Did you know that you can capture beautiful images using only your smartphone?

It’s true. And while smartphone photography might seem difficult, it’s actually pretty easy – once you know a few techniques.

That’s where this article comes in handy; I’m going to share with you some simple tips so you can achieve awesome, beautiful, and memorable mobile phone photography in no time at all. I also include plenty of smartphone image examples so you can see exactly what your little phone camera is capable of.

Let’s get started!

1. Clean your lens

This tip is extremely basic, but you will be amazed by the dirt and grime that accumulate on your smartphone lens.

When I reach for my phone, I often find lots of smudges and dirt caused by my kids, my pockets, the environment, and more.

So do yourself a favor and get in the habit of quickly wiping your phone lens before beginning a photoshoot. It’ll make your photos look so much sharper!

2. Tap the screen to set focus

Typically, when you point your smartphone at a subject, the camera will guess what you want to photograph. For instance, if it recognizes faces, it’ll focus on the faces; if it recognizes a person, it’ll focus on the person.

This method of autofocusing can work well, especially if you’re photographing a clear scene with an obvious main subject. But when the scene is more complex – you’re photographing a bird surrounded by trees, for example – your smartphone may get the focusing wrong, and the shot will turn out blurry.

So what do you do?

Instead of letting your smartphone’s algorithms determine your point of focus, simply tap on your subject, and then – voila! – you’ll get a sharp result.

3. Don’t use flash

Your smartphone camera has a flash…

…but it really, really sucks! Sorry – there simply isn’t a way to sugarcoat it: The flash on your phone camera is not flattering for photos, whether you’re shooting in the daytime, late at night, landscapes, flowers, or portraits.

So whenever you’re shooting, keep that flash off. Instead, use natural light for great results. For instance, shoot in the early morning or the late evening to get beautiful golden lighting, or work on cloudy days for soft, evenly lit images.

4. Manually set the image brightness

Did you know that you can set image brightness (i.e., image exposure) manually?

It’s true, and you can use this function to control the level of detail that will appear in the final photo.

The details depend on your specific smartphone model, but try tapping on the screen, then look for some sort of exposure symbol (such as a sun). Swipe up (or drag the corresponding slider) to brighten the exposure, and swipe down (or drag the corresponding slider) to darken it.

Note that the general goal is to keep as much detail as possible in the final image. However, you can also deliberately brighten or darken an image for creative effect, like this:

5. Compose your photos creatively

Composition refers to the arrangement of elements in the frame. If you want to capture stunning photos, you must carefully position people and objects in a pleasing way.

A few quick pieces of advice:

• Avoid placing your subject smack-dab in the center of the frame
• Symmetry often looks good
• Try to include a natural frame around your subject, like a window, a doorway, or an arch

If you want especially beautiful compositions, I’d recommend using the rule of thirds, which encourages you to position key elements a third of the way into the image. See how the chairs are positioned around the bottom-third portion of the frame:

Note that you don’t have to use the rule of thirds – it’s not really a rule, just a guideline – but it helps create compositions that are well-balanced and dynamic at the same time.

6. Rule of odds

Another tip for great smartphone composition is the rule of odds, which encourages you to group your subjects in odd-numbered collections.

(For some reason, odd-numbered collections just tend to look good!)

So if you were photographing a group of people, you’d want to include three, five, or seven people in a cluster – not two or four. And if you were photographing a group of forks, you’d want to include three, five, seven, or nine. Make sense?

As with the rule of thirds, the rule of odds isn’t actually a rule. It’s a suggestion – but a good one, so I do recommend you follow it whenever possible!

7. Straighten the horizon

A common beginner smartphone photography mistake is a crooked horizon. After all, it’s so easy to accidentally tilt your phone when shooting!

Unfortunately, crooked horizons are a major problem, and unless you know how to handle them (either in the field or in post-processing), you’ll be stuck with a set of bad photos.

Fortunately, dealing with crooked horizons isn’t difficult. Simply take a moment to turn on your camera grid; this will display a set of lines across the screen, which you can then use to level your horizons in the field.

You can also handle crooked horizons in post-processing. Most editing apps include some sort of straightening option, though you will lose pixels in the process, so it’s always best to get it right in the field!

8. Use leading lines

Leading lines are lines that lead the viewer into the frame and draw attention to the main subject.

And leading lines, when used correctly, are insanely powerful.

When you’re shooting with your smartphone, look around for roads, buildings, or even furniture that can help lead the eye to the subject. Technically, a leading line can be pretty much anything, from outstretched arms and tree branches to road signs and buildings, so even if you can’t see any obvious lines, I encourage you to keep looking!

Once you find a leading line, adjust your position so that it points to the main subject. Your composition will instantly improve! Here, I used the row of chairs to direct the viewer toward the building in the background:

9. Photograph in natural light

Earlier in the article, I mentioned the value of natural light, but it’s so important that it deserves its own section.

You see, there is something so pure and clean about photographing in natural light. It looks great, it produces beautiful photos, and it’s always available.

I love morning and evening light because of its golden hues and soft, flattering effect. Overcast light is nice, too. And even high-contrast light produced by the harsh sun can look amazing (especially in black and white).

If you shoot in heavy shade or at night, you can still use natural light, but you’ll need to use a tripod to prevent image blur. (Fortunately, there are plenty of high-quality, cheap smartphone tripods to choose from!)

This next image, of a foggy morning out on Lake Michigan, shows the beauty of soft natural light:

10. Try not to zoom

Unless your camera offers a telephoto lens, don’t zoom.

You see, most zoom functions use digital zoom, which simply crops the image to magnify the subject. In other words, it doesn’t actually get you closer to the subject; instead, it just removes pixels.

While digital zoom might seem convenient, it’ll only serve to magnify image imperfections and noise. You can get much better results by walking toward your subject (or, better yet, composing a more scenic, environmental-type shot).

Smartphone photography tips: final words

Well, there you have it:

10 quick and easy tips to help you improve your smartphone photography.

Remember: With a bit of practice and perseverance, you can capture stunning images using only your smartphone!

Now over to you:

What kind of smartphone photos do you plan to take? Which of these tips will you use first? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post 10 Tips for Beautiful Smartphone Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Karthika Gupta.

Are you struggling to capture stunning smartphone product shots? You’re not alone.

Smartphone product photography often seems tough, especially when you’re starting out. But here’s a secret:

With a little bit of know-how, you can take product photos with a smartphone that look just as good as product photos captured with a DSLR or mirrorless camera. You just need to take advantage of your camera settings, your equipment, your lighting options, and your compositional skills – all of which I explore in this article.

So no matter your product photography skill level, read on for plenty of tips, tricks, and examples, starting with:

1. Use a good camera phone

Different smartphones include cameras of various quality; for instance, some smartphone cameras offer more megapixels, better dynamic range, superior color rendering, and so on.

And it’s true: Camera quality does matter.

Most smartphone brands have professional models with a higher megapixel count and/or bigger sensors. These smartphones cost more, of course, and I’m not saying that you have to buy the newest most expensive phone on the market. But try to find a good balance between the camera specs and your budget; that way, you can get the best results.

Nowadays, many smartphones offer three or four cameras/lenses. This is hugely useful because it gives you a wide variety of focal lengths to work with – but be careful. Changing the lens may change the resolution, and you don’t want to accidentally capture dozens of low-res product photos, so make sure to check camera/lens resolutions before doing a shoot.

(Of course, you can always buy external lenses to switch up your focal length choices. Just make sure they’re good quality!)

At the end of the day, it is possible to get great shots using the smartphone that you currently own. Just remember that better specs make it easier to capture better-quality images, so if you can afford an upgrade and you want amazing results, it might be worth the extra money.

2. Don’t limit yourself to the default camera app

Some smartphones have excellent native camera apps, especially smartphones that are designed for photographers.

But if your native camera app doesn’t give you enough control or you’re simply looking to experiment, try some third-party camera apps. There are some great ones out there, and many of them offer amazing features such as:

• Manual mode. In some camera apps, this is called Pro mode. Whatever its title, Manual mode allows you to set the shutter speed, the ISO, and the white balance manually, which gives you far more control over your product photos.
• Composition-grid overlays. The arrangement of elements in the frame is your composition, and it can greatly influence how the viewer experiences each photo (and each product). Most camera apps have a rule-of-thirds grid overlay that’ll help you create more dynamic compositions, and to further up your game, look for an app with more complex compositional overlays.
• A histogram. The histogram is a graph that depicts the exposure of an image. That way, you can evaluate image brightness and detail without relying on the screen preview (which can be deceiving!).
• Level. A level not only helps you keep your horizon straight, but also helps prevent perspective distortion. This can be especially handy for flat-lay product photography!

3. Use a tripod

Most smartphone product photographers try to handhold their product shots, and while this can work, it often results in blurry images.

On the other hand, a cheap tripod will keep your smartphone steady while you shoot, preventing camera shake and any resulting blur effects. (For the best results, make sure you use your smartphone’s self-timer feature or a remote release. That way, you don’t create additional camera shake when you press the shutter button.)

Tripods are also helpful for creating complex product arrangements; a tripod will keep the framing fixed as you move your product(s) throughout the frame. And it’ll force you to slow down and really think about your composition before shooting.

Finally, a tripod will free up your hand so that you can hold a light or even appear as a model.

As I mentioned above, you’ll get the best results by pairing the tripod with a remote shutter release, which will let you trigger the camera shutter from a distance. And if you don’t want to pay for a remote release, the self-timer feature works, too.

4. Carefully prepare your product photo

While impromptu snapshots are fine for personal use, if you want to take photos for a brand or a business, you need to put in some real preparation.

If you’re photographing for a brand, there may be a marketing team that explains what the brand is after. However, if you’re photographing your own products or you don’t have a briefing from your client, it’s up to you to decide how to proceed.

Should you use a white background? This is often the case for e-commerce photography. If not, what color should the background be? Do you have a color palette to work with? If you’ll be capturing a series of shots, make sure you determine your color palette in advance!

You’ll also need to plan for props, locations, and even models. Once you have everything together, carefully prepare the entire set, including lighting, props, and backgrounds.

Finally, take the time to clean and style the product. After all, it’s the hero of the photo! Any time spent preparing is time you’ll save in retouching and post-processing.

5. Take control of the lighting

Professional product photographers often use strobes and all sorts of studio lighting equipment, but as a smartphone product shooter, this isn’t really an option. You can’t sync strobes to a smartphone – yet you can control and manipulate light for pro-level results, so I highly recommend you spend time learning how to work with light.

If you want to use natural light, you’ll get different results depending on the weather, the time of the day, and the direction of the light. If you position your subject under the direct sunlight, for instance, you’ll get strong shadows, while photographing in the shade or on a cloudy day will give a softer, more even effect. Experiment with different types of light, and you’ll soon start to notice what you like – and what you don’t.

