What is noise?

There are many different types of noise. The most visible noise is the random variation of brightness or colour information in images. These often appear as salt and pepper specks in the shadows or as bands of shadows. Some degree of electronic noise is present in any electronic device that transmits or receives a signal. When you sharpen an image, it also sharpens the noise significantly degrading your image quality.

The other most common issue is pixelation noise and jpeg artifacts. This is due to insufficient image information/resolution for the required output. An example is cropping in tight and zooming in. It is also due to down-sampling an image or excessive editing.

Noise reduction

The process of noise reduction smooths the dots of colour and tone in your image, reducing sharpness. The goal is to reduce noise and retain as much sharpness as you can in the image.

Noise reduction trick inside Snapseed

Snapseed does not have a noise reduction tool. However, understanding the process of noise reduction, you can replicate it using the existing Details tool. We need to smooth the image while retaining as much sharpness as we can.

Locate and use the Details tool?

Noise reduction inside Adobe Lightroom

One of the great advantages of using the Sharpening tool inside Lightroom is the Masking option. You can avoid enhancing the details in the flat, smoother and darker areas of the image where the noise and artifacts like to hang out! Also within the Details section are two noise reduction tools - Noise Reduction (luminance noise) and Colour Noise Reduction.

Colour noise reduction

My editing process typically involves colour noise first. You can see this when the blotchiness has random colour. A more technical term is mottling artifacts.

Noise reduction

Now you have three sliders to balance! You will need to zoom in to see the effect of your adjustments then zoom back out again to make sure it still has a sense of realism. The Contrast slider protects the contrast in the edges of the objects in the photo. Details is adjusted to bring back details lost when adjusting the Noise Reduction slider. Again, it is a balancing act.

This video lesson is extracted from the Blurry to Tack-Sharp Photos: 4-Step System. More details on the system can be found here

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Read the full article at https://www.smartphonephotographytraining.com/editing/reduce-image-noise

There are two main reasons for a blurry photo: focus blur and motion blur which can be broken down into subject and camera movement. We are going to look at techniques and gear to stabilise and steady your mobile phone camera. This video lesson is extracted from the Blurry to Tack-Sharp Photos: 4-Step System. https://www.smartphonephotographytraining.com/blurry-to-tack-sharp-photos 

Stabilise yourself 

Do not have your outstretched arms away from your body offers the least stability. Try to tuck your elbows in by your side or rest your elbows on a table or post. Better yet, rest your smartphone on a sturdy object. 

What to look for in a tripod 

The only phone holder I recommend is the Sunwayfoto CPC-02. It is lightweight and has a dovetail Arca-Swiss style plate to attach directly to most tripods. If you are planning on using your tripod outside I would recommend investing in a quality tripod. There are several features to consider and prioritise: tripod height, size when folded, centre column, leg release mechanism, centre column removal as a selfie stick and the quality feel of the product. My personal preference out of the 8 tripods I own for smartphone photography is by far the MeFOTO Air range. 

What if you cannot hold your smartphone still? 

You may be hanging on the back of a speed boat or riding on a very bumpy tram - who knows! What if you cannot hold your camera still and the lighting conditions create a blurred image? You can take manual control of the camera ISO and shutter to make it work faster. 

This video lesson is extracted from the Blurry to Tack-Sharp Photos: 4-Step System. More details on the system can be found here

・・・

Take the14-Day Photo Creativity Challenge to quickly unleash your photo creativity through daily project-based learning: bit.ly/3aBXPhy

・・・

FREE membership – full access to the community forum, unlocked tutorials, downloadable PDFs and 5-part video series: bit.ly/sptgetstarted

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Read the full article at https://www.smartphonephotographytraining.com/capturing-photos/stabilize-phone

Sharpening and adding detail to your photos can make it look like you have had a phone upgrade. Using the various Snapseed sharpening options can make it pop and jump off the screen. 

1. Tonal Contrast

Firstly, what is contrast? If you increase contrast, you are increasing the difference between two things. When you have a line in your photo, either side of the edge of that line is brightened and darkened to increase the perception of sharpness. Tap on the Edit pencil icon, then Tonal Contrast. Tap on Adjust to reveal the submenu or swipe up and down on the screen.

