How to take awesome photos with your smartphone

The revolution of smartphone photography

I have always been a firm believer in using what you have to capture a moment. Often times, I find myself so on-the-go that I don’t even think about carrying my DSLR camera. However, this pushes me to use what I have on me 99% of the time – my iPhone X. Smartphones have come such a long way and if you own one that was created in the past 5 years, there is a great chance that you are able to capture amazing photo and video content with your smartphone device – you just have to know how to use it properly and use the right apps to maximize its capabilities.

… This is where I can help you.

Step 1: Download the Lightroom App

Go to the app store and download the app called “Lightroom”, created by Adobe. This app will unlock the true potential of your camera as it allows you to capture photos in a RAW format – a RAW file means that your photo is captured in a lossless format that has no compression; this allows you to have a much more detailed photo in comparison to a .JPG photo from the regular camera app, giving you full editing control in the post-processing phase. RAW further allows you to seamlessly recover underexposed and overexposed elements as well as recover the correct white balance (something you cannot achieve with .JPG photos taken via the stock camera app on your smartphone).

Download the app for iPhone here.

Step 2: Open Lightroom and turn on .DNG file format

- Locate and open the Lightroom App on your smartphone.

- Click on the camera button.

- Click on the DNG or JPG button at the top middle of your screen.

- Select DNG for your file format. (this is the RAW file format)

Step 3: Capturing photos

- Click on the camera button

- Choose your subject (What you would like to take a photo of)

- Compose your photo *Tip - try to align your verticals and horizontals while taking the photo to save time correcting this in the post-processing phase

- Click the circle button to take the photo (stay as still as possible when taking the shot)

Step 4: Editing photos

- Click on the “All Photos” tab

- Locate the photo that you would like to edit

- Begin editing the photo.

Color Tab: Adjust the white balance (I suggest selecting auto white balance to achieve the correct white balance; however, this is all preference!)

Click on the mix button to adjust color hues, saturation and luminance. Adjust each color to your liking. *Tip - in a bright and white space, desaturating the yellows can help eliminate the distracting yellow hues emitted from yellow lights or sunlight

Effects Tab: Adjust the texture and clarity to bring out more details in your photo

The Dehaze feature is excellent to use to eliminate haze or fogginess apparent in a photo that was taken with a lens that was not clean prior to taking the shot.

Detail Tab: Adjust the Sharpening to make your photo look sharper

Tip - I recommend setting your sharpening between 30-50 when taking a photo on a smartphone as it will appear better resemble a shot that was taken on a DLSR camera

Optics Tab: Turn on lens correction if you would like to get rid of the lens distortion

Remove chromatic aberration if you see strange purple lines that surround objects in your photo *Note - this rarely occurs with iPhones in my experience

Geometry Tab: if you captured your photo correctly in the first place, you should not touch this tab. However, this tool can help you correct your horizontals and verticals if you did not correctly capture your picture in the first place *Tip – I recommend using the Auto, Level or Vertical option.

Step 5: Exporting Photos

- Click on the share button

- Click on Save to Camera Roll

- Click on Maximum available to save as a maximum .JPG image

The photo will now be available in your camera roll and is now in a .JPG format which can be shared with your friends/family or can be posted on social media platforms.

Next steps..

Now apply what you learned from this blog, get out there and go take some awesome photos with your smartphone!

For more inspiration, here are two of my favourite photographers that use Lightroom Mobile to capture their visions:

@shortstache: https://instagram.com/shortstache?igshid=1dv3k6uwvbbb9

@benjam: https://instagram.com/benjam?igshid=ormoqm6e2lfq