Smartphone Photography 101: Capture, Edit, and Share

Even among the most serious professional photographers, there is recognition that the smartphone is an extraordinarily capable and convenient tool. They have it easy, though, with years of experience that make taking a photo with their mobile devices intuitive, and then follow it up with stellar editing that really makes the subject pop. If you have always wanted to make your smartphone photos shine like the pros, you have come to the right place, because this is Smartphone Photography 101, and I’m going to walk you through the essential knowledge for capturing better photographs with that iPhone of yours.

Capture

With digital photography, the first step is simply capturing the image. Now, with a stand-alone camera, this is generally straightforward with an array of dials and labeled controls to help you adjust the look of an image, but for shooters who have only used a smartphone, there usually isn’t much to know beyond “hit the big red button.” Usually, this works for most images because the brains in the latest smartphones are very good, and optimized for this style of shooting. But, if you want to take better photos, there are a few simple tips to follow:

• Learn the ins and out of your camera app. Small tips on how to brighten/darken or change focus can help make sure you get more keepers.
• Try to avoid high-contrast or backlit scenes, since the limited dynamic range of smartphone cameras will struggle in these conditions.
• Learn basic composition rules of photography, including the rule of thirds, leading lines, and more.
• Avoid “zooming.” Most cameras use a digital zoom that simply crops into the photo and enlarges it, resulting in reduced resolution. This is a good tip unless you have a dual camera/lens system that provides an optical telephoto and wide-angle setting, but in this case, you should avoid any digital zoom options.

That could be all you need to know. For those of you looking to expand your knowledge base and skill dramatically, we can go into more photo concepts and tools. First, you are going to want to find an app that gives you full manual control over camera settings, including things like ISO, shutter speed, and white balance. Normally, cameras will offer aperture control, as well, but many smartphones offer fixed apertures that we can’t change. Aperture is used in photography to control depth of field and the amount of light that hits the sensor. There are other ways to control depth of field, however, such as moving closer or using app-based effects.

Let’s explain what each of these basic settings controls. ISO is simply the sensitivity of the camera which, as you raise it, will brighten your image but add noise. Generally, you will want to keep ISO as low as possible for clean photographs. Second, we have shutter speed in seconds, and the faster this is, the less light is let in, but you can better freeze motion and action. You will want to stay at 1/30 second or faster to prevent camera shake when holding the phone, but you can do a lot of experimenting here for unique effects or nighttime shooting. Finally, we have white balance. I would say just leave this in auto and trust the camera, since it’s usually an easy fix later, but if you do see a weird color cast you can adjust this to various lighting types for a more neutral color in your photo.

One other thing you can do on many phones these days is capture raw images. This means that you have an image file with all the original data from the camera before it gets processed into compressed JPEGs or HEIF files. To get the most out of these files, you will need to do some work after the fact, which leads us to…

Edit

This is the stage where third-party apps are basically required, with options like Adobe Photoshop Mobile and Google Snapseed providing professional tools for your pocket device, and other networks like Instagram and Snapchat providing quick filters to add a look to your image. Starting with the more simplified tools, this is where you will want to adjust brightness and add some sharpening if the image needs it. A boost to contrast is generally a good idea, since I’ve found most phones create flatter images, and it can give the appearance of a sharper photograph. This is perhaps the best and simplest way to make an image look better. Though you will also have the option to just pop on a filter and call it a day, I must admit that sometimes that is exactly what you want.

I wouldn’t recommend going overboard with compressed JPEGs because you will see the limitations of the format, so if you intend to do some major tweaking, you should be working with raw files. This ensures you can access all possible data, and potentially recover details in the shadows and highlights that would have been lost normally. It also opens the door for using advanced apps like Photoshop to create impressive final images that can rival that of stand-alone camera systems.

To start, you will need to understand some basic controls to which you will have access, including exposure, contrast, saturation, shadows, highlights, blacks, and whites, among others. These controls act on the raw data, meaning when you start making changes you may start to see features you couldn’t originally. You can then balance the shot to create a more well-rounded shot, though it will require more work than your straight-out-of-camera JPEG. Play around with all these settings and see what happens to understand what is going on. And, there is one more huge advantage to a raw workflow: white balance. White balance settings are baked into JPEGs, but raw files don’t have any white balance assigned, meaning you can adjust this without losing any data, resulting in greater color accuracy and improved rendering of a final shot, especially in difficult or mixed lighting conditions.

Beyond these basic tools, local adjustments can be a lifesaver if your app allows them. These options allow you to mask out certain areas, such as the sky, for instance, and adjust those areas independently of the rest of the image. This helps with high-contrast scenes where you may have a dark foreground and a bright sky that needs to be balanced. In general, for editing I try to do as little as needed and then finish up with some added contrast and saturation to make colors pop a bit more, but finding what looks good for your subject is up to you.

Once you are finished here, and export a photo to your camera roll, you are ready to…

Share!

The final step is one I am sure you are most familiar with already, since Instagram and Facebook are used by almost everyone to share images with friends and family. My personal favorite right now is Instagram, but there are so many out there to choose from. Be careful with some options, however, because some have more stringent cropping or quality requirements that may not be ideal for your images, or require borders of some sort to preserve the ratio—even Instagram’s ability to use ratios other than square has limits of 4 x 5 in vertical orientation and 16 x 9 in horizontal. Be aware of what is happening so you can optimize your photos in the editing step or at time of capture but there is the fun part. So, get out there and start shooting and sharing!

This set of tips only scratches the surface of what you can do with smartphone photography. And if you want to start diving into more advanced photo techniques, I would highly recommend browsing the Explora blog for more tips and solutions to guide you along the way. What questions do you have about taking better photographs on your phone?