Another choice is to use continuous lighting lamps. You can use LED lights designed specifically for photography and video, or you can simply use a flashlight or a table lamp. Which is best? Photography-specific lights tend to give you the most control, but it really depends on what you can afford and the result you want.

Whether you choose to use natural or artificial light, you should use light modifiers to gain even greater control over your lighting. Softboxes and diffusers allow you to turn hard light soft, and you can use reflectors to bounce the light and fill in the shadows on the opposite side of the product.

In fact, working with modifiers is a ton of fun, so I recommend you buy – or make – a few, then see what you can create.

6. Choose the best aspect ratio

Did you know that most camera apps allow you to choose different aspect ratios before you snap your picture? It’s true, and it’s a great way to create more powerful images.

You see, different aspect ratios work well for different compositions, so by picking the right one, you can increase the impact of your product photos. Plus, certain websites have specific aspect ratio requirements, which means that – unless you shoot with a specific aspect ratio in mind – you’ll be doing a lot of cropping.

So before you start shooting, check out your image display requirements. For example, Shopify’s product images have a 1:1 aspect ratio, but the banner image is 16:9 – so you might want to take most of your images using the 1:1 ratio, then do a couple of special shots at 16:9. And on Instagram, the best post format is 1:1, but if you want to share it in your stories, it’s better to use 9:16. Make sense?

If you’re not sure which aspect ratio to use, I’d recommend leaving enough room around the main subject so that you can crop later on. Keep in mind that you’ll be losing pixels this way, so if you don’t have enough resolution, the final photo might look a bit rough. That’s why it’s always best to get the aspect ratio right in advance!

7. Shoot in RAW format

These days, many smartphones offer RAW file formats – and if you can’t find a RAW option in your native camera app, you can always download a third-party app that supports it. Some good free RAW-supporting apps are Lightroom Mobile, ProShot, and ON1 Photo RAW.

But what makes RAW so special? A RAW file holds more information than a JPEG or a HEIF; RAWs are uncompressed, which means they contain all the data from the moment of capture. Therefore, RAW photos allow more flexibility when editing: you can recover underexposed shadows and overexposed highlights, make significant color adjustments, and do much-needed color correction.

You’ll eventually need to convert your RAW photos to JPEGs for posing online as browsers cannot display RAW images, but the enhanced quality is worth the hassle.

8. Make use of editing apps

Whether you like it or not, post-processing is an essential part of the product photography process. Pretty much every professional product photographer – smartphone or otherwise – edits their images, which means you should be editing your images, too.

Your editing workflow doesn’t have to be complex. You can do basic adjustments, such as contrast boosts, exposure shifts, and a bit of sharpening. Alternatively, you can do more complex edits, such as HDR composites, focus stacking, and even multiple exposures.

No matter the editing workflow you pursue, one thing is clear: Using the right photo editing app can simplify your work and save you lots of time.

Fortunately, there are some great free editing apps out there. Snapseed, the basic version of Lightroom, or the basic version of VSCO all do a nice job, and you’ll pay nothing for the basics. That said, if you’re going to do smartphone product photography professionally, you might want to invest in premium plans or even specialized apps.

Smartphone product photography: final words

Hopefully, you now feel more prepared and confident for your next smartphone product photoshoot!

Just remember the tips I’ve shared above, and you’ll do just fine.

Now over to you:

Which of these smartphone product photography tips will you use? Which is your favorite? And do you have any tips of your own? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post 8 Tips for Pro-Level Smartphone Product Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

These days, there are dozens of camera apps available, and it can be hard to select the perfect option for your photography. And although smartphone native camera apps are pretty decent nowadays, it’s always handy to have an dedicated app to expand your phone photography capabilities.

In this article, we’ll have a look at the best camera apps available for smartphones, including Android and iOS options (both free and paid).

So if you’re ready to find an outstanding app to take smartphone photos, then let’s get started.

1. Adobe Photoshop Camera (iOS and Android)

Price: Free, with in-app purchases

First up on our list of best camera apps is Adobe Photoshop Camera. While it doesn’t offer a lot of the manual settings that other camera apps possess, the Photoshop Camera app does feature a solid range of intelligent live camera filters (called Lenses) to apply to a scene. Once a Lens is selected, the AI-powered app implements the selection in real time to create beautiful effects.

The many free Lenses – along with the editing capabilities – available in Adobe Photoshop Camera offer a responsive phoneography experience, expanding your creative potential with intriguing effects like Rainy Window, Cyanotype (see the photo above), Vintage, Double Exposure, Blue Skies, Pop Color, Monochrome, and more.

If you’re looking for a fun and engaging way to experiment with phoneography effects, Adobe Photoshop Camera is worth the download.

2. Open Camera (Android)

Price: Free

Open Camera is one of the most versatile camera app options available for Android, and it’s a great open-source alternative to the built-in Android camera app. Completely free, Open Camera features a wealth of features for phoneography work.

First, Open Camera offers the core functions that many other dedicated camera apps provide. ISO, exposure, focus adjustments, white balance – it’s all there. But Open Camera also offers a plethora of other functions and customizable features, including RAW functionality, face detection, a ghost image function (which uses an image overlay to aid in alignment), burst mode, noise reduction, exposure and focus bracketing, and more.

Plus, you get an on-screen histogram, numerous grids and guides, a panorama function for both the front and back cameras, focus peaking, zebra stripes, and even the option to trigger the camera remotely by making a noise. While the interface may not be as smooth as some other photography apps, Open Camera also has a customizable GUI that enables or hides different features as per the user’s requirements.

3. Camera+ 2 (iOS)

Price: $7.99 USD

Camera+ 2 is an improved version of its popular predecessor, Camera+, and both have a reputation as two of the best iPhone camera apps on the market today. With features like exposure, ISO, and white balance adjustments, along with an image stabilizer, focus lock, and RAW shooting and editing, Camera+ 2 is a great app to have on hand for iOS phone photography.

Camera+ 2 also features a clipping indicator, focus peaking, hands-free control with Siri shortcuts and Apple Watch remote trigger compatibility, and smile detection. An improved long exposure functionality enables exposures of up to 30 seconds and even displays a preview of the scene as the exposure is captured.

In addition, a Monuments mode utilizes AI technology to track objects moving through a series of frames and erases them from the final image. If you’re trying to capture an image free of moving vehicles or people, Monuments mode may make all the difference.

4. Darkr (iOS)

Price: Free, with in-app purchases

Ever wished you could cram a darkroom-like process into your iPhone? Darkr is an app that allows iOS users to capture and edit images exclusively in black and white, while using simulated film cameras and a darkroom-inspired process.

The Darkr app has a number of intriguing features; first, basic JPEG shooting is performed with a fixed 35mm camera interface (though you can also import existing shots from your camera roll). And there are two other camera simulations (medium and large format) available for purchase.

Darkr offers a distinctive editing format, too. In Darkroom mode, the app renders images as negatives. Then, once a negative is chosen, the user is presented with a simulated test strip interface to select a desired exposure. You have the option to dodge and burn, while selecting various film types, editing layers, and applying tones are all available with in-app purchases.

5. Adobe Lightroom (iOS and Android)

Price: Free, with in-app purchases

Marketed as a powerful post-production tool, the Adobe Lightroom mobile app is an expansive editing application that comes with a handy camera function. While the base app is free, you will need an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription to unlock several key features – including selective adjustments, a healing brush, a geometry tool, batch editing, and RAW support.

The camera itself is paired with several filters that are applied in real time. Among these are two black and white offerings – flat and high contrast – which can be useful if you’re looking to take beautiful monochrome photos.

Lightroom also comes with a community full of photographers keen to share their work and gain inspiration from each other. And although the Lightroom camera isn’t as flexible as other options on this list, a simple design, RAW shooting, and extensive in-app editing capabilities make for a simple and effective phoneography tool.

6. KD PRO Disposable Camera (iOS and Android)

Price: Free, with in-app purchases

KD PRO Disposable Camera is a nifty little camera app designed to imitate a classic disposable camera. Available for both Android and iOS devices, the app is a fun take on retro photography. With several filter themes, a self-timer, sound effects, a frame counter, optional light leaks, and customizable time stamps, KD PRO makes for whimsical phoneography with a hint of nostalgia.

Paid features include the ability to import images, view original photos, and customize camera color. Plus, for that authentic disposable camera experience, you can even increase the “film development time” to up to three days.

7. RAW+ (iOS)

Price: First 100 shots free, plus in-app purchases

Describing itself as a “minimalist camera for purists and professionals,” RAW+ is a camera app with an emphasis on hands-on experience. With responsive functionality, a balanced amount of free screen space, large sliders, and a simple aesthetic, RAW+ comes to life when used in landscape orientation, which neatly divides the manual controls for greater ergonomic control.

RAW+ offers full manual exposure, manual focus override, white balance presets, an RGB histogram, plus highlight and shadow clipping warnings. The app also supports RAW shooting as well as ProRAW, an Apple file format that combines the information of a standard RAW file with iOS image processing for extra creative control and flexibility.

8. Halide Mark II (iOS)

Price: 1 week free trial, then $11.99 USD per year or a one-time fee of $36.00 USD

Known for its simple yet professional interface, Halide Mark II shares many of the integral features of its predecessor. With gesture functionality, responsivity, and full manual control (divided into small increments for precise adjustments), the app is designed for a fluid user experience.

Features in Halide Mark II include manual exposure controls, focus peaking, color zebras, Depth mode, machine-learning assisted RAW and ProRAW shooting, an extended dynamic range (XDR), a focus loupe feature, and real-time 14-bit RAW visualization for accurate rendering of tonal information.

The app also has a privacy feature, which can remove embedded location data when the image is shared to any Facebook-owned app.

9. Manual Camera (Android)

Price: In-app purchases (Lite); $4.99 USD (Pro)

Manual Camera has a significant range of functions and features within a user-friendly interface. Adjustments for exposure, white balance, focus, ISO, and more are all available. Face detection, scene modes, focus assist, RAW shooting, touch to capture, and geotagging are a few other features Manual Camera offers.

There are two versions of the Manual Camera app for Android phoneography – Manual Camera DSLR Pro and Manual Camera DSLR Lite. Lite is free and gives a user access to numerous features. However, there are some limits to the Lite version, including an 8 MP resolution cap and a five-minute video recording restriction.

