How to take

better

smartphone pictures

Smart phone pro settings

The rule of thirds (Sarah)

A technique called “rule of thirds” is applied to drawings and paintings to make them ornamentally successful and it uses composition.

Each one of sections made by 2 vertical & 2 horizontal line are ⅓ of a picture

intersecting points are locations to place subjects

Steps to improve a composition using rule of thirds:

Crop the image down to a more horizontal composition
Layer over the picture (rule of thirds)
See where the subject and horizontal line (basically the elements) line up with the point

*if the figure is positioned with it’s body facing a certain side of the picture, allow that side of the picture plane be filled up with the background

ISO

Gyeongmin Yang

In camera, we can adjust sensitivity to light through the function named ISO. If we set high ISO, more light enters the lens and it makes the picture brighter.

Shutter speed

Jiwoo Park

Shutter speed is the setting that you can change to adjust how long it would take for the shutter to close when you take a photo. By adjusting it, you can also the control the amount of light that it captures. Slower shutter speed makes the photo brighter and faster shutter speed makes it darker. For example, if you set the shutter speed as 5 seconds in the day light, the photo will be very bright and most of the parts will show as white. However, if you set proper shutter speed, you will be able to take great photos like the one above. Also, when an object is moving really fast, it would be nice to use faster shutter speed to freeze the moment.

white balance

Hongjun An

White balance is used to adjust images to make white objects look white. We can balance the picture by adjusting Kelvin (color temperature). The higher Kelvin (3600-5500 K) appears blue, and the lower Kelvin (2700-3000 K) appears red. For example, the incandescent bulb has a 2500-3000 K and the clear autumn sky has a 8000-9000 K.

manual focus

Woojin choi

Manual focus is the process of adjusting the depth of field of camera lens to bring an image into focus without relying on an autofocus or other technical aid. Switching to manual focus can be useful in scenarios that are overwhelming to an autofocus system such as very low light, low contrast, or backlighting. It’s also useful when shooting any static situations, such as landscape photography or macro photography where precise focusing is necessary.

GIMP

GNU Image Manipulation Program

color (sarah) filter (sarah)

saturation

what it is:

a point at which some capacity is at it's fullest

This is used to adjust the saturation levels on a range of color weights for the selected area or active layer

curves

this tool is for changing the color, brightness, contrast or transparentcy of the active layer or a selection

focus blur

this is a photographic effect that places one area of an image in sharp focus while blurring the rest.

Tools (Luke)

crop

Crop tool basically removes the unwanted area of the image.

This tool is useful when you want to focus more on main things in the image.

perspective corrections

When people normally takes a picture of tall building, the sides appear to slant inward at the top due to the perspective which the picture was taken.

You can correct this with the perspective tool. This tool works with any picture with tall objects.

skin retouching (jiwoo lee)

1) heal tool

The shortcut key for the heal tool is H. Then, hold the ctrl key and click on somewhere on the image that you want to paint with. Then, paint the area you want to cover. It uses algorithms.

2) clone tool

The shortcut key for the clone tool is C. The clone tool paints the exact pixels that you copy from the source. Same as the heal tool, hold the ctrl key and click on somewhere on the image that you want to paint with. Then, paint the area you want to cover.

3) frequency separation

Using Frequency separation we can smooth out the skin tones.

4) high pass

High pass method makes the skin look softer.

5) dodge/burn tool

Using the dodge and burn tool we can contour. The shortcut key for the dodge/burn tool is Shift + D.

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