Spatial reframe in iOS 27 is a neat trick for creating dream fuel

Apple’s spatial reframing tool in Photos for iOS 27 is an interesting application of Apple Intelligence, but don’t push it too far.

WWDC 2025 includes a neat feature for Spatial Photos, which allows users to convert flat images into 3D views. By moving the iPhone, you can temporarily re-angle your shot and explore the scene.

It’s a neat trick, but it’s not an important feature for photographers. This has reduced the idea of ​​what spatial photography looks like to the likes of Apple Vision Pro.

A year later, Apple has decided to try to make this feature more practical for iPhone users. This comes in the form of spatial reframing.

Correcting an imperfect shot

One of the problems with photography is the regret of not lining up the shot properly. Often, you’ll look back at what you’ve taken and the background isn’t where you wanted it to be.

If you wanted to edit it traditionally, you’d cut around the subject and try to move it, then fill in the new empty pixels with the clone tool or something. A professional image editor can do this, and most people won’t even tell an edit has taken place.

It requires time and skill, which the average photographer either doesn’t have or isn’t willing to invest.

Spatial Reframing is a combination of previous Spatial Photos feature and generative AI smarts. The idea is that you can select an image, the iPhone will analyze it, and then change the camera’s angle of view to a new one.

In theory, this is a quick and relatively painless process, and should be problem-free. Depending on the photo you throw in, you can get it, but with some big caveats.

Background fill

Under Tools, under the Image Editing section, you’ll find the Reframe feature.

Once you tap it, the screen will be filled with a multi-colored filter as you scan the shot. Once scanned, you’ll be prompted to touch and drag to adjust the perspective.

You can also use a two-finger pinch to pan, zoom and rotate the image.

Dragging the image around gives a similar effect to spatial photos, but to a more extreme degree. You can move the angle to one side or the other so that you can find parts of the background that were simply not visible in the original shot.

In the preview, it’s filled with minimal creating graphics that aren’t used in the final image. This is especially true for edges, which tend to look blurry because there’s a lot to create on the fly, and it’s not necessary in preview.

Once you’ve set your new angle, pressing the Reshape button sets processing in motion. After a few seconds, you have your reformatted image.

In the short time we played with the feature, we tried it out with a couple of images to see how it performed with a close-up portrait and a wide view.

The portrait is very well handled as we used an old picture of a kitten. This shifted the camera to the right, slightly distorting the image of the cat.

Since the left side of the image is completely created by the tool, the background is very clear. It was fine in its dim state, and if I showed it to anyone who didn’t know the layout of the room, they wouldn’t tell.

Our second experiment was with a wide tourist photo of the Colosseum in Rome. This is a difficult composition with many curves and the subjects are far away from the camera in the middle of the frame.

Let’s say it tries to create a vague-but-acceptable background for the foreground when lining up the shot, and that’s fine.

The final image has some pros, but also some cons.

On the plus side, it created the background well. Curves and road not seen in the original shot are created and placed well in the background.

Subject faces are less done. You can say that as part of the redesign, bodies and heads are taken into account and adjusted to match the rest of the image.

This works well at times, but the cast on the face is unpleasant to say the least.

Caveat emptor

Spatial reframing, as a concept, makes perfect sense. If you have a camera setup and processing that can take a scene apart, move elements and intelligently create missing bits, there’s no reason not to.

This can be a huge task for one man, so it is quite unique for a first attempt.

We’re talking about a feature that’s in developer beta, a few months after its release and the first real try. Here are expected hiccups and glitches.

Expect more improvements in the future.

While it’s there, it’s a nice feature that can make for some fun shot changes. Content that has been changed by the feature is not going to be covered Vogue Anytime, professional teachers can breathe a sigh of relief.

If you don’t push it too far, it’s enough to make your Instagram cat photos a little better.