Apple Enhances Image Playground with New 'Sketch' Style in iOS 18.4 Update

iOS 18.4 adds new Apple Intelligence feature to the Image Playground app - 9to5Mac

Back in December, the iPhone gained a new Image Playground app powered by Apple Intelligence, and that app just got a welcome upgrade in iOS 18.4 thanks to a newly added feature for image creation. Apple Intelligence is an umbrella term covering a wide array of different features. iOS 18.2 brought some of the most exciting features to date with ChatGPT integration, Genmoji, and Image Playground. If you're into AI image generation, Image Playground is Apple's solution. The app lets users create original images just by typing a description. You can use the tool in its own dedicated app, or through built-in integration inside other apps like Messages and Notes. And in iOS 18.4, Apple added a new style not previously available for Image Playground creations: Sketch. That means there are now three style options in total: All the way back in June of last year, Apple had announced that Sketch would be a feature of Image Playground. However, neither iOS 18.2 nor iOS 18.3 showed any sign of it. Fortunately, Apple has now debuted the full set of Image Playground features originally demoed back at WWDC. Sketch is available in Image Playground across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, offering a new way to visualize your AI creations via iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, and macOS Sequoia 15.4. And since Image Playground is also baked into several other first-party apps, like Apple Invites, Notes, and iWork, those apps benefit too. What do you think of the new Sketch style? Let us know in the comments.

Apple Brings New Sketch Style to Image Playground on iPhone With iOS 18.4

The feature is powered by the company's Apple Intelligence suite Apple rolled out its highly anticipated iOS 18.4 update last month and it brought several notable features to the iPhone. While the update's highlight was the introduction of Visual Intelligence on iPhone 15 Pro models, some features didn't make the limelight. For example, the update brought a new change to the Image Playground app. A new Sketch image style now joins the existing two options and finally completes the feature set which the company initially previewed as part of iOS 18 at WWDC 2024. According to Apple, Image Playground has a new image style dubbed Sketch. It is described as an "academic and highly detailed style that uses a vibrant color palette combined with technical lines to produce realistic drawings." Similar to other options, it also leverages Apple Intelligence -- the company's AI suite -- to transform rough sketches into digital art based on text-based prompts. The new Sketch option joins the existing Animation and Illustration styles, bringing the number of total available choices in the Image Playground app to three. Although Apple previewed the Sketch style, along with others, during WWDC 2024, it remained eluded while others made their way to the iPhone following the release of the iOS 18.2 update in December. Notably, Image Playground is available as a free standalone app on the App Store. It bundles three capabilities, enabling users to express themselves better. As per Apple, the app leverages generative AI to generate and tailor images in different styles, with Animation, Illustration, and Sketch styles to choose from. Additionally, there's a Genmoji feature which has similar functionality but works for emojis instead of images. The company says that images and emojis created in Image Playground can be shared in apps such as Messages and Notes, along with the entire iWork suite of apps. The third feature part of Image Playground is the Image Wand. It transforms a rough sketch into a related image in the Notes app, similar to Samsung's Galaxy AI-powered Sketch to Image feature. Further, the feature can also create an image in the app based on the handwritten or typed text using on-device generative AI models.