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Colour casts, missing detail and composition

Like most cameras, the iPhone Camera app can automatically set shutter, aperture and ISO to capture detail in a subject’s shadows, midtones and highlights. Most iPhones have an HDR mode that snaps three consecutive exposures which are automatically merged into a single shot that displays detail throughout the entire tonal range. You can also manually set an exposure by tapping on the sky to capture detail in the brighter areas and then fine-tune the exposure by dragging the sun icon downwards.

Despite your best efforts to sort these issues, a scene may still be over- or underexposed in certain areas and will require a bit of editing. We’ll look at how to tackle problem tones in the Fix Exposure Issues walkthrough on p26.

The human eye sees true colours in a range of different lighting scenarios. However, to a digital camera daylight can look cold (blue) and indoor light can look warm (orange) due to differences in the colour temperature of light. Digital cameras, such as your iPhone, perform an Auto White Balance (AWB) operation that cools down or warms up a shot to capture accurate colours. Check out our Colour Correction walkthrough to remove cold or warm colour casts using the Photos app’s digital darkroom tools.

File formats

A key thing to consider is the format of the photos that you’re capturing as this will affect the quality of your images, especially if you plan to edit them. If you go to the iPhone’s Settings menu and tap Formats then you can choose High Efficiency or Most Compatible. The High Efficiency option creates a smaller HEIC image file that takes up less space on your iPhone. However, an HEIC image contains less tonal detail and colour

1 Auto

Clicking the Light panel’s Auto button is a good place to start as it analyses the selected photo’s tones and then alters multiple sliders to create a more well-exposed image. You can then drag this bar left or right to fine-tune the auto results.

2 Brilliance

This powerful slider offers a quick exposure fix as it brightens underexposed darker areas while simultaneously darkening overexposed lighter ones, revealing more detail in both the shadows and the highlights.

3 Colour

Create more vibrant-looking colours by pushing Saturation right. You can also counteract warm or cold colour casts with the Cast slider.

4 Portrait

When working with Portrait mode pictures click here to adjust the aperture setting used to capture the shot. This lets you make the background look more or less blurry.

5 Crop

Click here to access tools that enable you to create a more considered composition (see more below).

information compared to the larger JPEG format file that is captured using the Most Compatible option.

The adjusted areas of an HEIC shot may feature more noticeable compression artefacts (such as jagged bands of pixels instead of smooth graduated tones).

Raw files

Digital SLR users have the option to capture images as JPEG or Raw format files. A JPEG is a compressed file, so it lacks certain information about a scene’s colours and tones. A Raw file is uncompressed, so it is packed full of data that the Photos app can use to restore missing tonal details without adding compression artefacts.

By using third-party camera apps, such as Firstlight, you can capture images as uncompressed Raw files on your iPhone. These files are saved as .DNG (Digital Negative) files. The only downside to Raw files is that they take up more storage space than JPEG or HEIC files.

When it comes to improving colour, tone and composition you can relax in the knowledge that your edits in Photos are non-destructive. You can return a shot to its original look at any time. Simply choose Edit and then choose Revert (on the iPhone) or Revert to Original on the Mac.