High, mid and low tones. Editing the mid and low tones are where you will notice the strongest effect.

2. Details tool

This tool sharpens the whole photo. Tap on the Pencil edit icon > Details. Next, tap on Adjust to reveal two options: Structure and Sharpening. Structure – applies the sharpening to the areas where there is evident contrast. It will make the darker side of a contrasting edge darker and the light section of an edge lighter. Sharpening – indiscriminately sharpens every single pixel (dot) in the image. 

3. Selective Tool

This is my favourite tool to apply strong sharpening in very specific parts of the photo. After opening your photo, go to the Pencil edit icon > Details. Tap on the + symbol and tap on the photo. Pinch and zoom to increase/decrease the selection of surrounding pixels. Swipe up and down to access Structure.

4. Stacks (layers) and Masking

To access the Layers, tap on the icon on the top right side that resembles an undo arrow atop two stacked tiles. Next, tap View edits to reveal a 'Stack' of each adjustment made. Tap on a previous adjustment to reveal a fly-out menu of a bin icon to delete and adjust icons to refine the edit. 

What is masking? When you make an adjustment, the new version of the image is stacked on top of the previous version, hiding the previous layer. Masking is the process of selectively revealing and/or hiding parts or all of the previous layer. The benefit of masking is we can specifically apply varying strength of ANY editing tool to exactly where you want. 

Summary 

When sharpening my photos, my typical workflow involves Tonal Contrast to add some depth to the mid-tones. Next, Details add sharpness to the whole photo. The Selective tool adds heavy sharpening to specific areas of the photo. Lastly, I will use the Stacks and Masking option to apply more controlled sharpening over specific areas of the photo. 

This video lesson is extracted from the Blurry to Tack-Sharp Photos: 4-Step System. More details on the system can be found here

・・・

Take the14-Day Photo Creativity Challenge to quickly unleash your photo creativity through daily project-based learning: bit.ly/3aBXPhy

・・・

FREE membership – full access to the community forum, unlocked tutorials, downloadable PDFs and 5-part video series: bit.ly/sptgetstarted

・・・

Smartphone photography gear: Struman Optics lens accessories and tripods: bit.ly/3gv9JuC

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Accelerate your learning. Join the Live 6-week small group program: Smartphone Photography Transformation: 5-Step System: bit.ly/sptspt

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Be passionate, Be creative and Stay curious

- Mike

Read the full article at https://www.smartphonephotographytraining.com/editing/snapseed-sharpening

Photo distortion can leave you disappointed with your photography and blaming your Android or iPhone camera. Typical distortion attributes to a recognisable smartphone photo... especially indoors and architecture photos.

Barrel lens distortion

The barrel distortion becomes quite noticeable when you add a wide-angle lens attachment to the phone. Your smartphone is designed to gather and process the information from the field of view of the standard built-in lens. When we attach a wide-angle lens to the phone, it needs to squeeze that extra context onto the same image sensor.

Pincushion lens distortion

Opposite to barrel, straight lines curve inward from the edges looking squashed in the middle of the photo! This distortion is more found in zoom lenses. Zoom lenses increase magnification from the centre to the edges.

Fix or introduce lens distortion using SKWRT app

SKRWT app corrects and introduces different types of distortion is all it does and it does it well.

Perspective Distortion

Objects further away appear smaller. This is even more so when you have a wide-angle lens on your smartphone camera. You have likely seen a beautiful sunset and raised your phone in excitement to be disappointed that the sunset is tiny on your screen!

Distance to subject distortion

Have you noticed that if you hold the phone close to a person’s face, their ears look smaller and appear to move around behind their head? Their nose is closer to the lens looking unflattering larger.

What is angle perspective distortion?

You have seen those roads or train track photos highlighting the converging lines. This is even more emphasized when you shoot from a lower angle! Standing at the bottom of a building the walls taper and look narrow the further away the roof is.

