How to Edit Photos Professionally on Your Mobile
If you want to edit photos on your smartphone and make them look like they have been professionally done, take a look at these tips.
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Take Good Photos in the First Place
This might sound like a sermon instead of a tip but hear us out. A bad photo will still be a bad photo no matter how much retouching you do. Keep in mind whenever you are taking images that skillful photography should always be your number one priority.
Retouching is something that you can do after every photoshoot but it should not be your number one priority. In fact, there are cases where retouching can ruin the original image. When taking photos, make sure that you are checking your exposure and composition before taking the shot. Making fewer changes to your original photo means you get to retain more of its original quality.
Calibrate Your Phone Settings
Before you proceed to edit, make sure that your touchscreen is properly calibrated. Doing this allows you to create more accurate modifications especially when it comes to photo retouching. More often than not, if you're using an iPhone, the display is usually accurate.
However, the iPhone 8, iPhone X, and other newer models are geared with features that can adjust the settings automatically for you. Be sure to check the color temperature and brightness of your screen because this will affect your retouching. Disable these settings to make sure that you are getting consistent and actual colors. This means that you have to turn off your smartphone’s auto-brightness setting.
You can do this by going to settings. Go to General. Look for the Accessibility Panel. Choose Display Accommodations. once you find Auto-Brightness, turn it off. Go back to Settings, then to Display and Brightness. Here you can adjust the slider to your preferred brightness setting. Keeping it in the middle or at the maximum is preferred for consistency.
You can also use a feature called True Tone which is available in newer models. It adjusts the color temperature automatically based on ambient lighting. Note that this will change your screen’s tone so you could not always get the most precise color representation during retouching. You can disable this by going to Display and Brightness and switching off True Tone.
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Use Third-Party Retouching Apps
Today, there are several third-party easy to use photo editing software available for both iPhones and Android smartphones. These retouching apps are specifically created to help with mobile phone photography here are our top recommendations.
VSCO
Snapseed
Adobe Photoshop Express / Adobe Lightroom
Apps for Adding Effects
The retouching apps we mentioned above are preferable for your standard photo retouching. But if you want options, such as adding different effects to your images, here are more photo retouching apps that we are using:
Canva
Glitchr
Mirrorlabs
Save Separate Files
One tip that we always tell our readers is to save a separate file after retouching. Make sure that you do this in order to retain your original file. By keeping the unedited image, you can work on it in the future if you decide to go for a different look.
To keep yourself organized, we also recommend using separate folders for your photos. Use one folder for unedited or original files, and another for your edited images. This will avoid any possible confusion, especially if you are taking several photos for several different projects.
Connect Your Camera to Your Phone
You can get more professional-looking images by connecting your camera to your smartphone wirelessly. This is our favorite tip to tell our readers and we think that not enough people are doing it.
By doing this sync, you allow high-quality RAW images to be transferred. This means that you can edit your images and compatible apps such as Adobe Lightroom or Snapseed.
if your camera is new, it is likely to already have wi-fi functionality. You can activate this by downloading the corresponding mobile app from your camera manufacturer. For instance, Nikon cameras have the Nikon Mobile Utility app, Canon cameras have Camera Connect, and so on.
Open the corresponding app and turn on the wi-fi of your camera. Input the password that it generates for you. Go to your phone settings. Look for the name of your camera under wi-fi and select it. Enter the password when the panel appears and tap Connect.
After connecting your devices, you can now take photos using your camera then view and edit them using your phone. If you have an older camera, don't worry because there are separate wi-fi adapters that you can purchase and connect to your DSLR. This will also allow you to connect them to your phone.
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We hope that these tips and tricks help you out in creating and retouching images that look like they’ve gone through professional photo editing.
