). Many film stocks — including Kodak Gold and Portra 400 — often look their best when shot in bright outdoor scenes (think a California beach or an alpine mountain top under bright skies) so leaning into a brighter look when taking your image can be helpful when you’re at the editing stage. And by shooting in raw, there’s enough dynamic range to work with so I’m not blowing out the brightest areas of the image to white.

Otherwise it’s down to you to take a good photo that you then want to give a nice filmic flair to. Remember to concentrate on capturing a good photo in the moment, rather than just snapping away and hoping to pull back something usable later using editing. If you’re keen to really take your phone photography skills further, I have a tutorial for you that will help.

Using your phone’s built-in presets

Most phones offer presets that change the look of your images. Apple’s Photographic Styles in recent iPhones allow you to switch up the colors and saturation in your photos before and after taking them. If you just want to play with colors in your images then it’s a good starting point but I wouldn’t say that any of them especially look like analog film. (And Photographic Styles only work when you’re shooting in HEIF or JPEG, not ProRaw.)

Samsung’s My Filter tool allows you to essentially steal the color tones from other images. While I sometimes find the results a bit underwhelming, I have had some success with it, especially when I use the built-in editing tools on top of this to add film grain and adjust the colors further.

Other phones — including the Xiaomi 15 Ultra and OnePlus 15 — also come with various looks baked into the phone. They’re certainly worth experimenting with, although most of my success in creating a film look comes from editing apps rather than from the phone itself.

Edit your phone photos to look like film

When I’m editing, I’m not trying to mimic a particular film stock like Kodak Gold or CineStill 800T. Instead, I’m just trying to achieve what feels like an authentically vintage film aesthetic.

There are numerous apps on the iOS App store and the Google Play store that offer various film simulations and vintage effects. Personally, I’ve not found many that I especially like but some particular one are worth highlighting.

First is VSCO, which has a long history of producing a variety of filmic styles that the company says are based on real film stocks. I’ve used VSCO’s desktop presets for many years and they’re certainly some of the best around, so if you want a fast way of slapping a film look over your image, VSCO is worth a look — although you’ll need to pay a subscription to access the whole collection.

Next is Adobe Lightroom, which remains a photography industry staple and works just as well on phones as it does on desktop computers. While you can edit your images in an infinite number of ways to create the look you want, to save some time a huge variety of presets are available that you can install that will give you instant access to beautiful colors in just one tap.

Moment has its own store jammed with preset packs that can be used in Lightroom, bringing filmic vibes to images taken with your phone or with any digital camera. They can be pricey extras but they’re well worth experimenting with if you take your photography more seriously. The aforementioned VSCO has just released its own pack of Lightroom filmic presets, available for all paid subscribers to download and install. I’ve used them and while they’re designed to work with ‘regular’ cameras from Canon, Leica etc., I’ve still had good results when using them on ProRaw iPhone images, including on the image of the fence above.

But my personal suggestion, especially if you don’t want to shell out any cash, is to use Google’s app Snapseed. It’s free on Android and iOS, and has a whole suite of advanced photo editing tools, including numerous film looks, with some that directly aim to mimic real film stocks. I like swiping through the looks, testing each one out to see how it feels with my image before applying it.

I’ll also apply quite a heavy amount of grain to simulate the natural grain seen in analog film, which also helps reduce the digital sharpness. I’ll also go into the Details tool and reduce the structure and ensure sharpening is set to 0. Other things in Snapseed that can add to the effect using the Dehaze tool to reduce sharpness, the Adjust tool to reduce Ambience and add a touch blur with the Lens Blur tool.

I love using Snapseed, because I can go back to different tools and layer the effect again and again, resulting in a photo with a color style that’s uniquely my own. It’s one of the most well-rounded photo editors out there and it’s amazing that it’s free.

Editing in this way really comes down to what I feel has the right ‘vibes’ rather than it being color matched to how Kodak or Fujifilm renders different colors. It’s all about personal preference here so I encourage you to play around as much as you want to find what looks best to you.

I’ve Taken Hundreds of Photos With the Oppo Find X9 Pro. These Are My Faves

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Technologies

Amazon Speeds Up Delivery Even More With 1- and 3-Hour Options

The retailer says the one-hour option is available in hundreds of cities, with discounted shipping for Prime members.

Same-day delivery apparently isn’t fast enough for some Amazon shoppers. The retail giant said on Tuesday it’s adding new shipping options that will get products to front doors within a one- or three-hour window.

