Thermal looks
Predator vision, on the camera you already carry
Glowing bodies against a cold jungle, everything in orange and violet. Forty years on, people still search for that look by the name of the film that made it famous.
What the look actually is
The effect people call predator vision is false colour applied to a thermal image: a palette that paints cold areas deep blue and violet and hot ones orange, yellow and white. Real thermal cameras have used exactly that ramp — usually called iron or rainbow — since long before the film.
In the film itself most of the shots were not thermal at all. They were made with an early video camera modified to be sensitive past visible red, plus colourising the result, because a true thermal camera in 1987 was a military item the size of a suitcase.
Which is the useful part: the look was always a colour treatment. Getting it does not require a sensor. Getting a real temperature reading does — and no iPhone has one.
Getting the look on your phone
Thermal Camera maps the brightness of your live camera picture onto the same false-colour ramps, so warm-looking bright things read hot and shadows read cold. Iron and Rainbow are the two closest to what you are picturing.
Iron
Black through violet and red into yellow and white — the classic ramp.
Rainbow
Maximum separation between bands. The loudest, most cinematic of the eight.
HUD on top
Crosshair, palette scale, hot and cold markers, and brackets around the people in frame.
Video
Record with sound in any look, then keep it or share it.
Questions about the app
- Is this real thermal imaging?
- No. It is a live camera effect. Real thermal imaging needs an infrared sensor, and no iPhone or iPad has one — see our guide on whether the iPhone has a thermal camera.
- Will it show body heat through clothing or walls?
- No. It cannot, and neither can a real thermal camera: a genuine thermal imager reads the surface of whatever is in front of it, which is the outside of your clothes or the plaster on the wall.
- Which look is closest to the film?
- Rainbow, with the intensity slider high. Iron is closer to what modern thermal cameras actually output.