5 Simple Tips to Improve Photo Quality with Your iPhone

Thanks to its portability and advanced technology, the iPhone has become an indispensable tool for photography enthusiasts and professionals. In this article, we review 5 very simple tips that will help us significantly improve the quality and creativity of our photos.

Smart use of formats: RAW for details, HEIC for efficiency
The file format we choose can significantly affect the final result of a photo. By default, iPhone uses the HEIF (High Efficiency Image File) format, which optimizes space without compromising too much on quality. However, for moments when there is plenty of light and we want to capture all possible details for later editing, switching to RAW is a better option. This format preserves all the information captured by the camera’s sensor and gives us unparalleled freedom in post-production.

Using RAW in good light and HEIC in bad light helps us maintain a balance between quality and file size. By enabling the option in Settings > Camera > ProRAW, we can switch between the two formats from the same camera app.

Custom Photography Styles
Photography styles allow us to predefine the look of our photos before we take them. Unlike traditional filters, these styles adjust the photo while respecting skin tones and ensuring that colors are naturally represented, while making creative changes to the rest of the image.

To access them, simply touch the arrow in the top center of the Camera app to expand the options, then select the one that looks like three overlapping squares. The selected style will remain until we manually deactivate it for greater convenience throughout the shoot, and we can also customize its hue and warmth to our liking to ensure that each photo captures exactly the vibe we want.

Exposure and focus lock
For more creative shots, Exposure and Focus Lock (AE/AF Lock) gives us precise control over the lighting and sharpness of the image. This technique is especially useful for creating effects such as contrasting light and dark or bokeh, capturing details in difficult lighting conditions, or maintaining focus on a specific subject even if we change the composition of the photo, giving us complete control over the final look of the photo.

We simply hold down the point on the screen we want to focus on for a few seconds until we see the lock indicator. This not only fixes the focus, but also the exposure, allowing us to adjust the exposure by sliding our finger up or down.

Multi-Pose Panorama Trick
An unconventional but fascinating technique is to creatively use the panorama feature to create multi-pose images. This means that you can take “partial” panoramic photos with a steady hand and end up seeing the same person in various poses in one photo. This technique plays with perspective and composition to create surprising visual effects that appear to be edited or generated by artificial intelligence, but are actually the result of clever use of iPhone features.

This video from Huelya on X shows us how to make the most of multiple poses and vertical panoramas.

Vertical Panorama

Finally, changing the orientation of a panorama to vertical can open up a new world of possibilities, especially for capturing high-rise urban or natural landscapes. This perspective can provide a more vivid and complete view of scenes that would otherwise be difficult to encapsulate in a single image.

These tips will allow us to improve the technical quality of our photos and explore new forms of creative expression using iPhone to give our photos greater visual impact.