Hacks

5 practical tips on how to make your smartphone photos look a lot more professional

2023-05-05 , 11:45 am

Last Updated on 2023-05-10 , 1:50 pm

Smartphone cameras have come a long way. Some photographers even make careers out of mobile photography—photographer Matt Louder uses a Huawei and an iPhone to capture amazing shots.

With smartphones capable of producing image resolutions comparable to high end cameras, you’ll find plenty of budding smartphone photographers showcasing their works in social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook.

Even if you’re not planning to go pro, curating that perfect Instagram feed is still noteworthy in this day and age, so here are some simple tips to fully exploit your smartphone’s camera abilities.

1. Composition and Framing

First and most importantly, picture composition and framing! Forget about the fancy effects or filters your smartphone camera may offer, because no matter how cool the effects will turn out, your photo will be ruined if not composed properly.

Most users simply look at the subject they want to capture in the photo, but fail to look at the surrounding.

Therefore, before you snap the picture, look at the whole screen, edge to edge. Make sure there are no unwanted objects in the frame. You also do not want to get a portion of your finger or your phone strap in the picture.

2. Use the crop function instead of zooming

Most smartphone cameras have the digital zoom capabilities. Unfortunately, zooming in will only degrade the photo quality and also amplify your shaky movements causing blurred photos.

Take advantage of your phone’s high resolution by cropping the original photo, selecting the area you wish to be enlarged.

3. Use the timer for low light photography

Most smartphone cameras are capable enough of capturing excellent low light images. However, we are often failed by the shakiness of our own hands, especially when we are moving our fingers to press the shoot button.

Thus, you can take advantage of the timer button. Some cameras are equipped with short timers such as 2 seconds or 5 seconds timer. Use these extra seconds to stabilize your hands and camera before the shutter snaps.

4. Look at the lens, not the screen in ‘selfie’ mode

One common mistake when taking selfies especially in a big group is that some tend to look at themselves in the screen instead of the camera lens. In the end, the picture will have different set of eyes looking everywhere else which can be pretty hilarious sometimes.

Taking a selfie is just like taking those trending 0.5x shots with the back camera—you have to look into the lens. So, please remind everyone to look at the little pinhole lens at the front of your phone, instead of smiling at themselves on screen.

5. Try editing instead of using automated filters

Most decent smartphones possess the basic editing tools such as adjusting saturation, brightness and contrast. There are also plenty of third party photo editing apps available for free.

Try tweaking around these adjustments to get the effects you want and you’ll be surprise with the levels of customisation you can achieve instead of simply using the automated filters millions around the world are using—we’re all sick of the same Instagram filters again and again.