The company said in its announcement that the one-hour option is available in hundreds of cities across the US, while the three-hour option is now live in more than 2,000 areas. Amazon’s web page at amazon.com/getitfast shows whether those options are available to shoppers for their location. More than 90,000 products will be available for those shipping windows, the company said.

For those who can’t get those services (including the author of this post, who lives between Austin and San Antonio in Texas), a message will display: «3-hour delivery is currently unavailable. Check back at a later time or shop products with Same-Day delivery below.»

Pricing for the faster delivery options is not cheap: It’ll cost you $20 for one-hour delivery and $15 for three-hour delivery for those without an Amazon Prime account, or $10 and $5 for customers who subscribe to Prime.

Last year, the company rolled out faster Amazon delivery options to 4,000 additional areas.

In a video of the podcast Learn and Be Curious with Doug Herrington, hosted by Amazon’s CEO of worldwide stores, Kandace Kapps, the director of the company’s same-day strategy team, spoke in more detail about the challenges of fast shipping. Kapps discussed shifts in customer buying habits over the last few years, such as more people buying household essentials like toilet paper on Amazon.

She said that Amazon can deliver so quickly by placing same-day delivery hubs close to customers in metro areas and by getting products ready to ship within 15 minutes, aided by warehouse robots.

«I think customers are going to continue to get magically surprised by how fast we can deliver to their doorstop,» Kapps said.

Herrington said fast shipping increases sales: «When we speed up the service, the probability that somebody buys a product from us goes up.»

Other retailers, including Walmart, have been adding same-day delivery options or exploring other ways to speed up shipping times to compete with Amazon.

Removing buyers’ moments of hesitation

Part of Amazon’s strategy, which has involved a massive buildout of locations, deployment of thousands of trucks, deals with other delivery services and investment in logistics software, is actually pretty simple: being there when people need last-minute items or make impulse buys.

«It’s about removing the last moment where you would’ve reconsidered the purchase,» said Stephanie Carls, retail insights expert at coupon and promotional-code website RetailMeNot, a sibling site of CNET. «It changes how you shop, not just how fast you get things.»

Carls said that Amazon’s super-fast delivery is removing the timeframe when people might change their minds about a purchase.

«There used to be a gap between deciding to buy something and actually having it. That’s when you’d price check, rethink it, or decide you didn’t need it after all,» she said. «This closes that gap.»

The retail expert said that competitors, including Walmart and Target, have been speeding up delivery times in some markets. Still, they’re not matching Amazon’s scale or product range at those speeds or levels of consistency.

«And that’s what starts to make everyone else feel slow,» Carls said. «Amazon’s advantage is how tightly connected its technology, inventory and delivery networks are, which makes this level of speed more repeatable.»

Technologies

Dog Health Goes Digital With New AI Chatbot

Fi Intelligence allows you to ask questions of a specially tailored pet health chatbot, but it’s not meant to replace vet visits.

It might be time to rethink what it means to be sick as a dog. On Tuesday, Fi, a smart pet technology company, announced a new AI-powered chatbot to help owners stay on top of their dog’s health using a blend of personal information and generalized dog breed data.

The AI agent, which the company is calling Fi Intelligence, is integrated directly into the Fi app. It has access to all the information gathered about your dog across the entire suite of Fi products, including the Fi Series 3 Plus and Fi Mini dog collars, as well as information and documents uploaded by the pet owner. The service is for dogs only (not cats, rabbits or other pets).

If you already own a Fi smart collar, existing data will be incorporated into the AI agent’s dataset to help it answer your questions.

When creating Fi Intelligence, the company identified a multitude of common questions that dog owners have, including whether their animal friend is walking or sleeping enough, or scratching more than usual. The chatbot was created to help owners find answers to these questions quickly and easily, according to Fi.

Fi designed its agent to answer these questions using a mix of general information about a dog’s breed, personal information and biometric data gathered by Fi smart pet collars.

Pet owners can ask the chatbot questions in plain English and get back detailed responses. Fi Intelligence is equipped to answer general questions, contrast your dog’s current data to previous time periods and compare your dog’s data to other dogs of the same breed.

Fi says its chatbot is different from general-purpose AI agents because it has been trained on a proprietary dataset containing «the largest repository of real-world canine activity, sleep and behavior data in the world.»

Fi Intelligence doesn’t replace a trip to the vet — and the company stresses it’s not supposed to. Rather, the agent is supposed to grant owners «informed confidence» about their dog’s health and can help them «show up [to the vet] with specific, documented observations drawn from weeks of continuous data.»

«The strongest signal from our beta was that owners aren’t using this to replace their vet,» said Fi’s Vice President of Product Darrell Stone. «They’re using it to show up better prepared.»

