We’ve been consistently impressed by Apple’s iPhone 13 Pro and its great camera setup. Those three rear lenses can take stunning images that can easily rival competing flagship phones such as the Pixel 6 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. The iPhone’s powerful combo of overall image quality, software processing, and advanced features, such as Apple’s own ProRaw image format, means the iPhone 13 Pro can take stunning images you’d be forgiven for thinking on a professional-level camera Will go
But having a great camera isn’t all you need to take award-worthy pictures—it’s knowing the tricks of the trade that will make the difference between coming home with some fun photos and coming back with beautiful photos. Don’t wait to print and frame for your wall.
Here are my top tips for better images, techniques that I use every day as a professional photographer, from working with lighting through using more creative angles to my shots in editing apps. For polishing. Many of these tips will apply to any recent phone you own, including less powerful iPhone models like the iPhone 11 or 13 mini and even many Android phones, while others are more specific to the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. are those that share the same camera system.
Know when to use different lenses
It’s easy to stand in front of a picturesque scene and flick between normal, super wide, and zoomed views on a phone, but it’s more difficult to understand properly Why? One may be better than the other for a particular composition. To figure this out, you need to take an extra moment to see what’s important in the scene in front of you.
By switching to the ultrawide lens, I was able to capture this mooring rope as a foreground interest, which really ties the scene together.
Andrew Hoyle / CNET
Is there a particular subject – perhaps a statue or an impressive building – that is surrounded by many other elements, such as trees, sign posts or street lights? Here using the iPhone 13 Pro’s 3.5x telephoto zoom is a great way to isolate your subject and remove all those distractions. You may need to backtrack a bit and then zoom in to keep it in frame, but simplifying your scene like this will help your subject stand out.
But perhaps it’s those extra surrounding elements that really add to the scene and provide context as to where you are. In that case, using the standard zoom will allow you to keep those objects in the shot. Switching to Super Wide View will capture even more of the surrounding, so to keep your subject from getting lost in the frame, you might want to move closer and look at interesting foreground objects (a patch of flowers, a cool-looking rock) would like to add. To the creation
The wait till dusk for this shot really paid off with an incredibly fiery sunset.
Andrew Hoyle / CNET
come back at different times of the day
The iPhone 13 Pro’s awesome low-light prowess means you’re not limited to taking photos only in the afternoon when the sun is at its highest. Sunrise and sunset will usually be darker, but can reward you with beautiful colors in the sky and great contrast in the light being cast. Landscape photographers know that getting up early in the morning can often yield the best results and this is something that’s always worth keeping in mind if you wake up early.
It was the same scene 10 minutes ago. OK, but none of that Edinburgh sunset drama.
Andrew Hoyle / CNET
If you’re on a city holiday it’s worth trying at least one sunrise shooting, visiting the places you’ve already found and seeing how they change with different lighting. It’s what will set your images apart from the hundreds of others on Instagram who just took a picture after drinking their morning coffee.
The excellent Night Mode of the iPhone 13 Pro allowed me to capture a vibrant and sharp shot here even though it was midnight.
Andrew Hoyle / CNET
don’t be afraid of the dark
And don’t think you need to stop shooting once the lights are completely gone. The iPhone 13 Pro has one of the best night modes on any phone and can take stunning pictures in the night time. City views, with car headlights, vibrant shop window displays and even festive holiday decorations, can provide great fodder for night shots. And don’t worry if it rains – those wet roads will now reflect all that light, which can look amazing.
Check out our tutorial if you want to get even better results from your night time phone photography.
The original image on the left is a fair photo, but with a moody black and white edit it has a lot more atmosphere and works much better as a single shot.
Andrew Hoyle / CNET
Shoot in ProRaw, edit your shots later
Taking a few precautions in editing apps like Adobe Lightroom can make all the difference between an everyday photo and a beautiful piece of award-worthy art. Thankfully, Apple has made it through with the introduction of ProRaw on the previous generation of iPhones as well. ProRaw is very similar to shooting in Raw on a regular DSLR; It doesn’t save all of the image data, so you can tweak white balance and change colors more accurately after you’ve taken your shot.
It captures more detail in the shadows and highlights of your images, giving you more scope to rescue those bright skies with the Highlights slider or bring back a bit more visible detail in darker shadows. You’ll see raw button in the top corner of your screen when you’re in the camera, so make sure if you’re taking an image that you know you’ll want to polish later to keep it looking its best, it doesn’t have any lines . , You can edit JPEG images as well, it’s just that you won’t have the same level of flexibility.
I use Adobe Lightroom Mobile for most of my phone editing. It’s a professional tool and has a lot of control over color and exposure, plus syncs my images to the cloud so I can pick up my edits later on my iPad or my desktop computer. If you don’t like the monthly fee, Google’s Snapseed is free and also has tons of great features to get the best out of your shots, including a variety of film effects that give your photos some pretty color.
If you want to get a little more wild and creative, you should check out apps like Bazaart and PicsArt, which offer a variety of tools and effects to combine images to turn photos into often bizarre pieces of modern art. Huh. Take a look at my roundup of image editing apps for more ideas.
Remember that there’s no right or wrong way to edit your images, and applying creative effects doesn’t mean deleting the original file — so if you don’t like the result you can always go back and try again. can. My advice is to have a cup of tea, sit in a comfy chair and spend some time playing around with your editing app of choice and see what you can create. You might be surprised what you can come up with, even images from your gallery that you may have had a while back.