Fix or introduce perspective distortion using apps

My favourite apps for correcting perspective distortion is the Perspective tool inside Snapseed. You have several options: Tilt, Rotate, Scale and Free. Another app for fixing perspective is the paid option of Geometry tool in Adobe Lightroom mobile. Using the guided tool place a reference straight line and the software warps the photo to change the vertical and horizontal perspectives.

・・・

Take the14-Day Photo Creativity Challenge to quickly unleash your photo creativity through daily project-based learning: bit.ly/3aBXPhy

・・・

FREE membership – full access to the community forum, unlocked tutorials, downloadable PDFs and 5-part video series: bit.ly/sptgetstarted

・・・

Smartphone photography gear: Struman Optics lens accessories and tripods: bit.ly/3gv9JuC

・・・

Accelerate your learning. Join the Live 6-week small group program: Smartphone Photography Transformation: 5-Step System: bit.ly/sptspt

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Be passionate, Be creative and Stay curious

- Mike

Read the full article at https://www.smartphonephotographytraining.com/composition/photo-distortion

What are photography apps?

Apps are provided by third-party developers who use the phone operating system and hardware of your phone. Apple developers can access the operating system architecture through the AVFoundation Capture subsystem. Using this 'Application Program Interface (API) and Swift coding, apps provide a custom User Interface (UI). These apps give you more manual control over the photo and video capture (focus, exposure, etc), photo processing, synthesising, controlling, importing and exporting.

The best example of an all-encompassing photography app is Adobe Lightroom mobile app. It is a camera replacement app and photo editor all in one. It provides full manual control of the camera and familiar Lightroom editing tools right there on your smartphone!

Why stay informed of updates to your photography apps?

Our photography apps are constantly being updated. You may have noticed that each time a developers releases an update, most of them provide a little blurb of what was included in the update. This is an amazing opportunity to stay informed of the latest news and developments in all your favourite photography apps.

At the time of recording the above podcast episode, there were interesting update descriptions for the Adobe Photoshop Express app  (local adjustments) and Lightroom app (colour toning).

Why do you need to keep apps updated?

The Android and iOS operating systems regularly patch security and other issues. Now and again they have major releases that affect the API to developers. You will notice each time this happens, it seems that every app on your smartphone requires an update.

How do you manually update your photo apps?

By default, your smartphone updates apps automatically in the background. As discussed, my preference is to manually update the photography apps on my smartphone. I cannot explain every phone model menu, so I will attempt to explain what to look for. Our phone settings are also getting more complicated as they get updated. I find the best way to find a tool or setting is to use the search function. Type in the word 'Update'. You are looking for App Update or similar, then Automatic Downloads.

See what's new in your existing apps

The other option to learn new features of your photography apps is often within the app itself. Many apps have a What's New section in the settings. In this section, you can see the update release date and their attention to bug fixes and new features. In here you can also see how regularly they update the app. Developers who regularly update their apps is one of my selection criteria in apps that I use and recommend.

・・・

FREE membership – full access to the community forum, unlocked tutorials, downloadable PDFs and 5-part video series: bit.ly/sptgetstarted

・・・

Smartphone photography gear: Struman Optics lens accessories and tripods: bit.ly/3gv9JuC

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Accelerate your learning. Join the Live 6-week small group program: Smartphone Photography Transformation: 5-Step System: bit.ly/sptspt

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Be passionate, Be creative and Stay curious

- Mike

Read the full article at https://www.smartphonephotographytraining.com/podcast/app-updates

Also known as Dutch tilt, canted angle, or oblique angle. It is basically, an intentionally crooked photo. The keyword there is intentional. It cannot be slightly crooked, because it looks like you just held the smartphone at an angle. You do not want horizons looking slightly tilted. The Dutch angle is more intentional and exaggerated for a creative effect. You can achieve this at capture by angling your smartphone or easily in mobile editing.

This technique is common in cinema cinematography for the dramatic effect. It helps to portray movement and/or introduce some unease and disorientation for that desperate or frantic action scene.

Why and when?

If like me, you struggle with creativity, this is a simple technique that will make even the most mundane look interesting. An angled photo has more diagonal lines adding more energy by introducing the perception of movement.