10. Pro Camera by Moment (iOS)

Price: $8.99 USD, plus in-app purchases

Pro Camera by Moment is a multifunctional app that has gained a reputation as one of the best camera apps available on iOS. Pro Camera comes equipped with all the tools you’d want from an advanced camera app: an intuitive screen layout, along with plenty of different settings, adjustments, and customizations. Full manual controls, a live histogram, lens support, bracketing, split exposure and focus, TIFF and RAW shooting (including in burst mode), focus peaking, and zebra stripes; it’s all available in the Pro Camera app.

You will need to pay up front to gain access to the app, and you can buy additional features such as a time-lapse mode and a powerful slow shutter mode.

Note that the slow shutter mode has two options: motion blur and light trails. Motion blur facilitates fluid renderings of a moving scene for any length of time. While the long exposure is being made, a live rendering unfolds on the screen. That way, if you like the image before the exposure has finished, you can simply tap the shutter button to complete the shot.

If you are finding that other apps lag in terms of long-exposure capability, Pro Camera by Moment is a great choice.

11. Footej Camera 2 (Android)

Price: Free, with in-app purchases

Simple and easy to use, Footej Camera 2 has a range of features, including full manual control, burst mode, panorama mode, time-lapse, HDR+ (for Pixel 2 phones), and RAW shooting. Footej also includes an automated GIF function, which takes a burst of images and compiles them into a GIF.

While the Footej Camera 2 base app comes with plenty of functions, a paid upgrade to the Footej Camera 2 Premium package will boost the maximum shots in a burst (limited to 20 in the free version) and improve JPEG and GIF quality. The Premium package also adds a histogram and lowers the burst interval to below 500 ms.

12. ProCam 8 (iOS)

Price: $7.99 USD

Arranged in a simple and accessible layout with a responsive scroll and stepper adjustment system, ProCam 8 and its predecessors were reportedly inspired by DSLR cameras themselves. With manual camera basics (shutter speed, ISO, focus, and white balance controls), plus manual focus assist, focus peaking, and zebra stripes all supported across each photo and video mode, ProCam 8 is a comprehensive app for iOS photographers.

In addition, RAW shooting, TIFF file format support, 3-shot HDR, auto exposure bracketing, a live light-level histogram, adjustable aspect ratios, and still photo capture during video recording all contribute to an app that helps make the most of iOS phone camera technology.

Shooting modes include burst mode, slow shutter, portrait mode, and time-lapse. For phones equipped with two or more cameras, ProCam 8 has a 3D Photo mode or “Wigglegram,” which creates animated images that simulate a 3D effect.

A focus loupe allows for a magnified preview of the scene, and extensive editing functions enable further enhancement during post production. Additionally, the Photo Editing Extension offers non-destructive editing, 60 filters, 17 lens effects, 19 extra adjustment tools, and batch photo actions. ProCam 8 is an app packed with functionality – so if you’re serious about iPhoneography and want to take your work to the next level, it’s a great pick.

The best camera apps in 2023: conclusion

So there you have it: 12 of the best camera apps available for iOS and Android photographers.

There is an abundance of helpful phone camera apps available – so many that it’s almost impossible to review them all. Nevertheless, the apps listed here are all capable of expanding the creative potential of phoneography.

Now over to you:

Do you have a favorite smartphone camera app? Which of these apps do you plan to try? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post The 12 Best Camera Apps in 2023 (Free and Paid) appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Megan Kennedy.

You’ve likely heard this before: The best camera is the one you have with you. Trite, but absolutely true. The high-end DSLR or mirrorless camera you might own is totally worthless if it’s sitting in your car, your hotel room, or your home when a great photo opportunity presents itself.

On the other hand, we almost always have a smartphone on hand, and their photo capabilities continue to improve by leaps and bounds. So if you want to capture stunning landscapes, why not learn to take better photos with the camera you always have with you? Why not learn to do smartphone landscape photography?

More than a few times, I’ve chatted with talented photographers who scoff at the idea of serious photography with a smartphone. Knowing I shoot both phone and dedicated camera images, they sometimes admire an image I’ve made, but then ask, “Did you take that with your real camera?”

My “real camera?” Why do some think a smartphone camera isn’t real, or that a person that shoots with one isn’t a real photographer?

I would argue that if you make a nice image, it doesn’t matter what you use to make it. Has anyone ever looked at a da Vinci painting and asked whether he painted it with a real brush?

The fact is that most modern smartphone cameras have far better specs than DSLRs from a decade ago. Sure, certain factors favor DSLRs, such as the greater control, the ability to use interchangeable lenses, and the larger sensor size. But the idea that you can’t make great images with a smartphone camera? Hogwash, I say!

So let’s give you 10 tips on how you can get better images when doing smartphone landscape photography.

1. Make photographs, don’t take snapshots

To be a better photographer, you must move beyond the idea that you “take” a photo. Ansel Adams said it succinctly:

“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”

What’s the difference? The idea is that you think about what you’re trying to communicate with your photo, then do everything you can to include that, and only that, in your shot. Another way to put it: Snapshots are taken by people who just point and click. Photographs are made by artists who give thought to the image they are creating.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what instrument you use, smartphone or high-end digital camera. What counts is the thought you put into your work. You generally won’t need to make a landscape photograph in a hurry, so slow down and think about what you’re doing.

If you only take one tip from this article, make sure it’s this one. Your smartphone landscape photography will be far ahead of the rest of the happy snappers who just point and shoot.

2. Compose, then expose

Composition is king in photography, no matter your camera.

So study compositional techniques such as the rule of thirds. Use the thirds grid on your smartphone to assist you. Do “border patrol” of your shot, looking for distracting elements around the edges of the frame.

Consider whether you should use portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal) mode for the shot. Just because you typically hold your phone vertically doesn’t mean you should always take photos that way. In fact, most landscape images benefit from a landscape mode composition. (Guess that’s why they call it that, huh?)

Of course, sometimes portrait mode is better suited for a shot. Thanks to their small sensors and wide lenses, smartphones feature excellent depth of field, which can make for beautiful near/far images (with everything sharp from foreground to horizon).

Note that creating such an expansive depth of field would require an ultra-narrow aperture – or even a focus stack – on a DSLR. But on a smartphone camera, it requires nothing extra.

3. Seek the light

Since we have our smartphones with us most of the time, we can make photos whenever we like. But images in midday sun usually won’t look great no matter what camera you use. Nice light is always going to make for a better photo.

So if you can do your smartphone landscape photography in the early morning or late evening – the “magic hours” – you’ll almost always end up with more dramatic images.

Modern smartphone cameras have also become much better at low-light shooting, so don’t overlook the possibility of night photos.

4. Take control of your settings

Beginning photographers, even with higher-end cameras, often stick to the simplicity of automatic modes and let the camera determine the focus, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance.

Yet while early smartphone cameras offered no option for manual control, many modern smartphone cameras now offer full manual control over settings. You can also find apps that expand your camera control, such as A Better Camera for Android-based phones or Camera+ 2 for iPhones.

By taking control of your camera settings, you can create better landscape photos – so make sure to explore these options, even if you currently feel more comfortable with your smartphone’s Auto mode.

5. Use all available lenses

It used to be that a distinct advantage of standard cameras over smartphone cameras was lens interchangeability. A smartphone had one lens with a fixed focal length, no optical zoom, and a set aperture.

But look at the back of a modern smartphone, and you’ll see multiple cameras. An iPhone 12 Pro Max features three cameras, while a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra sports four. There’s also the selfie-cam on the front, but that’s not one you’re likely to use for landscape photography.

If you have additional lenses, take advantage of them! On the other hand, don’t use digital zoom. Sure, it might seem easy to “zoom” into a composition with a simple touch of the screen, but you’re actually just cropping the image and losing resolution in the process.

I’d also discourage clip-on lenses for smartphones. These are always fiddly to work with and almost never produce quality images. Save your money. If you need a more versatile lens than your smartphone but still want something pocketable, check out some of the great point-and-shoot cameras that have superzooms and good specs.

6. Three legs are better than none

As a mostly landscape photographer, I shoot from a tripod about 85% of the time. However, I often see other landscape photographers happily working away with no tripod in sight.

Yes, lens and IBIS (in-body image stabilization) has brought us a long way, and if the light permits, a fast shutter speed might negate the advantage of a tripod. Still, I firmly believe that using a tripod will improve your landscape photography.

But being a tripod-evangelist isn’t an easy assignment. People don’t want to be bothered. Now try convincing smartphone photographers they should use a tripod!

Yet I’ve got to say it: A tripod does have a place in smartphone landscape photography. When the light is low and your shutter speed gets longer, being able to keep the camera still is the difference between a fuzzy shot and a tack-sharp shot. Add the ability to take really long exposures (yes, many smartphone cameras can now do this), and a tripod can sometimes make a lot of sense.

There is one good thing, however: you don’t need a big tripod for your tiny cellphone. Pocketable tripods can do the trick; couple one with a Bluetooth remote trigger, and you can do multi-second exposures with your smartphone. Joby, the company that invented the GorillaPod, is a good place to look.

By the way, if you’re going to be using your standard tripod with your smartphone, a smartphone adapter is a good addition to your bag.

7. You’re not done until you’ve edited

Some photographers believe you should get your image right in-camera so you don’t have to edit. They don’t like to edit their images, ever.

I disagree.

Whether taken with a regular camera or a smartphone, almost any shot can be made better with some editing. You will often want to crop, adjust exposure, and perhaps go even further. Fortunately, there are excellent editing apps for smartphones, and they’re often free.

My absolute favorite is Snapseed. It’s available for both Android and iPhone and is completely free. It’s very easy to learn, has a nice array of tools, and it is rare that any smartphone image I consider a keeper does not get the Snapseed treatment.

There are many other great smartphone editing apps, though. Adobe Lightroom has a mobile version that is very good. Some may argue that the whole idea of smartphone photography is “quick and easy photography” and therefore balk at editing. I get it, but I still think that almost any image can be improved with some fine-tuning.

8. Got a backup? Make one!

With standard cameras, we typically have image files stored on a card in the camera. Remove that card, copy the files to the computer, and make a backup – that’s the standard workflow.

Shooting with a smartphone, however, the images are stored in internal memory and sometimes on a micro SD card in the phone. You can connect your phone to your computer or plug in the micro SD card, but who does that? Most people just let the images stay on their phone. Which is fine, until your phone crashes, the storage is corrupted, or you break or lose your phone.

Now, what if your images were backed up to the cloud – as soon as you shot them? Not only would you have a backup, you’d have the images in a place where they could be easily shared to social media, emailed, whatever you prefer. There are many apps that will do this, but as an Android user, I look no further than Google Photos. iPhone users can also use Google Photos, but might instead opt for iCloud.

Whatever option you choose, the idea is to have an app that immediately and automatically syncs your smartphone images to the cloud for safe backup.

