Today we are going to give you some tricks to improve the photos taken with your mobile, both when taking them and when editing them. In times of quadruple cameras, good amounts of megapixels and the photographic section as the main asset in many phones, it is quite convenient to have certain guidelines for squeeze the most out of your mobile camera.
Likewise, we are going to show you the best apps to edit your photos, with a precise list of those ideal applications to leave your photographs with a look spectacular.
Tips to improve your photos
Photography is still an art, and like all art, subjectivity makes an appearance. However, there are some tips to improve your photos. We are going to tell you from the basics to some that you may not know.
- Clean the lens: the first and most basic advice, but the number of times we lose quality in photography is not usually taken into account because the lens is not 100% clean. Wear a chamois when you want to go out to take photos or, alternatively, wear a soft garment, such as a T-shirt.
Charm & Magic Microfiber Cleaning Cloths for All Types of Screens – Set of 24 units (20 Black + 4 Gray)
Fortography is light, literally. Always try to find a natural source of light and not very aggressive
- Use natural light whenever you canPhotography is light, and the more abundant and natural it is, the better. In low light, the performance of all phones drops, even in high-end, so try to avoid artificial light and use natural light, when possible.
- Activate HDR: HDR mode is not activated by default on some phones. After our tests, it is highly recommended to leave it active, especially for the control it does of the highlights.
- The flash is not your ally: The LED flash on our phones, although it has advanced in recent years, is quite aggressive and envelops photography in very aggressive light. It is usually recommended, if we have it, to activate the night mode or use another less aggressive artificial light source.
- Activate the grid: The grid is not usually active by default on smartphones, but it is essential to frame the scene. You just have to activate it from the settings menu, and with it you will save yourself more than one annoyance for a poorly done framing.
- Don’t get complicated with manual mode: Although manual mode is designed to take advantage of photographs, exposure and focus can already be controlled in automatic mode. If we want to have a great snapshot in a few seconds (the grace of using a mobile phone), keep it simple and manage the exposure from automatic mode.
- Turn off the AI mode of your phone– AI has come to help us recognize scenes and apply default values to them. Unfortunately, in most cases we only get a large oversaturation, so we recommend disabling the AI to obtain the most natural photograph that the sensor can give us. If we want to vitaminize it, we can always edit it later.
Versatility is always welcome, but the main workhorse will always be the main sensor – the brightest and most capable.
- The main sensor is your great ally: Even though mobiles have multiple cameras, the main sensor is still the best. With few exceptions (especially in high-end), the loss of quality with ultra-wide-angle or macro sensors is quite remarkable, so the main sensor can become a great ally. With a single camera you can do much more than you think.
- Take many, many photos: in the case of a server, for each session I do with my mobile or DSLR I can take more than 200 photos and keep, at most, 10% of them. Take photos, lots of photos, it is the only way to know which one you really like, to experience all the possibilities of the scene and, most importantly, to have fun and have fun taking photos.
Once the photo is taken, much of the magic comes from retouching them. This is a matter of taste, although in the case of a server I have to say that I cannot conceive of uploading a photograph to social networks if it is not edited. We are going to give you some tips, so that they serve you whether you want to give a slight retouch to the photograph or if you want to edit it in depth to give it a look spectacular.
- If you want to touch up a bit, boost the basics: any photo editor, including the native one on your phone, will let you touch basic values such as exposure, contract or detail. The key in a simple edit is not to sneak in by applying these settings too aggressively. It is usually enough to touch each parameter a little to have a better image than the one we have taken.
- Adjust the frame: if the photograph is not perfectly square, when editing it we have the opportunity to redeem our mistake. Keep in mind that a reframing usually comes from the hand of a small crop in the photograph, so we can lose some quality. However, if the reframing is light, we will not notice this loss.
- Use default filters or created by youFilters can make your photo better or completely ruin it. Here we cannot tell you what is good and what is bad, since it is a matter of taste. Later we will talk about apps to edit, with some filters that usually always work. You can also create them yourself, and apply them within applications that we will also detail.
- Eliminate what you don’t like from the photo: if someone or something has sneaked into the photo, it is usually rectifiable in editing. In this article we will tell you how you can remove objects from your photos, so get used to the idea that this is possible.
- Try not to break the quality of the photo: Although it sounds strange, giving too much sharpness, exposure or basic values to the photo can destroy it completely. Always pay attention to the original quality of the photo, and try that your edition does not generate strange artifacts or end up with what the sensor of your phone has managed to capture.
The best apps to retouch your photos
Seen how we can improve the quality of our photos, we are going to see a list with the best apps to edit photos on iOS and Android. Most of them are free and can take your photography to another level.
Adobe Lightroom
This is my favorite photo editing app. The main reason is that Lightroom allows create custom filters in .dng format and then apply them to photography. If it sounds very complicated, don’t worry, because it is more than simple. When we edit a photo we just have to click ‘copy settings’, these settings can later be copied to any other photo, so you don’t have to go around editing photos one by one, you can always have your presets.
Apart from this, it is still Adobe’s editing app. We can do everything in the free version, except syncing our Creative Cloud account. It is a tool that requires a certain learning curve, but it works very well.
Adobe Lightrooom
VSCO
VSCO is a photo editor, but it is best known for being “a filter app”. It has a large number of default filters that we can apply to our photographs, and most of them quite pretty. We can apply them more or less intensely, since they are completely adjustable.
VSCO
Snapseed
Snapseed is google photo editor, a great alternative to edit our photos in a matter of seconds. It is very simple, completely free and, being a lightweight tool, it works very well on any device.