Portrait Photography: Capturing Stunning Portraits with a Smartphone

Why Your Smartphone is a Portrait Powerhouse

Gone are the days when capturing a professional-looking portrait required a bulky DSLR camera and a bag full of expensive lenses. The powerful computer in your pocket is now one of the most capable and versatile cameras you can own. Thanks to incredible leaps in hardware and, more importantly, software, your smartphone is perfectly equipped to create stunning, memorable portraits.

The Convenience Factor: Always in Your Pocket

The old adage, “the best camera is the one you have with you,” has never been more true. The sheer convenience of a smartphone is its greatest strength. A fleeting smile, a perfect laugh, or the beautiful light of a sunset only lasts for a moment. Having a high-quality camera ready to go at a moment’s notice means you can capture these spontaneous, authentic expressions without the friction of setting up dedicated gear. This accessibility empowers you to practice your photography skills anywhere, turning everyday moments into portrait opportunities.

How Computational Photography Changed the Game

What truly elevates modern smartphone cameras is computational photography. This is the magic happening behind the scenes, where your phone’s powerful processor uses intelligent software to analyze and enhance images in ways traditional cameras can’t. It’s not just about the lens; it’s about the brain behind it.

• Software-driven image processing: The instant you press the shutter button, your phone captures multiple frames at different settings. It then merges the best parts of each—reducing noise, sharpening details, and optimizing color and light—to produce a single, high-quality image.
• Simulating professional camera effects: Sophisticated algorithms can now replicate effects that once required expensive equipment. The most famous example is the beautiful background blur (or ‘bokeh’) that makes a subject pop, an effect we’ll explore in-depth with Portrait Mode.
• HDR, Night Mode, and Portrait Mode explained: These common features are prime examples of computational photography at work. HDR (High Dynamic Range) blends several shots to ensure both the bright sky and the shadowy areas of your portrait are properly exposed. Night Mode stacks multiple images to create bright, clear photos in near darkness. And Portrait Mode uses depth-sensing technology and AI to separate your subject from the background, artfully blurring the latter.

Understanding Your Phone’s Lenses

Most modern smartphones come with a multi-lens system, giving you a toolkit for different scenarios. Knowing which lens to use is key to improving your portraits.

• The standard wide lens: This is your default, all-purpose camera (often labeled ‘1x’). It’s great for general use and environmental portraits where you want to include some of the background. However, if you get too close to your subject’s face, it can cause slight distortion.
• The telephoto lens for better portraits: If your phone has a telephoto lens (often ‘2x’, ‘3x’, or ‘5x’), it should be your go-to for classic headshots. This lens provides optical zoom, meaning it gets you closer without sacrificing quality. More importantly, it allows you to stand further back from your subject while still filling the frame with their face. This increased distance compresses perspective and dramatically reduces facial distortion, resulting in far more flattering and natural-looking proportions. A wide lens used up close can make a nose look larger and stretch facial features, while a telephoto lens renders them more accurately, just as our eyes see them.
• The ultra-wide lens (and when to avoid it for portraits): The ultra-wide lens (‘0.5x’ or ‘0.6x’) is fantastic for sweeping landscapes and large group shots. However, you should almost always avoid it for traditional portraits. The extreme field of view creates significant distortion, especially near the edges of the frame, which will stretch and warp your subject’s features in a very unflattering way. The only exception is for highly stylized, creative shots where the subject is a small part of a grand, dramatic scene.

The Foundations: Mastering Light and Composition

Before you even think about tapping the shutter button or opening an editing app, the two most critical elements of a great portrait are already at play: light and composition. Mastering these fundamentals will elevate your smartphone photos from simple snapshots to compelling portraits, regardless of the phone you use.

Finding and Using Great Light

Photography is, quite literally, “drawing with light.” Understanding how to find and manipulate light is the single most important skill you can develop. Fortunately, the best light is often free and readily available.

Natural Light is Your Best Friend

The sun is the ultimate light source, but its quality changes dramatically throughout the day. Your goal is to find soft, diffused light that wraps gently around your subject’s face, minimizing harsh shadows and flattering their features. You can learn more about this in our guide on how to take portraits of people in natural light when you travel.