9. Use GPS data to track your photo locations

Almost all smartphones will embed the GPS coordinates of a photo in the EXIF data. Bring up a photo, and in many apps, you will be able to see exactly when and where that photo was made. Some apps will also present pins on a map showing where a collection of photos was shot. If you decide you want to go back to that spot, it’s easy to find it again.

There is a downside to photos being tagged with GPS data. If you post a GPS-tagged image on social media, viewers can determine exactly where the photo was taken. This has caused an ethical dilemma for landscape photographers. Places that used to be known only to a few are now known widely. Photographers seeing a great photo online often think, “I want to go to that spot, too!” The problem is that beautiful places are being overrun, trampled down, littered, and even vandalized by unscrupulous people. Some places are now closed off because they were “loved to death” by the crowds who discovered them online.

So as an ethical landscape photographer, you may wish to consider stripping off the GPS data from your images before posting. It may not be necessary for the most well-known spots, as people already know where those are. But if you find a really great waterfall way up a mountain trail, consider keeping it a secret. Not only will you have an exclusive shot, but you’ll prevent hordes of people from descending upon it.

10. Previsualize with your smartphone camera

When out on a landscape photo outing, I almost always have my smartphone in my pocket and my main camera and equipment in a backpack. Often, I will use the smartphone as a tool to previsualize and help compose a shot. I’ll make some photos, consider my vantage point, and then determine if I even want to set up my tripod and bring out my other gear. This has several advantages.

If the shot doesn’t have merit, I will move on, not even going to the trouble of bringing out my DSLR. On the other hand, if it is a good shot, I will have captured GPS data, plus I’ll have a smartphone image that will be uploaded to the cloud.

And here’s the kicker: Occasionally, my smartphone shot will be better than what I later shoot with my DSLR. There have been times when, with changing light, the first capture is best. Sometimes the smartphone camera will process the image as a JPEG and achieve better results than I get when editing the RAW file from my main camera. There have also been times when I didn’t bother to shoot a DSLR photo – the smartphone shot was all I took – and was later happy I did because it turned out great.

11. Try shooting in RAW

The article title promised 10 tips, but I’m going to throw in this 11th item, just for free! Really, it’s not so much a tip as something for you to explore.

Many newer smartphone cameras can now shoot in RAW format. My current LG V30 does this, and I have successfully brought its DNGs into Lightroom for editing.

That said, I often find that the additional work this requires (plus the huge file sizes and the drawback of not having an easily uploadable JPEG) makes RAW smartphone shooting too much of a hassle. AIso, I’m usually hard-pressed to edit a RAW file into a better image than a JPEG.

If your smartphone can shoot in RAW, give it a test and see what you think. I typically advocate shooting in RAW, but if the end result isn’t any better, why do it?

Smartphone landscape photography tips: conclusion

I’d never tell you to sell your dedicated camera and shoot only with a smartphone. As a dedicated photography tool, your DSLR or mirrorless camera should generally be capable of making superior images, especially if you’ll be printing large. But smartphone cameras get better with every generation, and it’s become impossible to dismiss them as not “real cameras.” As has been the case since the early days of film, it is the photographer, not the camera, that makes a great photograph.

Of course, practice makes perfect. If using the camera you have with you causes you to take more photos and get the shot you otherwise would have missed, then by all means, start doing more smartphone landscape photography!

Smartphone landscape photography FAQs

The post 10 Tips for Beautiful Smartphone Landscape Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Rick Ohnsman.

A phone with a camera is great for photography. But it can be tough to break away from a “snapshot” mindset and start taking images that are truly creative.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some tips to help you capture creative phone photography. Specifically, I’ll share:

• Key settings to make the most of your phone’s camera
• Several tips to get you creating unique, artistic compositions
• A simple secret for surreal-looking phone photos
• Much more!

So if you’re ready to shoot some creative images, then let’s get started.

1. Shoot in RAW

Familiarizing yourself with the ins and outs of your phone camera is an important way to expand your creative options. Modern camera phones have a surprising range of capabilities that you can use for better photos.

For example, it’s a good idea to shoot in a RAW file format (an option now offered by many native camera apps). While JPEGs are the default format on many phones, they experience a loss in image quality thanks to compression – whereas RAW files are uncompressed and therefore tend to look better.

RAW files also offer greater post-processing versatility. You can adjust colors and tones and recover lost details in a natural, realistic way.

So if you’re after high-quality photos – which allow for extensive enhancement during post-production – then try switching to RAW. (Even if your mobile phone doesn’t offer RAW in its native camera app, you should still be able to find a third-party app that produces high-quality RAW files.)

2. Make the most of Manual mode

As with a conventional camera, Manual mode allows you to take control of your phone’s camera’s settings when capturing a photo. In Manual mode, you can adjust shutter speed, ISO, and white balance – and this additional control allows for greater creative input.

To activate Manual mode (also known as Pro mode) on some devices, open your Camera app and look at the camera mode tray. You should see settings like Timelapse and Panorama, and if you’re lucky, you’ll also have a Pro option.

Simply tap the Pro mode icon, and you’ll be good to go; you’ll gain access to numerous options for adjusting your phone camera’s functionality.

If your phone doesn’t offer a Pro mode, don’t worry. Simply download a third-party app such as ProCamera, Camera+ 2, or Obscura 2. All of these apps feature a Manual mode of sorts, and you can use it to harness your phone camera’s creative potential.

3. Don’t forget about composition!

Over time, plenty of guidelines have been developed to help photographers compose effective images. While none of these guides are inflexible laws, if you’re familiar with some basic compositional concepts, your photos will come a long way.

Of course, compositional knowledge translates to creative phone photography, too! For example, by activating your phone camera’s grid function, you’ll get a useful visual overlay, perfect for positioning key points of interest.

Learn about the rule of thirds, leading lines, the rule of space, triangular composition, and more; each of these will be helpful tools that’ll aid in your creative phone photography.

4. Make use of editing apps

I’ve already mentioned how third-party camera apps can give you increased control over your phone camera. But did you know that editing apps offer a whole other world of creativity?

For instance, Snapseed (Android and iOS) is a (free!) Google-owned application with plenty of tools for tweaking images and applying filters. VSCO (Android and iOS) offers some editing functions for free, including artistic, film-like filters. Adobe Lightroom (Android and iOS) supplies image editing tools similar to its desktop counterpart for free, and it can also be upgraded to a paid premium version for additional functionality.

(Unlike VSCO and Snapseed, only the paid version of Lightroom will edit RAW files.)

There are plenty of fun, creative apps available for both iOS and Android devices. Need a retro aesthetic? Afterlight (above, left) provides users with an advanced toolkit to add light leak effects to an image. Want to combine two images into a single photograph? Snapseed (above, right) allows you to quickly and easily merge image layers to create a double-exposure effect.

There are a multitude of apps that suit a huge variety of purposes and capabilities. The fun part is trying them all out!

5. Try different perspectives

One of the great things about creative phone photography is the mobility of a small photographic device. A camera phone isn’t just an accessory; it’s a pocket-sized machine capable of capturing stunning photos.

So take advantage of the size and portability of a phone camera by physically experimenting to create intriguing perspectives. Place your phone close to the ground, try a high angle, or shoot from off to the side. Just make sure to get a non-conventional perspective, and you’re bound to end up with interesting results.

6. Go abstract

Also known as experimental, non-objective, or conceptual photography, abstract photography avoids depicting immediately identifiable subject matter.

In fact, creative phone photography and abstraction are a good mix. The accessibility of the phone camera allows you to snap abstract images anywhere, anytime. For instance, when you’re out in a city, you might capture abstract images of puddles on the ground, posters torn off a wall, or reflections in a glass building.

And thanks to readily available editing apps, unique abstract perspectives can be rapidly captured, edited, and shared – or even saved as inspiration for a later shoot with a dedicated camera.

7. Photograph details

If you have your phone in your pocket all the time – and let’s face it, most of us do! – you’ll be ready to capture even the smallest occurrences at a moment’s notice.

Even when it’s tough to find inspiration, focusing on the details that shape an everyday environment can make for beautiful photos. Try activating your phone’s close-up or macro function, then get close to a subject. You can even purchase little lenses that attach to your phone for close-up photography. A small tripod or a sturdy surface can help keep the camera phone steady.

8. Experiment!

It may sound obvious, but doing great phone photography can take a little experimentation. Many people assume (due to the advanced and accessible nature of phone camera technology) that every shot will be successful.

But in reality, practice and experimentation are the keys to effective creative phone camera photography. Familiarize yourself with your phone camera’s capabilities and make time to shoot. The more you experiment, the better your images will turn out.

Creative phone photography tips: conclusion

Phone photography is a great way to create stunning photos, especially if you want to be artistic without investing in a heavy camera.

Plus, with such a huge variety of apps available, doing creative phone photography has become a much more streamlined process.

There is an old saying: “The best camera is the one you have with you.” And while this might not always be the case, if you take advantage of your phone camera, you can create some truly outstanding images!

Now over to you:

Have you done a lot of phone photography? How do you like it? Which of these tips do you plan to use first? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post Creative Phone Photography: 8 Tips for Artistic Mobile Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Megan Kennedy.

I will be honest: I didn’t want to love taking photos with my phone. But then I fell in love with having a small, portable camera at hand at all times, and I was both shocked and exhilarated by what my photography could become with an extra piece of kit in my pocket.

And you can fall in love with phone photography, too! That’s why, in this article, I’m going to share 12 phone photography ideas – so you can have plenty of fun with your phone camera and start capturing some amazing mobile photos.

(I’ll also share plenty of practical tips along the way!)

Let’s get started.

1. Photograph the light

“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.”

George Eastman

If you ask me what I like to shoot, I will answer: light. Light is the number one subject in all of my photos. 

I don’t really care what I am shooting; my eternal search and my greatest passion is light. That is why I am not a genre-specific photographer – I always think of light as my subject.

I love light in all of its formations – the subdued winter light when the cloud cover is thick, which creates a feeling of melancholy. Dappled spring light making shapes on a brick wall, which feels fresh and joyful and fun. The hard light of a summer’s afternoon, creating cutting shadows and making the world look flat.

If I were to offer one piece of advice for phone photography, it would be to get to know light. You may think you already know light, but most people don’t notice the endless variations of light all around them. 

Become familiar with how light behaves and what it’s doing to your subject, and your photography will automatically take big leaps forward. 

Tip: To make sure your photos aren’t under- or over-exposed (i.e., too dark or too bright), you can manually adjust the exposure (brightness). Most good phone cameras allow you to do this. It’s usually as simple as tapping on the phone where you’d like to focus; an exposure slider will appear, and you can make the image lighter or darker from there.