According to Fi, the Fi Intelligence integration will provide the most complete dog health profile available in the app so far. Fi Intelligence is available to all Fi members immediately.

Technologies

Nvidia Teases DLSS 5 and Gamers Aren’t Impressed

The new AI technology is making some big changes to video game graphics that hardly anyone seems to like.

Nvidia opened its GTC conference with a keynote by CEO Jensen Huang, revealing the company’s latest tech. Among the raft of the company’s AI developments, gamers were treated to the imminent version of its AI-powered upscaling and optimization technology, DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), touted as the «biggest breakthrough in computer graphics».

Nvidia published a video illustrating how DLSS 5 can enhance graphics in Resident Evil Requiem, Starfield and other games, showing before-and-after takes. But gamers weren’t thrilled. In fact, the response to DLSS 5 resembles more of a collective backlash, replete with memes, ridicule and outrage.

Gamers were quick to point out that DLSS 5 transformed the original graphics into something vastly different. Some called the visuals «AI slop» because they look like «yassified» AI-generated filters.

Many worry that DLSS 5 could deviate from a creator’s specific artistic vision. Critics also fear that if this technology becomes the industry standard, video game graphics might start to look the same, losing their unique visual identity.

«Everything about this is a betrayal of these game’s artistry,» said YouTuber The Sphere Hunter in a post on X Monday. «Painting over handcrafted, intentional 3D art with shiny, wrinkly, sunken-in, porous, puckered, fraudulent, filtered nonsense is deeply disrespectful. If you want this, just watch gen-AI videos all day.»

Countless memes mocking the tech’s exaggerated features flooded the internet. Others on social media parodied the effects DLSS 5 could produce in other games.

Ok, you convinced us, NVIDIA DLSS 5 is coming to «Copycat» too 😅 pic.twitter.com/WT2qRRz9EC

— Copycat // OUT NOW 😻 (@GameCopycat) March 17, 2026

In a Q&A on Tuesday, Huang addressed the backlash from gamers, calling them «completely wrong.» Huang underlined that DLSS 5 «enhances and adds generative capability, but it doesn’t change the artistic control» and that «it’s in the direct control of the game developer.»

The team at Digital Foundry, which specializes in game technology and hardware reviews, called it «disruptive and transformative» but was generally positive about it, though they saw some hiccups.

«[The images] looked a little bit uncanny, I would say, but definitely the overall portrayal of those characters is much more sophisticated,» said Oliver Mackenzie, video producer and writer for Digital Foundry.

Bethesda’s official X account replied to comments from members of Digital Foundry about Starfield and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, both published by Bethesda.

«This is a very early look, and our art teams will be further adjusting the lighting and final effect to look the way we think works best for each game. This will all be under our artists’ control, and totally optional for players,» the publisher said.

DLSS 5 is set to be released sometime in the fall.

What is DLSS?

Nvidia first released its DLSS tech back in 2018 with its RTX 2080 card: The RTX architecture introduced the Tensor cores, which are essential for accelerating the calculations used by the DLSS AI. The deep learning technology was designed to upscale images and video from low resolution in real time to achieve higher frame rates.

Gamers weren’t impressed at first, but later versions of the technology did perform better in games that supported it. DLSS 4, released last year and tweaked to 4.5 as of January, made significant improvements to detail rendering, reducing motion artifacts, boosting frame rates, and generating more realistic lighting via path tracing (which incorporates interactions with ray-traced lighting).

What does DLSS 5 do?

DLSS 5 works a bit differently than previous versions of the technology. According to Nvidia, DLSS 5 shifts from processing simple pixels to understanding 3D elements. By deconstructing characters into specific components — such as skin, hair and clothing — the AI can render them more consistently. This results in faster performance and much more realistic details, especially for textures and lighting.

Game developers control how DLSS 5 enhances images and to what degree, ensuring it matches the game’s aesthetic. The demo video showcased some positive enhancements, but others looked like sweeping changes to the characters and the environment.

Which games will support DLSS 5 at launch?

On Monday, Nvidia released a list of games slated to support DLSS 5:

AION 2
Assassin’s Creed Shadows
Black State
Cinder City
Delta Force
Hogwarts Legacy
Justice
Naraka: Bladepoint
NTE: Neverness to Everness
Phantom Blade Zero
Resident Evil Requiem
Sea of Remnants
Starfield
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
Where Winds Meet

What cards will support DLSS 5?

Nvidia has yet to provide a list of GPUs that will support the new technology. In an FAQ, the company says it will release a list of supported cards closer to its release.