• The magic of Golden Hour: This is the period shortly after sunrise and before sunset. The sun is low in the sky, casting a soft, warm, and incredibly flattering golden glow. Shadows are long and gentle, creating a beautiful sense of depth and dimension. It’s almost impossible to take a bad portrait during Golden Hour.
• Using open shade for even, flattering skin tones: In the middle of a bright, sunny day, direct sunlight is your enemy. It creates harsh, dark shadows and causes people to squint. The solution is to find “open shade.” This is a shady area, like under a large tree or on the side of a building, that is still illuminated by the bright, open sky. This creates a giant, soft light source that produces even lighting and beautiful skin tones without the harshness of direct sun.
• Harnessing window light for dramatic indoor portraits: When shooting indoors, a window is your best friend. Position your subject facing a large window (with the light source off to the side or in front of them, not behind). The window acts like a professional softbox, creating a soft, directional light that can be used for everything from bright and airy portraits to moody, dramatic shots with deep shadows. This is a key technique in mobile photography.

Artificial Light to Avoid (and How to Fix It)

Sometimes you have no choice but to shoot indoors or at night. This is where things can get tricky, and where the most common smartphone photography mistakes are made.

• Why the built-in flash often creates harsh results: The tiny LED flash on your phone is a small, direct, and frontal light source. When it fires, it blasts your subject with harsh light, creating unflattering shiny spots on the skin, eliminating all natural shadows (which give a face its shape), and often causing the dreaded “red-eye” effect. Avoid it whenever possible.
• Finding ambient light sources indoors: Instead of using the flash, look for existing light in the room. This is called ambient light. A stylish table lamp, the glow from a storefront window, or even the soft light from a television screen can be used as your main light source. These sources are often warmer and more interesting, adding mood and context to your portrait. Simply move your subject closer to one of these sources to illuminate them properly. Experimenting with light is part of creative lighting techniques.

Composing Your Portrait Like a Pro

Composition is the art of arranging the elements within your frame to create a balanced, engaging, and visually appealing image. Strong composition guides the viewer’s eye directly to your subject.

The Rule of Thirds for Dynamic Shots

The most fundamental rule of composition is the Rule of Thirds. Imagine your screen is divided into nine equal segments by two horizontal and two vertical lines. The rule suggests that placing key elements of your scene along these lines, or at the points where they intersect, creates a more energetic and interesting photo than simply centering the subject.

• Enabling the grid on your phone’s camera: The first step is to turn on the grid display in your phone’s camera settings. This will overlay the Rule of Thirds grid directly on your screen, making it easy to compose your shots.
• Placing your subject’s eyes on an intersection point: For portraits, try placing your subject off-center along one of the vertical lines. A powerful technique is to align their dominant eye directly on one of the top intersection points. This creates a natural focal point and a more dynamic composition. It’s a great way to enhance creative mobile photography compositions.

Framing, Angles, and Perspective

How you position your camera relative to your subject can dramatically change the mood and message of your portrait.

• Shooting from eye-level for a direct connection: The most common and effective angle for a standard portrait is eye-level. This creates a sense of direct connection and intimacy, as if the viewer is in the room with the subject. It’s a neutral, honest perspective.
• Using a lower angle for a powerful, heroic feel: Shooting from a slightly lower angle and looking up at your subject can make them appear more powerful, confident, and important. This “hero” angle is great for creating a sense of strength and stature.
• Finding natural frames: Look for elements in the environment that can create a “frame within a frame” around your subject. Shooting through a doorway, an archway, between tree branches, or over someone’s shoulder adds depth and context, drawing the viewer’s eye right where you want it. This is a useful tip for travel photography.

Choosing a Background that Elevates Your Subject

The background is not just what’s behind your subject; it’s a critical part of the story. A good background supports the portrait, while a bad one can distract from it.

