Gosh, talk about NOT easy, Brigitte.
I looked at several videos from a search for "iphone 12/face/smoothing"
- ie, combos of the words, and though I found one on iPhone video, the
rest were way less relevant (read "vague"). I couldn't even find a decent
description of the iPhone 12 menus.
So, I'd say,
pore through the photo menus to see what you can find. If
it's only some global NR setting, then I'd leave it ON, as yours is just a
12MPx sensor like I have on my Nokia G50. My shots are as GRAINY as
without the NR on. Sure, it says it's a 48MPx sensor, but they do pixel
binning at 12 MPx output for all jpegs. I can only get 48MPx when using
raw mode (DNG output), which I hardly ever do.
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---Nope! Not much after more searching. I couldn't even find a decent user manual for it.
One thing I came across was "Scene Detection" mode. Maybe check that out
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Yet another update...
OK, looking for menu guides, I searched
iphone 12 camera guide...
Lots of videos came up, including
this first one. They're all long, but then
as he flipped through I noticed "Portrait" mode - like also on my phone.
What you described originally could be just that! Are you using Portrait mode?
It softens the BG and ?? knows what it does to faces. I used it about... half a
time and switched away from it
You might check that out as well.