How To Handle Flowers With Care
Follow these steps to edit your photos like a pro.
Whether you’re astounded by the simple beauty of a bouquet, or stunned by the complexity of showy wildflowers bursting with color in a field, and the only camera you have with you is on your iPhone (thus, the best camera to use), you can get spectacular results. Handle your flowers carefully by just following these simple shooting and editing steps:
- Before you shoot, tap the area of interest on your iPhone screen, to get an auto-adjustment for the proper exposure and focus.
- Shoot several pictures. You can keep pressing the shoot button to get a series of them (handy if your target is blowing in the breeze). What have you got to lose?
- To determine the best image before you edit, wait to examine your photos indoors on a larger screen, like your iPad or computer.
Pro Tip: Don’t edit on your iPhone, unless you must. Bigger is better.
- Edit with apps like Google Snapseed (free) or Photo fx Ultra on your iPad, or on your computer with Adobe Lightroom or other full-scale editing software.
- Start your edit by select your best image(s).
- Crop and straighten the selected photo. Pay attention to horizon lines to straighten your image; nothing is more distracting than a crooked photo.
- Adjust the exposure, the brightness, the contrast as needed; notice what happens to shadows and highlights as you make the edits.
- Increase or decrease the color saturation and watch how details disappear or pop.
- Enlarge your image to see how much photo sharpening it can handle. Aim for a crisper, cleaner look—a little bit goes a long way.
- Finally, apply filters, like the vignette I applied (above) to blur and soften the outer edges, bringing the focus smack into the unique center of the bouquet.
Below, the bouquet, before straightening, cropping and applying filters:
Editing doesn’t have to take long. Or it can. It all depends on what your image looks like when you start, and how much you enjoy the process. But even a minute amount of editing will improve your final image.
Give some thought to your photo’s final destination before you select, and edit. That will determine how you apply many of your edits.
Once you’ve done a few edits, you’ll discover some new tricks to use. Pretty soon, your images will look like they’ve been handled with care, and the entire process will become care-free. ♣
What iPhone editing tips can you share?
There are plenty more iPhoneography tips and tricks HERE. For a comparison of how the iPhone 6s camera shoots versus the iPhone 5s camera, see Four Things I Learned About Change From The iPhone 6s.
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I agree that editing on your computer vs. the Smartphone is definitely a better process. The big screen is necessary to really see the image.
Thanks, Sally, that might be the best tip ever, eh?
I agree.
And a great way to see the flaws you shot in the first place, too!
I’m learning how to use Pxlr photo editing. It seems a bit complicated. I edit on my phone but check to see on my computer if it looks okay or not. Carefully editing is correct. 🙂
Good for you. There are so many ways to edit; what’s important is that you do so! Thanks for visiting.
Yes, bigger is certainly better when editing. I generally just use Picasa 3, as that’s what I have on my laptop, but I think I need to branch out and up so I can do more. Having editing apps on my phone is mostly a waste of space, now that I think about it. I think I’ll leave them on my iPad and clear out space on my phone, as all my phone photos are shared with my iPad anyway.
It’s amazing what a difference in lighting tapping in different places on the phone can make!! Also, the phone often does an HDR edit on its own, so you have two sometimes very different choices right away.
Lovely flowers, BTW. 🙂
janet
Great compromise, Janet, on keeping your edit apps only on your iPad. I do that too, mostly. There are times when you want to share your iPhone shot asap, and you will need an editing app at the ready. Appreciate your comments here. I have my HDR set to be permanently on; I’ve never bothered to save both images (takes up more space) since the HDR shots are superior (IMO).
Wow! What a treasure trove of great information….Thank you. As a writer – rarely a photographer, I love Pixabay and Free Range Stock for free photos and I love Picmonkey for simple, instant gratification editing…Vanishing Austin is a brilliant idea. Brava, Jann.
Appreciate your enthusiasm for my posts, Page, thanks! Your stock suggestions and online editor are great, for folks who don’t want to mess with Lightroom and design software. Even I don’t, sometimes, but I like it all. Canva.com is another great tool for design/stock/editing.
I tend to do some editing on the phone, but then send it over to my computer and take it from there. I usually use PicMonkey (free). Your flowers look beautiful!
That works, too. I don’t do too much on my iPhone, mainly because every save of a JPEG throws away pixels. I’d rather keep ’em all to push around on the big screen. Thanks for visiting and sharing your approach, Angeline 😀
Thanks. I’ve just been using the built in Mac Photo app. Might have to branch out a bit. Cheers —