• The power of a simple, uncluttered background: When in doubt, go simple. A clean wall, a clear blue sky, or a plain-colored backdrop ensures that all the focus is on your subject’s face and expression. A busy, cluttered background competes for attention and weakens the portrait.
• Using the background to add context and story: Alternatively, the background can tell a story. A portrait of a chef in their kitchen, an artist in their studio, or a hiker on a mountain trail uses the background to give the viewer more information about who the person is. Just ensure the background adds to the story without being distracting. This ties into capturing the essence of destinations.
• Creating distance between subject and background for more depth: One of the easiest ways to make your subject pop is to create physical distance between them and their background. The further the background is from your subject, the more out of focus it will appear, especially when using Portrait Mode. This separation creates a beautiful sense of depth and a professional-looking result. For more on professional lenses, consider reading about the 24-70mm f/2.8 vs 24-105mm f/4.

Mastering Your Smartphone’s Camera Features

Beyond pointing and shooting, your smartphone’s camera app is packed with powerful tools. Learning to wield these features is the key to moving from simple snapshots to intentionally crafted portraits. Let’s unlock the software that gives you creative control.

The Secrets of Portrait Mode

Portrait Mode is arguably the most significant feature for smartphone photographers. It mimics the look of professional cameras by creating a beautifully blurred background, making your subject pop. But how does it work, and when should you use it?

How Portrait Mode Fakes a Shallow Depth of Field

Unlike a professional camera that uses a large lens and sensor to create a natural, optical background blur (known as “bokeh”), your smartphone uses computational photography. When you take a shot in Portrait Mode, the phone’s software and multiple lenses work together to create a 3D depth map of the scene. It identifies your subject in the foreground and then digitally applies a graduated blur to everything it determines is in the background. It’s a clever software trick that simulates the shallow depth of field of a wide-aperture lens.

Adjusting the Blur (Aperture/f-stop) After the Shot

One of the best parts of this digital process is its flexibility. Most modern smartphones, including iPhones and Android devices, allow you to edit the intensity of the background blur after you’ve taken the photo. In your photo gallery’s edit menu, you’ll often find a slider labeled with an aperture value (like f/1.4 to f/16). A lower number (e.g., f/2.0) creates a more intense blur, while a higher number (e.g., f/8.0) keeps more of the background in focus. A great starting point is to choose a moderate blur that looks realistic, as pushing it to the maximum can sometimes look artificial.

When Not to Use Portrait Mode

While powerful, Portrait Mode isn’t perfect and can sometimes do more harm than good. Here are a few situations where you might be better off using the standard camera mode:

• Complex Edges: The software can struggle to cleanly separate intricate details from the background. Wispy hair, the arms of glasses, or fine-leafed plants can confuse the algorithm, resulting in strange artifacts where parts of the subject are blurred or parts of the background remain sharp.
• Low-Light Situations: Creating an accurate depth map requires a lot of light and information. In dimly lit environments, Portrait Mode often fails, producing a noisy, blotchy image with poorly defined edges. A standard photo taken in Night Mode will almost always yield a better result.

Taking Control with Pro or Manual Mode

For those who want to break free from the camera’s automatic decisions, Pro or Manual mode is your creative playground. Found in many native Android camera apps and available through third-party apps like Halide or Lightroom Mobile on iOS, this mode gives you direct control over core camera settings.

Focus Peaking: Nailing Sharp Eyes Every Time

In portraiture, sharp eyes are non-negotiable. Focus Peaking is a manual focus assistant that makes this easy. It overlays a bright color (often red, green, or blue) on the parts of your image that are in sharpest focus. As you adjust the manual focus slider, you can watch the colored highlights appear on your subject’s eyes, confirming you’ve nailed the focus exactly where you want it.

Adjusting ISO for Brightness

ISO controls the camera sensor’s sensitivity to light. A low ISO (like 100 or 200) is less sensitive, requiring more light but producing a very clean, detailed image. A high ISO (like 1600 or 3200) is very sensitive, allowing you to shoot in darker conditions, but the trade-off is an increase in digital “noise” or graininess. For the highest quality portraits, always aim to keep your ISO as low as the lighting conditions will allow.

Controlling White Balance for Accurate Skin Tones

Have you ever taken a photo indoors that looked too yellow, or one in the shade that looked too blue? That’s an issue with White Balance (WB). While Auto WB does a decent job, manual control ensures your skin tones are accurate and natural. Pro modes offer presets like “Sunny” or “Cloudy,” but the real power lies in setting the temperature manually using the Kelvin (K) scale. This allows you to dial in the perfect color balance for any lighting scenario.

