On Friday, a weird iPhone image went viral. Comedian Tessa Coates shared a wild image on Instagram that she claimed wasn’t Photoshopped or edited in any way. Coates posted a photo of herself trying on a bridal gown in front of two mirrors that shows her in three separate poses at the same time: She’s standing with one arm at her side and one arm across her waist; the left reflection shows her with both arms at her side, and the right reflection shows her with her hands clasped in front her.
Coates, who is co-host of the podcast “Nobody Panic,” called the shot a “glitch in the matrix” that made her “nearly vomit in the street.” However, the explanation is likely much less worrisome. According to Faruk Korkmaz of the iPhonedo YouTube channel, the image is likely a perfect mistake of a panoramic photo—even though Coates claims it wasn’t taken in Pano mode.
As he describes, the photo, which was taken with an iPhone 12, is 3028 x 3948 instead of the standard main camera resolution of 4516 x 3874. That resolution precisely matches the resolution of a panoramic photo. Since Coates was likely moving her arms in different positions as the photo was shot, the iPhone’s panoramic system treated them as separate people and expertly stitched them together as if it were three people standing together. And the person snapping the photo could have easily taken it in Pano mode without even realizing it.
We’ve seen plenty of photos like this before. Instagram even has a #panoramafail hashtag dedicated to thousands of pictures showcasing glitchy panorama shots taken on iPhone and Android phones. Since panoramic mode stitches photos together and uses AI to re-create a full scene, images of people can go very wrong at times.
So resume reality as you know it. There’s (probably) nothing to see here.
Author: Michael Simon, Executive Editor
Michael Simon has been covering Apple since the iPod was the iWalk. His obsession with technology goes back to his first PC—the IBM Thinkpad with the lift-up keyboard for swapping out the drive. He's still waiting for that to come back in style tbh.