2. Look for interesting textures 

Textures make up the world. They are everywhere, and they can be infinitely fascinating.

Exploring textures can help us find beauty in even the most mundane of subjects. I like to look for textures at my feet, on walls, and around buildings. I look for natural textures, too, such as slick shiny stones or porous old wood. 

Textures are all around, so explore them with your phone camera! 

For me, the key to getting the best shots is to use the natural qualities of our phones to improve the composition. Specifically, phones are amazingly mobile; I am always bending down and shooting reflections in puddles, or delving into corners or crevasses, finding little tufts of grass or cool patterns.

So use the mobility of your phone camera to help you change perspective. Seek new and interesting angles that reveal cool textures!

Tip: Make sure your subject is in focus. (It’s something people often forget with phone photography.) To set the focus, simply tap the part of the scene you want to stay sharp, and your phone will do the rest of the work!

3. Use the rule of thirds

The rule of thirds is one of my favorite compositional rules. It lets you compose interesting shots, and it’s a helpful way to determine where to place key elements in a scene.

So here’s how it works:

Divide the frame into thirds both horizontally and vertically. You’ll end up with a grid of nine equal parts, like this:

Then place your subjects and supporting elements along the different lines and intersection points. This will prevent your photos from becoming too boring – including a subject sitting in the left or right third of the image, with another element in the opposite space, can be a lot more interesting than a centered subject. 

Tip: All phones have a built-in camera grid (i.e., a rule of thirds overlay!). This can be super useful when you’re composing with the rule of thirds. So go to the camera settings, find the grid option, turn it on, and compose away!

4. Don’t be afraid to photograph landscapes

In general, landscape photography is considered very technically demanding, and landscape photographers tend to own some of the biggest, priciest gear available. Yet I was astonished by the quality of the landscape photos I captured in Vietnam with my phone. Of course, it helps to have an astonishing landscape in front of you, but it also has to do with phone cameras and their now-impressive capabilities.

So give it a try and experiment with landscape photography. 

I recommend shooting landscapes during the early morning or late afternoon/evening golden hours. I’d also recommend heading out during interesting weather – clouds generally add an interesting texture to the sky, for instance.

Try composing your scene with layers – specifically, it helps to find foreground, midground, and background points of interest to create depth. That’s what I did for the photo below:

Tip: I have a tiny tripod that my kids bought for making stop-motion films. It’s super useful for low-light landscapes (you can combine it with your phone’s self-timer to prevent camera shake). 

5. Shoot panoramas

Capturing a panorama on your phone is so easy – you simply activate the Pano setting, and your phone does all the work for you. It will either ask you to move the camera across the scene or to take several photos which it then stitches together. Super cool!

I love panoramas because it’s hard to capture the full scale and wonder of a landscape without seeing the vastness of the location. Panos are particularly useful for city shooting, where it’s often tough to capture the expanse of a view in a single frame. 

Tip: It may sound obvious, but for the best image quality, clean your lens. Phones sit in pockets and bags attracting all kinds of dust and dirt, and this makes the lens get dirty, fast. Blow the lens to remove any grit, then wipe with a soft cloth.

6. Take selfies

I used to really dislike selfies. But then I realized they’re a great way to record myself in the places I travel to. I don’t know about you, but I am always the photographer in my family or friend group – which means I almost never have my photo taken! 

I also think shooting ourselves puts us more in touch with the experience of shooting portraits and helps us empathize with our subjects. Most people don’t mind having their photos taken, but there are people who are reluctant. So experiencing life on the other side of the camera is immensely useful when trying to put portrait subjects at ease. 

Tip: Try shooting yourself in reflections. It adds to the playful feeling of a selfie!

7. Look for color

Color is joy. One does not think of joy. One is carried by it.

Ernst Haas

For me, color is a key language in photography. Color is powerful; it can communicate feelings and atmosphere. It can even tell stories. I love to encourage people to play with color and discover the emotions and meanings different colors bring to their images. 

It’s definitely worth investigating what the colors in your photos mean to you!

Tip: If you want to get more control over color and go a little deeper with your editing, use the Snapseed app (for Android or iOS); it’s very powerful, and it’s also free!

8. Drop your expectations about what you want to see

One of the greatest enemies of finding interesting photos is your expectations.

This is especially true when you arrive in a famous location. You might expect to capture certain iconic places. You may even have a few specific shots lined up in your head.

Here’s the problem:

When you have expectations, you are essentially focusing your attention on the obvious. You’re limiting your awareness so that you may fail to see what is truly in the location around you.

If you expect to see certain things, your brain focuses on those things and blocks out other visual information. For example, if you’re going to Paris, you may fixate on obtaining a good Eiffel Tower shot. So you fixate on the Eiffel Tower – yet you don’t see all of the interesting subjects surrounding it, which may offer a better shot, better angle, or better elements.

This problem sounds simple, but I see it time and time again on my workshops: people tunnel-visioned by their expectations. Drop the expectations, focus on finding original shots, and you will see so much more. 

9. Take your time, wander, and get lost

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Pablo Picasso

Without a big camera around your neck, when you go out wandering, you could be anyone doing anything. You can blend into the background and nobody will see you as a photographer. It’s a freeing experience, and it lets you capture more honest, authentic moments.

To me, using a camera phone is all about roaming, getting lost, and figuring out how to photograph the place at which you end up. So take your phone, wander, and have fun. Then try to absorb the atmosphere and life of each place you choose to shoot. 

Tip: Investigate your phone camera’s hardware and software. Many phones have added lenses and offer more control with every iteration. So check out your phone manual or look up the specs online. 

10. Photograph the moments of life

Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.

Marc Riboud

Did you know that you can use photography to create something extraordinary from your life at any moment? Focusing parts of our life on creating and not just consuming or doing brings so many benefits.

This is where using a phone camera to keep a diary of the interesting moments of your life really comes into play. Personally, I want to savor my life. I want to weave being creative into my everyday activity!

So look around you. Appreciate what’s going on. And photograph moments of interest.

Now, when you always have a camera at hand, it can be tempting to just snap away and record everything you do. I don’t encourage that. Instead, live the moment, be in the moment, and – at times – use your camera to be intentionally creative.

Tip: When I am shooting fast-moving subjects – like my kids! – my phone’s burst mode offers a great way to get the subject in motion. Depending on your phone, you may be able to hold down the shutter button and capture a burst (and if that doesn’t work, check your manual for instructions specific to your phone).

11. Look for emotion

Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.

Don McCullin

Admit it: Most photos you see on social media or on your camera roll are boring. But why?

One very common reason is that they lack any type of feeling; they have no emotional impact. The photos are flat and uninteresting because the photographer was so busy focusing on the technical aspects of shooting, or on the subject and composition, that they forgot to include that magical element of emotion. 

Humans are emotional beings, and we communicate through our emotions (just think about how adverts play on our emotions and manipulate us into wanting to buy stuff!).

It boils down to this: If you stand in front of your subject and don’t feel anything, it’s unlikely your future viewers will feel anything, either.

So look for subjects, places, people, things that make you feel something. It’s an easy way to figure out what to shoot. And you can feel any emotion: sadness, joy, awe, excitement, or delight. 

Tip: Most up-to-date phones now come with a Night mode, and it helps the camera compensate for limited light. With Night mode on, you can do handheld shooting even at night. On most phones, you need to manually activate Night mode (but iPhones will do it automatically when they sense the low-light conditions). 

12. Train your eye with mini-seeing projects

To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

Elliott Erwitt

There are billions of pieces of visual information around us at all times. But our brains block most of it out – otherwise, instead of getting to the task at hand, we’d be constantly looking around and feeling overwhelmed by all that we see.

While blocking out all this visual noise is helpful for getting things done, it’s not helpful when we are trying to discover interesting shots. We want to see more of what’s around us. We want to open up our awareness.

I recommend using mini-seeing projects to help you do this. Specifically, pick a subject – and take a picture every time you encounter it. Yellow cars, discarded gloves, people with red hair, snail trails; the world is full of items worth noticing!

You’ll soon start to see how much you miss because you are basically just distracted with your life. 

I always have something like this going on. I’m currently collecting photos of torn posters, interesting cloud formations, and things crushed in the street. It’s a really fun way to develop your seeing skills. 

And of course, phones are a great way to do these mini seeing projects, because you can carry one with you at all times!

12 phone photography ideas: final words

So that’s it for my phone photography ideas! Hopefully, you’ll feel more excited and liberated as you go out and shoot with your phone.

Now over to you:

Do you have any additional phone photography ideas? Do you have any mobile photos you’re proud of? Share your thoughts (and images!) in the comments below.

The post 12 Phone Photography Ideas for Fun Photo Outings appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Anthony Epes.

There is an amazing array of iPhone camera settings you can tweak, customize, and configure to get just the right shots. Some of these settings are obvious, but others are buried beneath layers of buttons and menus and are easy to miss.

And while anyone can take great shots on an iPhone just by launching the camera and pressing the shutter button, learning a few of the custom options can truly take your iPhone photography to the next level.

Also, most of these iPhone tips and tricks are available no matter your iPhone model – so even if your iPhone is a few years old, you can still access some very helpful settings.

Are you ready to discover 13 highly useful iPhone settings?

Let’s dive right in.

1. Show and hide camera options

Nestled near the top of the iPhone camera is a thin strip (with the Flash icon on the left and the Live Photos icon on the right, as displayed below). Situated directly between these two icons is a small arrow pointing up, like the ^ caret above the number six on a keyboard:

Tap the caret at the top to show and hide a row of options near the bottom of the camera interface. As you can see in the screenshot above, this uncovers a handful of useful options, including filters and real-time cropping.

Another way to access these settings? Press your finger directly on the middle of your iPhone screen with the camera open, then swipe up or down. This yields the same result as tapping on the ^ icon, but some people find the press-and-swipe method to be a little more convenient. Either way, the hidden row of options puts some powerful tools right at your fingertips and can help you instantly take better photos.

One caveat: When you reveal this row of settings icons, your normal photo modes, such as Pano, Portrait, and Video, disappear. You can still access them by pressing on the middle of your phone and dragging your finger to the right or left, but it’s easy to get lost without seeing the name of the mode you are currently using.

I recommend you first set the photo mode (i.e. Portrait, Photo, etc.), and only then reveal the row of camera options icons.

2. Use the volume buttons as your camera shutter

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, he proudly declared that it would not have a keyboard (much to the chagrin of smartphone users around the world!). Replacing the physical keys was a revolutionary touchscreen that could transform into whatever the developer wanted.

While the touchscreen was a brilliant move, it meant some common actions like snapping a picture became a little more tricky. It’s not always easy to hold your phone just right and press the shutter button at the same time.

