Phone cameras are color-correcting the West Coast wildfires

Even phone cameras are having trouble taking in the dystopian-like skies from the West Coast wildfires.

Photographers have observed that their phones have been washing out the orange-reddish color permeating the skies to look overcast as blazes rage from California to Washington state, Earther reported.

“Had to take that picture with my Canon camera because my phone keeps auto color correcting it and doesn’t show just how gross outside it actually is,” wrote Twitter user @teriarchibbles after sharing a burnt orange photo of her vantage point in Daly City, California.

She then shared two gray and foggy-looking photos of the same landscape taken on her phone for comparison.

Jessica Christian, a San Francisco Chronicle staff photographer, also grappled with the same problem.

“The sky over Oakland keeps getting darker and more orange. My phone kept color correcting the actual hue so I busted out my real camera,” she wrote.

The phones make the skies not look as bad as they really are because they automatically correct what is known as the white balance, which helps images look more “natural.”

“The Apple built-in photo app does a great job with most things because it’s automatically doing adjustments and making everything look pretty by smoothing faces and balancing out shadows,” Maurice Ramirez, the photographer for the town of Alameda, California, told SFGate.

“But when you’re in a crazy situation like this, it’s going to take that crazy color and average it out.