5 smartphone settings to tweak before posting photos on social networks

Nowadays, most people take photos on their smartphones, many of us do not use dedicated cameras but instead use smartphone cameras. 

5 smartphone photo settings to adjust

There are dozens of edits you can make to photos on your smartphone before posting them online. However, there are a small number of necessary adjustments that everyone should make to each photo.

Before you start adjusting individual settings, the first thing to do is check out the suggestions that Google Photos provides. Try out the suggested edits for size and see if they improve the photo to the standard you desire. Even with the recommendations in place, some minor adjustments can still be made.

The same goes for the filters that most photo apps offer these days. Instagram also offers many good filters. With Google Photos, you can try each filter without applying it permanently. And as long as you keep an eye on these, you'll be able to spot what works and what doesn't. And even once a filter has been applied, you can still adjust individual settings.

Crop images to improve composition

The first thing to adjust is the shape and size of the photo. To do that, you need to use the Crop tool. This allows cropping the image to exactly what you want, meaning you can fill the frame, remove extraneous elements that add nothing to the image, and improve the overall composition.

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For example, suppose the original image has leading lines (leading layout), but does not have lines that extend to the edge of the image. A little cropping can fix this, helping to draw the viewer's eye with leading lines that start at the corners and work towards the subject.

Adjust brightness to improve visibility

Next is the brightness level of the image, increasing or decreasing depending on the content being captured. Even if the original photo's brightness doesn't need fixing, you may want to increase or decrease the brightness to affect the mood of the photo.

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If the original photo was taken in very dark conditions, increasing the brightness may help show details more clearly. Similarly, if the original photo was taken in bright sunlight, reducing the brightness can help balance the image.

Fine-tune contrast to create balance

Next is tweaking the contrast, and this is an important setting to change the highlights, shadows, colors, and clarity of the image. As the name suggests, contrast refers to the difference between light pixels and dark pixels.

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Adjusting contrast can increase visible detail, making the picture more vivid, or mute the sound to make the picture quieter and softer. While most of us want our photos to appear on social media, sometimes toning things down can result in a better image.

Adjust saturation to change intensity

Next, saturation should be adjusted to affect the color intensity in the image. In short, saturation refers to the vividness of colors in an image.

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Adjust the saturation to low, the color will be reduced in hue. Adjust the saturation to increase, the colors will be brighter and richer. This can be based on personal preference or the theme of an individual image.

Increase or decrease the warmth to change the mood

Last but not least, it is necessary to adjust the warmth of the photo. Increase or decrease the warmth depending on the subject and context. Warm colors can really change the mood of a photo.

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The right amount of warmth will depend on how you feel to the viewer of your photo. Increasing the warmth will make people feel warm, while decreasing the warmth will make the photo look cold and icy.

Lesley Montoya

Update 21 June 2024