Fortunately, there’s an easy fix for this common frustration:

Press the volume-up button to snap a picture.

This feature is enabled by default, but many users aren’t aware that it exists. Once you learn to use it, you won’t ever want to go back to awkwardly tapping the touchscreen to take pictures.

(Also, quick tip: When you press and hold the volume-up button, your phone will begin recording a movie. Release the button to stop recording.)

3. Shoot in burst mode

An iPhone might not seem like the ideal device for action photography. After all, it can’t compare to a high-end DSLR or mirrorless camera that can fire off a burst of photos in rapid succession.

Or can it?

In fact, iPhones offer a burst mode – and with it, you can get action shots you never thought possible. You can shoot dozens of rapid-fire photos, then choose the best one from the batch.

Here’s how it works:

With the Camera app open, press and hold the shutter button, then quickly slide your finger all the way to the left. Burst mode will activate, you’ll start taking a series of images, and you’ll see a counter with the number of captured shots.

Use this during moments of fast action. You’ll always end up with those split-second, perfectly timed shots – without spending thousands of dollars on high-end camera equipment.

4. Press and hold the volume button for a photo burst

Burst mode is great, but what if you prefer using the camera volume buttons to snap pictures? If you press and hold the volume button, your phone starts recording a movie, not a burst – but did you know that you can force the volume buttons to shoot in burst mode when held down?

First, navigate to the Settings app. Then scroll down to Camera.

Next, look for the option that says Use Volume Up for Burst, and tap to enable it.

That’s it! Now, if you hold the volume-up button, your iPhone will fire off a burst – and if you hold the volume-down button, you’ll record a movie. It’s the best of both worlds, and a setting I highly recommend. You never know whether you’ll need a burst or a movie, so it helps to have both options at your fingertips!

5. Use the built-in self-timer

Sometimes, you don’t want to take a photo the instant you press the shutter button. DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have a built-in self-timer; it lets you set a delay from the time you press the shutter to the time the camera actually takes a picture.

At first glance, this feature may seem missing from iPhones. But with a quick tap or swipe, you can activate the self-timer and start taking control of your photos.

Here’s what you do:

First, show the row of extra camera options by tapping the caret at the top of the screen (as described in Point 1 of this article).

Then press the Timer icon. Select either Off, 3s, or 10s:

Now, when you press the shutter button, you’ll get a delay before your iPhone snaps the photo.

It helps to have a tripod to hold your phone steady, but the timer works fine for selfie shots, too. That way, you can snap a picture without trying to position the phone and fire your iPhone shutter at the same time.

6. Real-time aspect-ratio cropping

As experienced users know, it’s easy to crop a photo on an iPhone. Just tap on the image, hit Edit, and then press the Crop button.

But while this process works well for cropping your photos after you take them, what if you want to start with a cropped display and frame your image accordingly?

Some high-end cameras allow you to select custom crops when you take photos, and the iPhone has this ability, too.

First, tap the caret at the top of the screen to reveal the hidden camera options. Then, tap the 4:3 button (which represents the 4:3 ratio in which iPhone photos are shot):

Now you can choose whether to shoot in a 4:3, Square (1:1), or 16:9 aspect ratio – and you won’t have to go through the painstaking process of cropping your photos individually afterward.

7. Portrait Lighting

In 2016, the iPhone 7 Plus was released with the first iteration of Portrait mode.

Portrait mode essentially mimics the blurry background effect you can get with a DSLR or mirrorless camera, but with Apple software algorithms. And the blur mimicry has gotten much better since those early incarnations, and now incorporates a feature called Portrait Lighting. This gives your Portrait mode images the appearance of being captured in various lighting conditions, and the result is so good it’s downright uncanny.

To access Portrait Lighting, first put your phone in Portrait mode (find it in the mode options just above the shutter button).

You should see a series of circles above the Portrait label; these are your different Portrait Lighting effects:

The default lighting mode for portraits is “Natural Light” but this can be changed to “Studio Light,” “Stage Light,” “Contour Light,” and more. You actually see the effect in real time, so you know how the finished result will look, and you can change lighting modes as much as you want before you take a picture.

Portrait Lighting is a great way to punch up your portraits, and you can even go back and change the Portrait Lighting effect afterward when editing a Portrait mode image in the photo library.

8. Use filters as you shoot

Instagram and other social networks popularized the idea of filters, and now it’s almost strange to see photos without some kind of filter applied. The most common way of using filters is to snap a photo and then apply the filter afterward – but your iPhone camera has an option to use filters as you shoot.

With this, you can see what your edited pictures will look like before you even take them.

To use real-time filters, access the camera options by tapping the caret at the top of the screen. Then tap the icon with three intersecting circles.

The filter options will appear, and you’ll be able to choose from a variety of looks, including Vivid Warm, Dramatic Cool, Silvertone, and more. I find this method much more practical than applying filters after I take a photo, plus seeing your filters applied in real time can have a dramatic effect on your images!

9. Choose your preferred photo format (HEIF vs JPEG)

Until recently, the iPhone shot pictures in JPEG format. But while JPEGs are a good compromise between quality and file size, they’re ill-suited for today’s users, who want features like HDR imaging while still keeping file sizes small.

HEIF is a new file type designed to solve this problem, and it’s now the default format for iPhone photos.

Unfortunately, not everyone has a device that can load HEIF images, which makes sharing iPhone photos somewhat problematic – unless you know a handy iPhone settings solution.

Go to Settings, then Photos, and scroll all the way to the bottom to Transfer to Mac or PC. The Automatic setting will convert HEIF pictures to JPEG when sending them to a device that can’t read HEIF images. (Keep Originals will always send images as HEIFs).

You can also change the image format from HEIF to JPEG or JPEG to HEIF. Go to Settings, then Camera, and select Formats:

If you tap High Efficiency, your iPhone will shoot HEIFs – whereas selecting Most Compatible forces your camera to use JPEGs.

Generally, I recommend shooting photos in HEIF and leaving Transfer to Mac or PC on Automatic. But it’s always useful to know how to change these settings to your liking!

10. Optimize iPhone storage

If you take a lot of pictures on your iPhone, you might quickly find yourself running out of storage space. And while you can’t add more storage to your iPhone, there is a trick that lets you take tons of photos without worrying too much about using up space on your phone: storage optimization.

Go to Settings, then tap Photos. Look for the Optimize iPhone Storage option:

This will automatically upload the photos to your iCloud account while keeping tiny, low-resolution thumbnails on your iPhone. Then, when you load a photo, the original is automatically downloaded from iCloud.

A caveat is that you need enough space on your iCloud account to accommodate your photos. Unlike your iPhone, you can add more iCloud storage, but you will have to pay. Prices range from one to ten dollars a month, and the one-dollar plan is plenty for most people.

So if you find yourself constantly running low on iPhone storage because of all your photos, don’t delete them! Just use the Optimize iPhone Storage option and let iCloud take care of the rest.

11. Show/hide the camera grid

Many DSLR and mirrorless cameras have grid overlays that help you compose your shots. They’re a great way to make sure your horizons are level, and you can use them to guide your rule-of-thirds compositions.

But did you know that your iPhone also has a grid?

All you have to do is select Settings, then Camera, and enable the Grid option.

Now, when you take a photo, you will see a 3-by-3 grid, like this:

12. Adjust the blur strength in Portrait mode

The iPhone camera has a fixed-aperture lens.

What does this mean? Well, unlike a DSLR or mirrorless camera, you can’t decide whether to shoot wide open or stopped down – and so you don’t have control over the background blur.

Except that, when shooting in Portrait mode, your iPhone does let you customize the level of blur. This effectively mimics aperture adjustments (through software trickery).

First, select Portrait mode from the mode options. Then tap the f icon in the top-right corner.

A slider should appear at the bottom of the camera screen; it approximates various f-stops of a camera lens:

Slide all the way to the left for f/1.4 and all the way to the right for f/16. You will see the blur change in real time as you adjust the slider. I often find that the default value selected by my iPhone (usually between f/2.8 and f/4.5) is great, but it’s nice to be able to customize.

13. Preserve Settings

This final trick isn’t going to do anything for your photos, but it could save your sanity! If you find yourself frequently using a specific filter, adjustment, or Live Photos setting, you can tell your iPhone to preserve those settings – instead of forcing you to enable them one by one every time you take a picture.

Enabling the Preserve Settings option is simple:

Tap Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings:

Here, you can specify the settings you want your iPhone to remember. Then, every time you open the Camera app, all your custom settings will remain just as you left them.

iPhone camera settings: final words

Well, I hope you found these tips helpful! Note that these are just some of the iPhone camera settings you can change to help customize your photography experience. There are dozens of other options to change and tweak, and with just a bit of practice, you will soon find yourself adjusting plenty of settings to suit your needs.

Also, don’t be afraid to poke around in the Camera app and Camera Settings menu. You just might find some new options you didn’t know existed!

iPhone camera settings FAQs

The post 13 iPhone Camera Settings to Improve Your Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

If you’re eager to dive into smartphone photography and you’re looking for the best camera phone on the market, you’ve come to the right place.

It can be difficult to decide which phone to buy when there are so many good options. In my opinion, it’s a matter of deciding which features you want to prioritize and ensuring a good balance with the rest of the specs.

For example, if you do a lot of selfies, then you’d want a phone with an excellent front camera. If you like night photography, then you should search for a phone that performs best in low-light conditions. Obviously, you’ll also need to take your budget into account.

On this list, I’ve included the best camera phones for different needs – from the best point-and-shoot camera phones to the best phones for post-processing, from the phone with the best performance overall to the best budget smartphone.

Let’s get started.

1. Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra

When you buy a camera, you’ll want to be able to change lenses – and that’s the idea behind adding more cameras to a phone: it gives you a wider variety of focal lengths.

The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra has an impressive four-camera setup on the back: A wide 26mm camera with 108 MP and an f/1.8 aperture; an ultra-wide 12 MP camera with a 13mm lens and an f/2.2 aperture; a 10 MP telephoto camera with an f/2.4 aperture and 3x optical zoom; and a 10 MP telephoto camera with an f/4.9 aperture and 10x optical zoom. (The front camera is 40 MP, with a 26mm field of view and an f/2.2 aperture.)

All in all, the S21 has a fantastic camera system. As for the display, it has a high-resolution 6.8-inch (17.3 cm) screen. It supports the use of any S Pen, including future releases and options from third-party manufacturers.

While the S21 doesn’t have a microSD slot, it does come with several different storage capacity options: 128 GB and 256 GB.

2. Huawei P40 Pro

Some people are hesitant to buy Huawei phones because they don’t have Google Play services, but photographically speaking, the Huawei P40 Pro is one of the best camera phones on the market.