Essential Camera App Settings

Even if you don’t dive into Pro mode, the standard camera app has a couple of game-changing features you should be using for every portrait session.

Using AE/AF Lock

AE/AF Lock stands for Auto Exposure/Auto Focus Lock. When you tap on your subject’s face on the screen, the camera focuses and sets the exposure for that point. However, if you or your subject moves, the camera will readjust. To prevent this, simply tap and hold on your subject’s face until you see a “AE/AF Lock” confirmation appear. This locks in your focus and brightness, giving you the freedom to recompose the shot without the camera changing its settings. It’s a simple, indispensable tool for consistent results.

The Shutter Button: Volume Controls and Burst Mode

The on-screen shutter button isn’t always the most stable way to take a photo. Explore these two powerful alternatives:

• Volume Controls: On nearly every smartphone, pressing either of the physical volume buttons will trigger the shutter. Using a volume button allows you to hold the phone with a much firmer, steadier grip, much like a traditional camera. This simple change can significantly reduce camera shake and lead to sharper images.
• Burst Mode: Authentic expressions are fleeting. Instead of trying to time one perfect shot, use Burst Mode by holding down the shutter button (or volume button). The camera will rapidly capture a series of photos, increasing your chances of catching that perfect, natural smile or candid laugh. You can then easily review the sequence and save only the best ones.

Posing and Directing: The Human Element

The most advanced camera technology in the world can’t create a compelling portrait without a human connection. Your greatest tool as a portrait photographer isn’t your phone; it’s your ability to interact with your subject. Making someone feel seen, comfortable, and confident is the secret ingredient that transforms a simple snapshot into a captivating portrait that reveals their personality. Learn more about travel photo poses to enhance your portraits.

Making Your Subject Feel Comfortable and Confident

A nervous or self-conscious subject will often look stiff and unnatural on camera. Your first job is to be a director and a friend, creating a relaxed environment where their true self can shine through. A little effort here goes a long way.

• Communicate constantly: Silence can be intimidating. Keep a light conversation going. Talk about their day, a shared interest, or what you’re trying to achieve with the photo. Most importantly, offer consistent, positive feedback. Simple phrases like “That looks great,” “I love the way the light is hitting your eyes,” or “Perfect, hold that,” build confidence and let them know they’re doing a great job. Understanding how to take pictures of people when you travel is crucial for this.
• Set the mood with music: Ask your subject what music they love and play it from your phone or a small speaker. Music is incredibly effective at filling awkward silences, helping people relax, and encouraging natural movement. A favorite playlist can instantly change the energy of a photoshoot. This is a great tip for mastering travel photography.

Simple Posing Cues for Natural Results

Most people don’t know what to do in front of a camera. Vague instructions like “act natural” rarely work. Instead, give simple, actionable directions that lead to flattering and dynamic poses. The goal is to guide, not to rigidly command.

• “Chin out and down”: This might be the single most effective posing cue. Ask your subject to push their chin slightly forward (out toward you) and then tilt it down a bit. It feels strange, but it works wonders by elongating the neck and defining the jawline, eliminating the dreaded “double chin” effect. You can also explore how to use an 85mm lens for stunning travel portraits.
• Create space and angles: Poses look more dynamic when there are angles and negative space. Instead of having arms flat against the body, ask your subject to place a hand on their hip, lean against a wall, or gently touch their hair. This creates triangles and other shapes that are more visually interesting. Try out some creative mobile photography compositions to experiment with angles and perspectives.
• Shift their weight: Standing perfectly straight and square to the camera can look rigid. Ask your subject to shift all their weight onto one leg, which creates a natural and flattering S-curve in the body. This simple adjustment instantly makes a pose look more relaxed and dynamic. Experimenting with poses can help you achieve perfect portrait photography.

Capturing Authentic Expressions

The difference between a good portrait and a great one often comes down to the expression. Forced smiles are easy to spot. Your goal is to capture genuine emotion, whether it’s a hearty laugh, a thoughtful gaze, or a gentle smile.