As you know, the composition is how you position the main subject and other elements within the frame and how they all interact with each other. So if you've got a photo that just has lots of vertical and horizontal lines. It can be static. The viewer's attention can follow up and down or left and right. Rotating the photo turns these lines into more dynamic diagonal lines guiding the viewer through the photo.

This technique does not work on every photo. Dutching the photo can have compositional implications on the rest of the photo. The visual weight of different elements changes when placed higher or lower on either side of the frame. The subject and element emphasis might become something else. The space around the main subject completely changes when you change the angle. It is important to have active space in front of the subject in the frame.

How

It can be a lot of fun to play around intentionally angling straight lines. It is an easy process to hold on either end of your smartphone in a horizontal position, then lift either hand to angle the phone. It can be hard to imagine what an angled photo will look like without looking at the screen. You may need to tilt your head with the camera to see the screen. You have my permission to try this and look weird!

The preference is to consider the Dutch angle at the time of capture. When editing the photo and rotating it, the editor will inevitably zoom in and crop much of the photo.

Most smartphone inbuilt editors have a rotate option. Some are located in the crop tool. Most have a very limited amount of straightening adjustment which may not suit the purpose of creating a Dutch angle.

The app and tool that I use to introduce the Dutch angle is the Perspective tool inside Snapseed. It is amazing! Most rotation tools will zoom in and crop the photo. The Perspective tool has a Rotate option. It copies what is inside the edges of the frame and adds it to the outside corners, minimising how much of the photo is cropped and removed. It is easier to watch this tool in action.

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FREE membership – full access to the community forum, unlocked tutorials, downloadable PDFs and 5-part video series: bit.ly/sptgetstarted

・・・

Smartphone photography gear: Struman Optics lens accessories and tripods: bit.ly/3gv9JuC

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Accelerate your learning. Join the Live 6-week small group program: Smartphone Photography Transformation: 5-Step System: bit.ly/sptspt

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Be passionate, Be creative and Stay curious

- Mike

Read the full article at https://www.smartphonephotographytraining.com/composition/dutch-angle

My process as a camera club monthly photo competition judge

Have you participated in a photo contest or a monthly photo competition and wondered how the judge assesses the images? In this podcast video, I unveil the mystery and explain my process.

Entering a photo competition or a camera club monthly photo competition is a great way to have your work recognised and more importantly, receive some educated and experienced feedback from someone impartial.

As a smartphone photographer educator, I often deliver presentations and workshops at camera clubs. I also have the absolute privilege of judging monthly photo competitions – either for a smartphone category or open theme.

I am acutely aware that I come with prejudices and that my assessments, interpretations and assertions are subjective.

Initial Formulated Sorting Process

I have broken assessments into 5 main stages of image creation with the potential to score 15 points.

Intention – 3 points

Composition – 3 points

Lighting – 3 points

Equipment – 2 point

Editing – 4 points

1. Intention

Whenever you lift your smartphone to take a photo – take a moment to pause and think about what motivated me to take this photo?

2. Composition

This refers to the structure of the photo – positioning the main subject and different elements and how they all interact with each other to direct and hold the attention of the viewer.

3. Lighting

This is very under-rated in photography. The light direction, quality and quantity can really add to the intention of the image.

4. Equipment

Knowing how to get more out of your iPhone or Android camera, all the features of your camera and camera replacement apps and accessories for your smartphone can really extend the capability of your photographic tool.

5. Editing

As much as I am an absolute advocate for editing every image – I also scrutinize it for it being over-done. Unnatural colours, unrealistic lighting, awkwardly cut-off objects and balance and visual tension can create a visual irritation for the viewer.

Deciding placements and feedback

For each image – I document one or two positive observations that really work in the image and one or two considerations pivoted around the five stages of a great image, listed above. The most common suggestions are a re-crop to focus more on the subject and editing suggestions to make the intention of the image stand out further.