With the P40 Pro, the slogan “Visionary Photography” is more than a catchphrase; the phone is equipped with a Leica quad-camera, including an ultra-vision sensor that offers beautiful results in daylight and at night.

The P40 Pro features a 12 MP telephoto camera with 50x digital zoom and 5x optical zoom; a 40 MP, ultra-wide Cine Camera; a 12 MP telephoto camera with an f/3.4 aperture; and a 3D depth-sensing camera.

On the front, you’ll find a 32 MP camera with an aperture of f/2.2, plus a depth camera. As for the software perks, the P40 Pro incorporates an AI function that removes unwanted passersby from your picture.

The P40 Pro display is rounded and supports AI gesture control. You can share the screen with your laptop and download content just by touching both devices. And even with the beautiful display, it has excellent battery life.

So if you’re interested in leveling up your smartphone photography, the Huawei P40 Pro is a great pick.

3. iPhone 12 Pro Max

Apple has made a point of staying on top of smartphone photography, and the iPhone 12 Pro Max, with its amazing camera system and quality display, is further proof. It features a 6.7-inch (17 cm) edge-to-edge Super Retina XDR display protected by a ceramic shield.

The iPhone 12 Pro Max has three rear cameras, each offering 12 MP: an ultra-wide 13mm camera, a wide 26mm camera, and a 52mm telephoto camera. The front camera is 12 MP and packs TrueDepth technology (which captures 3D information and is useful for face ID).

The 12 Pro Max supports Apple ProRAW format, and it’s powered by a super-fast A14 Bionic chip. It also offers impressive battery life (so you don’t have to worry about your phone dying in the middle of a photoshoot!), and it’s water resistant up to 6 m (19.7 ft) for 30 minutes.

The iPhone 12 Pro is another excellent camera phone if you’re looking for something a little less pricey – and smaller – than the iPhone 12 Pro Max. The biggest downgrade is the camera sensor size (though the resolution remains the same).

4. Oppo Find X3 Pro

The Oppo Find X3 Pro has a 50 MP ultra-wide camera with an aperture of f/2.2. And thanks to a large sensor, you get brighter pictures with better color depth, ideal for photographs in low light. A second camera packs 50 MP and an aperture of f/1.8.

The X3 Pro also has a microlens with a 60x magnification and an aperture of f/3, as well as a 13 MP telephoto camera with 5x hybrid optical zoom and 20x digital zoom. The smartphone features one of the best night modes in photography and video.

The Oppo Find X3 Pro includes a 6.7 in (17 cm) display that covers the full color gamut and offers 10-bit color depth. Its AI Scene Enhancement reads the scene and automatically shifts tones to fit.

5. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra

The potent Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is not only great for photography, but also for photo editing. With a 6.9 in (17.5 cm) edge display and an S Pen, you can do precise photo and video editing on the go. And for detail work, you can connect your desktop or TV as a second monitor.

The Note 20 Ultra packs a 12 MP ultra-wide camera, a 108 MP wide-angle camera, and a 12 MP telephoto camera. The latter features a 5x optical zoom and a 50x digital zoom. Plus, it has a laser AF sensor to improve focusing precision and speed.

You get multiple shooting modes such as Food, Night, Hyperlapse, and some extra features like Motion Photos and AR Doodle. In the Single Take mode, you can capture a scene from different angles, formats, and styles with one touch of the shutter.

You can record 8K video and extract any frame as a 33 MP image. The front 10 MP camera has a 26mm lens and an f/2.2 aperture.

If you’re looking for a more budget-friendly option, there’s also the Galaxy Note 20. It’s slightly smaller (6.7 in/17 cm display) and the camera array is different, but the smartphone is still top-notch.

6. Sony Xperia 1 II

The Sony Xperia 1 II is an excellent smartphone for both photography and videography. For one, it uses the same technology as the Sony Alpha cameras to capture up to 20 frames per second; it also supports Real-Time Eye AF for people and animals.

Battery life is highly improved from its predecessor, so you can enjoy the 4K display without concerns. The screen has a 21:9 ratio, a feature that appeals to those who frequently stream video.

The Xperia 1 II includes three rear 12 MP cameras with different Zeiss lenses: a 24mm wide-angle lens, an ultra-wide 16mm lens, and a 70mm telephoto lens. (The front camera packs 8 MP.)

The smartphone comes with 256 MB of storage and a microSD slot for storage expansion. If you’re a creator who toggles between photography and video, the Sony Xperia 1 II is the best camera phone available.

7. Google Pixel 5

In a world where phones keep getting bigger and heavier, the Google Pixel 5 is a refreshing change of pace.

Its design might seem basic compared to its competitors, but it’s lighter and more comfortable to use while still delivering high-quality pictures. Sure, the 6 in (15.2 cm) display might be on the small side, but it comes with great battery life, plus a 90 Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ with three color profiles to choose from.

You get two cameras: a 12.2 MP wide-angle camera with an f/1.7 aperture and a 16 MP ultra-wide camera with an f/2.2 aperture. Unfortunately, the native camera app doesn’t offer Manual mode, but you can adjust the highlights and shadows using sliders. And the Pixel 5 supports HDR but is a little slow when processing it.

The front camera offers 8 MP and an f/2 aperture. In Portrait mode, you can capture subjects with beautifully blurred backgrounds (and you can also add this effect at a later time!).

8. OnePlus 8 Pro

Looking for a smartphone camera that’s both powerful and versatile? The OnePlus 8 Pro is a stellar option.

Battery life is extremely good – it can last for over a day with heavy use (and over two days with light use). Impressively, this doesn’t come at the expense of the display; it’s bright enough to be used in direct sunlight and features accurate colors. Also, the recharging time is quite fast.

The main camera has a 48 MP sensor with great dynamic range and an f/1.8 aperture. You also get an 8 MP telephoto camera, plus a 48 MP ultra-wide camera with excellent macro capabilities.

The front camera is 16 MP, and while the later-released OnePlus 8T may have more cameras, the overall performance of the OnePlus 8 Pro is better.

9. Google Pixel 4A

If you’re not ready to invest in the pricier options from this list, don’t worry – there are some good choices that are also budget-friendly, such as the Google Pixel 4A.

What makes this smartphone special? For one, while you only get a single rear camera, it’s surprisingly great. It packs 12.2 MP, and images are far better than you would expect from reading its specs. The front camera is 8 MP and uses an f/2 aperture.

The Pixel 4A has many of the features on higher-end Google phones, including Live HDR+ (which lets you preview the HDR effect before you take the picture). The display is 5.81 in (14.8 cm) and full HD for a bright picture with realistic colors.

Storage is only 128 GB and the battery life isn’t great – but at such a low price, the 4A remains appealing.

10. iPhone SE

For Apple fans after a budget smartphone, the iPhone SE is equipped with a 12 MP, 28mm rear camera and a 7 MP front camera, perfect for spur-of-the-moment shots, portraits, and more.

The SE combines the camera from the iPhone 8 with the software of the iPhone 11. As a result, you get great photographs, plus videos with image stabilization.

The iPhone SE also packs a 4.7 in (11.9 in) HD Retina screen; paired with the A13 Bionic chip, you can expect great battery life. And you still get Portrait mode, including a slider to manually control the blurred background (you also get Portrait Lighting!).

This is the most affordable iOS smartphone yet, and the quality is what you’d expect from a standard iPhone. Yes, the SE has fewer cameras and features, but it offers great value for money.

Best camera phone: conclusion

As you can see, there are many wonderful camera phone options – all of which allow you to capture professional-quality smartphone photography.

So it’s not so much about finding the best camera phone as finding the one that best fits your needs and means.

Now over to you:

Do you have any questions? Which camera phone do you like the best? Which one will you buy? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post The 10 Best Camera Phones You Can Buy in 2022 appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

Baked into every iPhone is a neat trick – one that combines the serendipity of photos with the magic of video to produce a Live Photo. These aren’t the same as normal photos, but they’re not exactly videos, either.

Live Photos are images that can be edited, adjusted, and shared just like any other image. But they are also tiny video clips: each contains three seconds of video showing a brief moment right before, during, and after you take the picture.

To learn more about Live Photos, including how to use and edit them, keep reading!

What are iPhone Live Photos?

First introduced in the iPhone 6s, Live Photos are a great way to add a bit of context to your iPhone pictures.

Instead of just taking a picture of your kids, you capture the photo – but you also get a brief clip of them running and laughing. Rather than photographing only a flower, your iPhone captures the flower, but it also displays the wind, moving insects, and background noise. A snapshot of your friend holding a freshly caught fish becomes a short clip where you can see the fish wiggling and flopping free.

These short bits of video might not sound like much, but they can go a long way toward bringing a still scene to life. A simple Live Photo can trigger emotions and memories years later that you never knew you wanted to save. The best part about Live Photos is that you don’t have to do anything to create or view them – they’re captured automatically by your iPhone unless you turn the option off manually.

That said, despite the prevalence of Live Photos, there’s still a great deal of confusion among iPhone users. For instance, how do you use Live Photos? How do you edit and share them? What are their benefits and drawbacks? That’s what I aim to cover in the rest of this article.

How to use Live Photos

As with a lot of things in the Apple ecosystem, using Live Photos requires almost zero effort. Any time the camera interface is open, there is an icon in the top-right corner that looks like three concentric circles (pictured below). If there is a line through the icon, Live Photos is turned off. If there is no line, it means Live Photos is enabled. Tap the icon to switch between On and Off.

When Live Photos is enabled, you don’t have to do anything different when you take a picture. Any time you press the shutter button, your iPhone automatically captures the picture and a bit of video. It’s almost like a short animation, or like a moving picture you might see in one of the Harry Potter movies.

If you don’t want to toggle the Live Photos setting every time, navigate to Settings and then choose Camera>Preserve Settings. If you have Live Photo checked, the camera app will remember whether you had Live Photos enabled or disabled the last time you used it. That way you won’t have to click the Live Photos icon every single time you want to take a picture – it will be enabled or disabled depending on your previous settings.

Once the Live Photos setting is enabled, all you have to do is snap a picture and your phone takes care of the rest. There are no parameters to tweak, no options to configure, and no changes from one iPhone to the next. Every time you take a picture, your phone automatically saves a Live Photo.

What can you do with Live Photos?

Apple cofounder Steve Jobs once said that people don’t know what they want until you give it to them. Live Photos are kind of like that, in that they give you a tiny glimpse into the context of your images.

People take pictures with their phones every day, but those images are devoid of the audiovisual context that Live Photos provide. Live Photos aren’t life-altering or world-changing, but the few seconds of video alongside each photo is so nice that it’s hard to give up once you’re used to it.

