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Apple's Deep Fusion photography feature,China Archives which uses machine learning to improve photos taken in less-than-perfect lighting conditions, is now available to everyone with an iPhone 11 or an iPhone 11 Pro/Max.

To get the feature now, though, you must enrol into Apple's beta testing program and install the latest iOS public beta, iOS 13.2. Beta software can be buggy and can result in loss of data, so you might want to wait until the feature trickles down into the standard iOS 13.2 release, which is likely coming soon.

So what does Deep Fusion do? According to Apple, it uses "advanced machine learning to do pixel-by-pixel processing of photos, optimizing for texture, details and noise in every part of the photo." During its iPhone 11 launch event earlier this month, the company illustrated the system's capabilities with photos of people in sweaters (prompting some to call it Sweater Mode). The improvements shown in that example were subtle but definitely visible.

In practice, this should mean better low-light photos, but as The Verge has noted, it's a bit hard to figure out whether it's working or not, as there's no way to turn it on or off or any visual indication that it's been activated.

This is all a bit confusing, as the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 11 Pro/Max already have a Night mode feature which automatically turns on in low-light scenarios. Deep Fusion should work independently of Night mode and further improve the photo quality.

Note that Deep Fusion is not available on older iPhone models, as the feature needs the Neural Engine in Apple's latest A13 Bionic chip to work.

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