・・・

Take the14-Day Photo Creativity Challenge to quickly unleash your photo creativity through daily project-based learning: bit.ly/3aBXPhy

・・・

FREE membership – full access to the community forum, unlocked tutorials, downloadable PDFs and 5-part video series: bit.ly/sptgetstarted

・・・

Smartphone photography gear: Struman Optics lens accessories and tripods: bit.ly/3gv9JuC

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Accelerate your learning. Join the Live 6-week small group program: Smartphone Photography Transformation: 5-Step System: bit.ly/sptspt

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Be passionate, Be creative and Stay curious

- Mike

Read the full article at https://www.smartphonephotographytraining.com/capturing-photos/camera-club-photo-competition-judge

Here's the list:

Have you noticed that the most professional looking images are ‘clean,’ distraction-free? A photo without a clear subject divides your attention and causes confusion.

The first step to isolating the subject is identifying your photographic intention. Once, you recognise your motivation for capturing the photo, you will attempt to make it stand out to the viewer.

There are many techniques to isolate the subject. You can remove background clutter from the frame before capture, or in editing!

If you do not have control over the background, you can blur it. A blurred background will contrast against the sharp detail of the subject.

You can isolate the subject against the sky by shooting from a low angle. Other options to contrast the subject, could be the positioning in front of a simple, single colour or texture background.

Contrast colour or lighting by darkening the background or adding a spotlight on the subject can make it isolated and stand out.

・・・

Take the14-Day Photo Creativity Challenge to quickly unleash your photo creativity through daily project-based learning: bit.ly/3aBXPhy

・・・

FREE membership – full access to the community forum, unlocked tutorials, downloadable PDFs and 5-part video series: bit.ly/sptgetstarted

・・・

Smartphone photography gear: Struman Optics lens accessories and tripods: bit.ly/3gv9JuC

・・・

Accelerate your learning. Join the Live 6-week small group program: Smartphone Photography Transformation: 5-Step System: bit.ly/sptspt

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Be passionate, Be creative and Stay curious

- Mike

Read the full article at https://www.smartphonephotographytraining.com/composition/isolate-the-subject

Identifying other reasons for improving and learning photography may help to realise new motivations to get out there and develop a little each day.

You are a photo enthusiast who loves to capture photos and create your favourite photos. Taking the step to learn photography brings you so much joy, love for life and transferrable skills to other arts and hobbies, even travel.

Photography is therapy and a distraction for many of us in this busy, crazy world we live in. Committing to study photography, you will further love the creative process and your results.

It took me too long to go discuss all 88 reasons identified, so I split the episode to deliver it to you into two parts. In this episode, I discuss each of the reasons from 37 to 88.

・・・

Take the14-Day Photo Creativity Challenge to quickly unleash your photo creativity through daily project-based learning: bit.ly/3aBXPhy

・・・

FREE membership – full access to the community forum, unlocked tutorials, downloadable PDFs and 5-part video series: bit.ly/sptgetstarted

・・・

Smartphone photography gear: Struman Optics lens accessories and tripods: bit.ly/3gv9JuC

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Accelerate your learning. Join the Live 6-week small group program: Smartphone Photography Transformation: 5-Step System: bit.ly/sptspt

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Be passionate, Be creative and Stay curious

- Mike

Identifying other reasons for improving and learning photography may help to realise new motivations to get out there and develop a little each day.

You are a photo enthusiast who loves to capture photos and create your favourite photos. Taking the step to learn photography brings you so much joy, love for life and transferrable skills to other arts and hobbies, even travel.

Photography is therapy and a distraction for many of us in this busy, crazy world we live in. Committing to study photography, you will further love the creative process and your results.

It took me too long to go discuss all 88 reasons identified, so I split the episode to deliver it to you into two parts. In this episode, I discuss each of the first 36 reasons. 

・・・

Take the14-Day Photo Creativity Challenge to quickly unleash your photo creativity through daily project-based learning: bit.ly/3aBXPhy

・・・

FREE membership – full access to the community forum, unlocked tutorials, downloadable PDFs and 5-part video series: bit.ly/sptgetstarted

・・・

Smartphone photography gear: Struman Optics lens accessories and tripods: bit.ly/3gv9JuC

・・・

Accelerate your learning. Join the Live 6-week small group program: Smartphone Photography Transformation: 5-Step System: bit.ly/sptspt

・・・

Join the email list to stay up to date on the latest articles and tutorials: bit.ly/sptemail

Be passionate, Be creative and Stay curious

- Mike