In fact, the real benefit of Live Photos isn’t readily apparent until you start scrolling back through images from months or years ago. You see a picture of a parent, child, or loved one – and you suddenly realize you also have a few seconds of their voice and past life. That’s when Live Photos become indispensable.

Personally, I don’t find Live Photos to be particularly useful for landscapes, animals, or everyday objects, but it’s those images of the people in my life that make me glad to have Live Photos as an option.

How to view Live Photos

While taking Live Photos is easy, viewing them can be a bit confusing. As you scroll through your photo library, there aren’t any indicators that separate Live Photos from normal photos. And when you tap on a Live Photo, all you see is a still image.

Viewing a Live Photo sent by someone else can be tricky, too, because it looks like any other picture.

The key to viewing Live Photos lies in the key to operating your phone: You have to use your fingers. So to view a Live Photo, whether in your own photo library or one sent to you in a text message, you have to press and hold. The pressure will activate the Live function and start playing the video.

(Note: If you are viewing Live Photos on a Mac computer in the Messages or Photos apps, you have to click and hold on with the mouse cursor.)

Viewing Live Photos is one thing, but what about finding them in the first place? With scant visual clues to separate Live Photos from normal images, locating them can be confusing. Fortunately, you can use the Media Type option in your iPhone photo library to show all Live Photos; this eliminates the need to scroll through all your images in the hopes of randomly stumbling across a Live Photo.

There are also a few hints embedded in every Live Photo to help you know what you’re looking at: Every Live Photo has the word “Live” in the top-left corner, along with the Live Photos bullseye icon. And when you receive a Live Photo over text message, you won’t see the word “Live” – but you will see the Live Photos icon, which means you can tap and hold to view the clip.

How to edit Live Photos

One of the most compelling features of Live Photos is how they can be edited and tweaked just like any other image.

You can use the iPhone Photos app to crop, adjust color, change brightness, add a vignette, and even use filters such as Mono, Silvertone, Dramatic, and more.

You can also change the Key Photo – the image that shows up when you first view a Live Photo (before video playback begins).

I’m a fan of Live Photo editing capabilities; they reinforce the idea that Live Photos aren’t to be treated differently from any other picture. Editing prohibitions or restrictions would be a big drawback – but at present, the only thing you can’t do with a Live Photo is use markup effects to draw on it.

(If you do want to add markup, the Live Photo is discarded and you’re left with a still image. It’s not necessarily a bad tradeoff, just something to keep in mind.)

Apple also gives you some fun ways to edit your Live Photos that go beyond what you can do with normal images. When viewing a Live Photo, you can tap the Share button to save it as a movie, which can then be sent to anyone for viewing on any device – iPhone, Windows computer, etc. You can tweak things even further with some fun effects, too.

For instance, tap and hold on a Live Photo, then – without letting go – swipe upward. This brings up an Effects menu, where you can make a Live Photo loop, bounce back and forth from the end to the beginning, or create a long exposure that blurs all the frames together. These can be shared like other Live Photos, exported as movie files, or uploaded to websites like Giphy.com, which can turn the content into animated GIFs.

If you have your iPhone pictures synced to your Mac via iCloud, you can even separate a Live Photo into its component parts: a single HEIC image file and a QuickTime movie file. (HEIC files are similar to JPEG files, but they offer more color information and better compression.) You can then edit and share each file individually, or you can use software such as iMovie or Adobe Premiere to stitch multiple Live Photo QuickTime movies into a single video.

Drawbacks to Live Photos

There are a few caveats to keep in mind when using Live Photos.

For one, while Live Photos are a great way to add a bit of context to your memories, they do take up more storage space than traditional photos. The exact file size varies, but Live Photos are generally about twice as large as normal photos. Even if you have 256 GB or 512 GB of storage space, Live Photos can eat through this pretty quickly.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t take Live Photos; just be aware of your storage limitations.

Also, Live Photos exist only within the Apple ecosystem. Other Apple users can see the entire three-second clip – but if you send a Live Photo to an Android user, they’ll only receive a single JPEG image. There is a process you can use to export a Live Photo as a movie clip or animated GIF file, but those extra steps are an obvious inconvenience.

And Live Photos offer no customization options, which might bother folks who enjoy tweaking things to fit their own preferences. Every Live Photo is exactly 3 seconds – no more, no less. Every Live Photo is also shot at the same resolution and quality settings, and these limits can be somewhat frustrating. It would be nice if Apple had the option to shoot longer Live Photos, but I wouldn’t count on that changing anytime soon.

iPhone Live Photos: final words

Live Photos are a great way to get more enjoyment out of everyday images.

While drawbacks exist, the benefits mostly outweigh the negatives – and it can be incredibly rewarding to look back on these brief video snippets years later. You will find yourself enjoying your images in a whole new way, and the creative sharing options might open up new doors you never knew existed.

Now over to you:

What do you think of iPhone Live Photos? Do you plan to use them often? Do you prefer them to still images? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Live Photos FAQ

The post iPhone Live Photos: A Comprehensive Guide appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

What is smartphone RAW photography, and how can you set up RAW imaging on your phone? If high-quality photos are your goal, you must know how to shoot in RAW.

For a long time, only standalone cameras supported the RAW format. But these days, many smartphone manufacturers are including it as a feature on their devices – and in this article, I’ll share with you step-by-step instructions for capturing RAW photos on iPhones, Samsung phones, and Huawei phones.

And in case your native camera app doesn’t support RAW, I’ll include a list of third-party apps that produce RAW photos.

Let’s get started.

What is smartphone RAW photography?

A RAW file is the unprocessed version of a photo. When you take a photograph, the camera records all sorts of information.

Then, if it saves the image as a JPEG – which is the most common format – it will use only the information it needs and discard the rest.

After that process, there’s no way to recover the information that was thrown away. So you’ll have less dynamic range and fewer details in the highlights and shadows. (The loss of information will be more noticeable if you want to do extreme editing, which can lead to unpleasant artifacts such as banding when done in JPEG.)

Most camera manufacturers have proprietary RAW file formats. For example, Nikon cameras generate NEF files, Canon files are CRW, and so on.

DNG format was developed by Adobe as an open-source RAW file, so it’s more compatible and any manufacturer can use it. In smartphone photography, DNG is the most commonly used RAW format.

Should you shoot in RAW on a smartphone?

If you want to do serious mobile photography, then yes. Photographing in RAW gives you great flexibility when you edit your photos.

However, RAW files are 10 to 12 times bigger than JPEG files – and that’s a lot of storage space. So you might not want to shoot in RAW for every single picture that you take.

If it’s an option on your phone, you might try saving the images to an SD card instead of using the internal memory. Another storage solution is to send your files to the cloud or transfer them to your computer to be backed up on an external hard drive.

How to shoot in RAW: Step by step

Not all phones support RAW format, and the ones that do have different ways of enabling it.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to using RAW on the most common smartphone brands:

For Huawei shooters

These instructions reference a Huawei P20 Lite; however, the process should be the same on all Huawei models that support RAW photography.

First, open the camera app and scroll through the Mode menu until you reach Pro. Select this mode, keeping in mind that RAW shooting is not available in the other photo modes.

Open your camera Settings menu by tapping on the gear icon (this will be in the upper left corner if you’re shooting in landscape orientation and in the upper right corner if you’re shooting in portrait orientation):

Tap Resolution:

Then scroll to the bottom, where you’ll find the Photo format section. Enable RAW format:

Then close the settings and snap your photo! As long as you’re in Pro mode, the images will be saved in RAW (plus a JPEG copy).

RAW files are saved in Files > Internal Storage > DCIM > Camera > RAW. You can review them in the gallery under More Albums > Others > RAW.

For iPhone shooters

Not all iPhones support RAW format in the native camera app. If your iPhone doesn’t shoot in RAW, you’ll have to use a third-party app. Look for recommendations at the end of this article.

However, the iPhone 12 Pro and the iPhone 12 Pro Max both support Apple ProRAW (they need to have iOS 14.3 or later, though).

To turn on ProRAW, go to Settings > Camera > Formats. Under the Photo Capture section, enable Apple ProRAW.

Once you have enabled this function, you’ll have the RAW option when you’re taking pictures. Simply tap to turn it on or off. (That way, you can shoot in different formats without having to go through the Settings menu every time.)

When you take a photo and RAW is on, it will be saved as a DNG file of about 25 MB. But if you turn ProRAW off, your iPhone will create a JPEG or HEIF file – whichever you have selected as the default.

For Samsung shooters

Keep in mind that not all Samsung devices will support RAW files. However, for the Samsung devices that do support smartphone RAW photography, here’s how to set it up:

Open the camera app and scroll the options bar until you find More.

In the More menu, you can see different modes. Tap on PRO.

Then open Camera Settings and scroll down to Save Options.

Enable Save RAW copies.

Once you’ve done this, all the pictures you take in PRO mode will be saved with a RAW copy – though in every other mode, the images will still be JPEGs.

If your Samsung phone doesn’t support RAW files in the native camera app, you can always download another app that can save RAW photos. You’ll find a list of recommendations in the next section.

Apps to shoot in RAW

As I explained above, not all smartphones offer RAW shooting in their native camera app. However, there are plenty of third-party apps that will let you work in RAW. Here’s a list of a few good ones:

Lightroom Mobile (for iOS and Android). The free limited version includes the RAW function, though you will need to create an Adobe account. Of course, if you have an Adobe Lightroom or an Adobe Photography subscription, you already have access to the full version of Lightroom Mobile.

VSCO (iOS and Android). The RAW function is only for iPhone 6 and later. Older devices and Android phones can use VSCO as a camera and editor but won’t be able to shoot in RAW.

ProShot (iOS and Android). The RAW function works only on compatible phones. To know if your phone supports ProShot RAW, you might want to do some research before purchasing it. The cost is $1.99.

ProCam (iOS). Works on iPhones with 12 MP cameras – that’s iPhone 6s and later. It supports RAW files in Auto and Manual mode.

ON1 Photo RAW (iOS and Android). Free. Supports RAW and JPEG formats in all photo modes.

Flannl RAW Camera (iOS). Free.

Manual Camera Lite: Professional Camera DSLR (Android). The free version supports RAW on some phones. You can upgrade to the PRO version, but it’s not necessary to capture photos in RAW.

Smartphone RAW photography: conclusion

As you can see, it’s very easy to do smartphone RAW photography, no matter your phone type. It may take a few extra taps, but it makes a world of difference!

Now over to you:

Have you tried shooting smartphone RAW photos? Have you noticed a difference compared to your JPEGs? Share your thoughts (and images!) in the comments below.

The post Smartphone RAW Photography: An Easy Way to Improve Your Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.