Your smartphone photos can look way better. If you’re willing to put in a little extra work, use third party apps and spend a bit of time editing, it’s possible to take photos that — under the right circumstances — can rival dedicated digital cameras.
I post a lot of smartphone photos online, and “How do I take better photos on my phone?” is a question I get practically every day. It makes sense. As the saying goes, “The best camera is the one you have on you,” and we practically always have our phones on us these days.
Over the last few years, smartphone camera sensors have gotten bigger, with better light gathering capabilities and higher resolutions. But even though the sensors have gotten bigger and better, the straight-out-of-camera quality through default camera apps hasn’t improved much, if at all. In some respects, smartphone photos have actually gotten worse — aesthetically, at least.
The reason driving this is what people generally use their smartphone cameras for. Smartphone cameras are mostly optimized for information transfer — sending photos of menus, signs, faces and objects that are clear and easy to see. This means phones will usually pull down highlights and pull up the shadows, creating a flatter image that makes it easier to see more information in the frame. But showing more information does not automatically make a photo better. In fact, much of our perception of aesthetics in a photo has to do with its ability to present depth. A photo with too much information in the shadows and highlights will appear washed out. Phones also introduce artifacts like over-sharpening and noise reduction to compensate for thier small sensors, which further contributes to the “muddy” smartphone camera look you’re used to seeing by now. This is less necessary now, but many smartphones still do it. But that’s a topic for
But that doesn’t mean phone cameras are bad. The sensors in modern smartphones have actually gotten so good, many of them can rival dedicated point-and-shoot options on the market today. Knowing how to utilize those sensors is the part most people don’t know how to do, and it really comes down to utilizing some third-party camera and editing apps.
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There are plenty of apps available today that will give you an instantly “aesthetic” photo. Apps like Dazzcam and Hujicam try to emulate film aesthetics like light leaks and polaroid borders (and honestly, if that’s what you’re looking for, they do a fantastic job). There are also apps like Moment Pro Camera II and Halide that offer “Natural” and “Process Zero” modes, which apply far lighter processing than the default camera offers.
Those options are great if you want your pictures to look better instantly without needing to do any additional editing, but if you want the best possible photo, you’ll need to shoot RAW or DNG.
RAW files are a bundle of practically all the information your camera collects, with extremely minimal processing. In most cases, RAW photos won’t necessarily look better than photos straight from the default camera app right away, but that’s because the default camera app makes a lot of creative decisions for you. If you want the highest-quality photo, it’s best to make these creative decisions yourself.
There are tons of apps available that let you shoot RAW, but the apps I use frequently and that I recommend to other people are Moment Pro Camera II and Halide on iOS, and VWFNDR and Zerocam on Android.
I wouldn’t recommend shooting RAW on every photo you take on your phone. Your phone camera is, after all, optimized for what you are probably taking photos of every day. I generally shoot RAW when I see a nice landscape or city scene that I want to share, or if I’m trying to take a portrait of someone and don’t want all the automatic computational phone processing to apply. Really, I shoot RAW when I’m trying to take a photo for artistic purposes, not for informational purposes.
When you’re shooting, you’ll want to tap on your subject in the viewfinder to get the best possible exposure for it. If the rest of the image is a little bright, or a little dark, don’t worry too much. RAW photos retain a lot of information. I should note, though, that under extremely dark circumstances, RAW on smartphones won’t always be the best option. Physics is still physics, and sometimes it’s better to use the computational photography capabilities your phone offers, which mostly shine in low-light environments by stacking multiple frames to reduce noise.
You’ll notice that when you shoot in RAW, the apps will force you to stick to the native focal lengths your phone offers. That’s because RAW images are information straight off the sensor, and cropping applies processing. Photos from the main sensor will often be the best quality, since it usually has the biggest sensor on your phone, so I recommend shooting with it if you can. I do often shoot with the telephoto lens while traveling though, because sometimes you want a little more reach or a little more compression, and you can usually get good photos from that lens as well.
After you take your photos, you’re going to need to edit them. Most phones won’t show RAW images in the camera gallery, so in order to get them in an editing app, it’s best to use the share sheet and share directly to your editing app of choice. I suggest Snapseed, since it’s totally free and recently got a wonderful visual overhaul. If you’re an Adobe subscriber, Lightroom Mobile is also great, especially if you’re already used to Lightroom’s tools on your computer.
RAW photos don’t usually look great right away, and the magic of RAW is just how much you can tweak the files. Once I have the photo imported, I usually hit the auto button, just to see what the general boundaries are for the image. Auto mode tries to make everything a mid-tone, meaning it will pull down the highlights and pull up the shadows. This will already look better than straight-out-of-camera from your phone’s default camera app, because it isn’t applying noise reduction or sharpening, just highlight, shadow, contrast, and saturation tweaks, but it usually still needs more, or different, adjustments.
Once I see what auto mode wants to do, I’ll either edit from there, or hit the back button and edit myself. A good photo has a natural amount of contrast, with relatively deep shadows and bright highlights. You usually don’t want to go too hard on either of these things, and having a little bit of detail in both of these is usually preferred, but honestly, this is subjective. Occasionally, it’s preferable to crush the highlights and shadows completely, if you’re going for an ultra high-contrast look.
For color, RAW images are usually flatter than most people find pleasing, and you can fix this with either the saturation or vibrance sliders. I generally prefer vibrance. Saturation will increase the saturation of all colors in the image linearly, where vibrance is weighted, increasing saturation of flatter colors more than already-saturated colors. You can overdo this pretty easily, so I recommend having a light touch when it comes to saturation. You can also use white balance to color your image, and many people find a warmer white balance more pleasing, especially when taking photos outside.
Another color tool I love to use is the color mix, or selective editing tool. This allows you to tap on a portion of the image and change some of its values. In Snapseed, you can change the brightness, contrast, saturation, and structure. If you’re in Lightroom mobile, you’ll have access to selective hue shifts, which I use all the time. This allows you to shift a yellow tone towards more orange or green, or shift a blue tone more cyan or purple.
Most editing apps also include geometry or perspective tools. These tools allow you to adjust distortion, aspect, scale, and offset. If you don’t know what that means, try hitting the auto button in the geometry or perspective setting. You might be surprised how distorted your phone captured a scene compared to what it looks like in reality, but this is image-dependent. If you want to straighten lines in your photo, some editing apps offer a guided tool that allows you to manually add guidance lines to tell the program what lines should be straight in the image.
The tools you’ll want to use are going to depend heavily on what you want the image to convey. For example, when I’m doing architectural photography, I rely a lot more heavily on the perspective tools, because the aesthetic of the image is heavily dictated by its geometry. If I’m photographing a landscape, I’m more focused on tone and color. Not every scene needs to be tweaked with every tool, and how you edit comes down to personal taste. That taste can also take a while to develop, so study the photos you like and try to figure out how they were edited.
When you’re done with your edits, many editing apps like Snapseed and Lightroom Mobile also come with a handy tool to put a matte (or border) around your image. I think that photos look better with a white border, as it isolates the image for your eyes. You obviously don’t have to use this tool, but I really like it. Have some whimsy!
This process is a lot more work than just opening your camera app and snapping, but the results are worth it. I am continuously blown away by the quality of images I’m able to get off smartphones, and just how close they can be to a dedicated camera. If you don’t believe me, check out this video I did comparing RAW photos from the iPhone 17 Pro to the Leica M11.
Photography by David Imel / The Verge
