Shot AEB sets on a dedicated camera or a drone and want the HDR merge done before you're back at a desk? Here's the on-device workflow — no laptop, no cloud uploads, and no waiting until you get home.
Step by step with MergeHDR
Get your brackets onto the iPhoneBring the bracketed frames into your Photos library — AirDrop from a camera, an SD card reader, or directly from a drone's companion app.Screenshot placeholder — real UI not captured yet assets/img/guide-iphone-import.webpStep 1 — get the bracketed frames into your Photos library.
Let MergeHDR find the setMergeHDR detects the bracket automatically and gathers it in the shelf, so opening the app shows every detected set waiting for review.Screenshot placeholder — real UI not captured yet assets/img/guide-iphone-detected.webpStep 2 — brackets are detected automatically and gather in the shelf.
Review and mergeTap the set, adjust deghosting and tone-mapping if you want a different look, and merge — the whole process runs on the iPhone itself.Screenshot placeholder — real UI not captured yet assets/img/guide-iphone-merge-review.webpStep 3 — adjust deghosting and tone-mapping, then merge on-device.
ExportSave the merged photo at full quality, or compress it to HEIC to save space while you're still out shooting.Screenshot placeholder — real UI not captured yet assets/img/guide-iphone-export.webpStep 4 — export at full quality, or compress to HEIC on the spot.
It is, for photos the iPhone's own camera takes. Smart HDR (and, in low light, Deep Fusion) blends several frames together the instant you press the shutter in the Camera app — that happens automatically, with no separate exposures left over for you to work with afterward.
A bracket from a dedicated mirrorless or DSLR camera, or from a drone's exposure-bracketing mode, is a completely different situation: it arrives in your Photos library as several separate RAW files, not one already-blended photo. Apple's Photos app has no built-in way to combine those separate frames into a single HDR image — that gap between "my phone's camera does HDR automatically" and "I have a folder of unmerged RAW brackets from another camera" is exactly what this workflow fills.
Let MergeHDR find your brackets.
MergeHDR watches your photo library, detects your exposure brackets automatically, and offers the merge — on-device, no uploads.