iOS 16

The latest iPhone operating system, iOS 16, comes with a new lock screen feature. It’s a sort of layered overlay wallpaper that cuts out your subject and sticks it on top of the clock. It’s a neat visual effect – and one that’s been commonly used on magazine covers over the years – but with the iPhone, there is a trick to creating the images in order to make them work in this way.

In this video, ZY Cheng walks us through the process of how the new layered lock screen photos work and how we need to shoot and compose them in order to get the desired result. It’s a pretty straightforward process and requires no 3rd party tools or funky file formats. In fact, you can even do it with images shot using the phone’s own built-in cameras, but there is definitely a trick to it.