These days, most people take photos on their smartphones, and many of us don’t use dedicated cameras, but use the camera on our smartphones instead. However, even the best smartphone photographers among us should edit our photos before posting them online. Here’s what to do!
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You might think that every photo on your smartphone is a gem that doesn’t need any editing. But that’s probably not true. Even if your smartphone photos are high quality, well composed, and ready to share, making subtle changes can improve them in some way.
Whether your photo needs cropping to remove some extraneous elements from the edges or the brightness, contrast, saturation, and warmth levels need adjusting to improve the look, these edits are a necessary part of the mobile photography process.
To create the most impressive smartphone photos, you need to either capture the perfect shot in real time or use your post-editing skills to take it to the next level. And achieving absolute perfection in real time is nearly impossible.
The author of this article owns a Google Pixel phone, so he uses a combination of Google Photos and Snapseed (available on Android and iOS) to edit his smartphone photos. However, the same basic settings that are adjusted for every photo will be available on every smartphone and in every photo app.
The image above is the finished result after editing the original until the author was satisfied. However, in the sections below, you will see each setting applied in turn to illustrate the effect of each specific setting.
There are dozens of edits you can make to photos on your smartphone before posting them online. However, there are a small number of essential adjustments that everyone should make to every photo.
Before you start tweaking individual settings, the first thing to do is check out the suggestions that Google Photos offers. Try out the suggested edits on a sizing basis and see if they improve the photo to your desired standard. Even with the suggestions, there may still be some small adjustments that can be made.
The same goes for the filters that most photo apps offer these days. Instagram offers a lot of good ones, too. With Google Photos, you can try out each filter without permanently applying it. And as long as you keep an eye on them, you’ll be able to figure out what works and what doesn’t. And even after you’ve applied a filter, you can still adjust the individual settings.
The first thing to adjust is the shape and size of the photo. To do this, you need to use the Crop tool. This allows you to crop the image exactly to what you want, meaning you can fill the frame, remove extraneous elements that don't add anything to the image, and improve the overall composition.
For example, let's say the original image has leading lines, but no lines that extend to the edge of the image. A slight crop can fix this, drawing the viewer's eye with leading lines that start in the corners and flow toward the subject.
Next is the brightness level of the photo, which increases or decreases depending on the content being captured. Even if the original photo's brightness doesn't need any editing, you may want to increase or decrease the brightness to affect the mood of the photo.
If the original photo was taken in very dark conditions, increasing the brightness can help reveal more detail. Similarly, if the original photo was taken in bright sunlight, decreasing the brightness can help balance the image.
Next is contrast adjustment and this is an important setting to change the lightness, darkness, color, and clarity of the image. As the name suggests, contrast refers to the difference between bright pixels and dark pixels.
Adjusting contrast can increase visible detail, making an image more vibrant, or mute it to make it more quiet and subdued. While most of us want our photos to stand out on social media, sometimes toning things down can make for a better image.
Next, you should adjust the saturation to affect the intensity of the colors in the photo. In short, saturation refers to the vividness of the colors in the photo.
Turn the saturation down and the colors will be dull. Turn the saturation up and the colors will be brighter and richer. This can be based on personal preference or the subject matter of an individual image.
Last but not least, adjust the warmth of your photo. Increase or decrease the warmth depending on the subject and setting. Warm colors can really change the mood of a photo.
The right amount of warmth will depend on how you want the photo to feel to the viewer. Increasing the warmth will make people feel warm, while decreasing the warmth will make the photo look cold and icy.
Unlike analog photography, where you are limited in the amount of editing you can do after you have taken the photo, digital photography offers a plethora of editing options. So, you should always take advantage of this unique form of photography.
While you can obviously go in-depth and make a lot of edits to your photos, most of them aren’t absolutely necessary. While things like white balance and perspective are optional, most of your photos won’t require that level of adjustment, so it’s better to focus on the essential edits that will make the biggest difference.
These five settings can make a big difference, so we recommend applying them to every photo you take. Sometimes you’ll find yourself making big adjustments, while other times you’ll only make small adjustments. But the result will be better-looking smartphone photos.
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