• Prompt, don’t command: The phrase “say cheese!” is the enemy of authentic smiles. Instead of asking for a smile, create a reason for one. Ask them to think about a favorite memory, tell a funny (and short) joke, or ask them about a person or pet they love. This will evoke a real, unforced expression.
• Shoot the “in-between” moments: Some of the best shots happen when your subject thinks you’re not shooting. Keep your phone up and use Burst Mode between poses, as they’re laughing at your joke, or while they’re fixing their hair. These candid, unposed moments are often the most genuine and reveal the most personality. This is a great technique when using a smartphone for street photography.

Editing Your Portraits Directly On Your Phone

Taking the photo is only half the journey. The magic of modern smartphone photography lies in the incredible editing power you hold in your hands. A few thoughtful adjustments can transform a good photo into a stunning portrait, enhancing its mood, clarity, and impact. The best part? You don’t need a computer or expensive software to do it. For those looking to enhance their travel shots, understanding how to maximize your mobile device while traveling is key.

The Philosophy of Subtle Enhancement

Before you touch a single slider, it’s important to adopt the right mindset. The goal of editing is not to create an artificial or unrecognizable version of your subject, but to produce a better, more polished version of reality. A great edit is often invisible; it simply makes the photo feel more professional and emotionally resonant. This approach is crucial when you’re aiming to take pictures of people when you travel.

• Aim for authenticity: Your edits should enhance what’s already there. Think of it as adjusting the lights in a room after the fact, not changing the person in it.
• Focus on the fundamentals: The most impactful edits almost always involve subtle corrections to light, color, and sharpness. These three pillars are the foundation of a compelling portrait. Mastering Creative Lighting Techniques can significantly elevate your portrait work.

Essential Tools in Your Phone’s Native Editor

Your phone’s built-in Photos app (whether on iOS or Android) is surprisingly powerful and the perfect place to start. Before downloading anything else, get comfortable with these fundamental tools that can make a massive difference. This is especially helpful for Mobile Photography.

• Cropping for a stronger composition: Don’t be afraid to crop your image. A tighter crop can remove distracting background elements, bring the focus squarely onto your subject, and improve the overall composition. Try cropping to place your subject’s eyes along a rule-of-thirds line for a more dynamic feel. This ties into Creative Mobile Photography Compositions.
• Adjusting Exposure, Contrast, and Highlights/Shadows: This is where you control the light.
  • Exposure: This slider controls the overall brightness of the entire image. Use it to make a photo that’s too dark or too bright just right.
  • Contrast: This adjusts the difference between the darkest and brightest parts of your photo. A little extra contrast can make a portrait “pop,” but too much can look harsh.
  • Highlights & Shadows: These are your most powerful lighting tools. Lowering Highlights can bring back detail in bright areas, like a sunlit cheek or a bright sky. Raising Shadows can reveal details in darker areas, like hair or clothing, without over-brightening the rest of the image.
• Fine-tuning Vibrance vs. Saturation for skin tones: Color is crucial for portraits. It’s important to know the difference between these two tools. Saturation boosts every single color in your photo equally, which can quickly make skin tones look unnatural and orange. Vibrance is much smarter; it primarily boosts the less-saturated colors while leaving already-vibrant colors (like skin tones) alone. For portraits, almost always prefer adjusting Vibrance over Saturation. This is a key aspect of learning how to take portraits of people in natural light when you travel.

Top Apps for Next-Level Smartphone Editing

When you’re ready to move beyond the basics and gain more creative control, a dedicated editing app is your next step. These apps offer more precision, advanced features, and unique creative filters to help you develop your personal style. For those using top-tier devices, understanding how to get the most out of them, like the Xiaomi 14 Ultra Mobile Lenses, is essential.

Snapseed

Developed by Google, Snapseed is a completely free and incredibly powerful editor. It’s an excellent all-around choice for detailed work. Its standout features for portraits include the Selective tool, which lets you tap on a specific part of the image—like an eye or a piece of clothing—and adjust its brightness, contrast, or saturation independently. The Healing tool is also fantastic for removing small blemishes or distracting background elements with a simple tap. This tool is great for refining shots taken in busy environments, like when you’re Photographing Local Markets.

Adobe Lightroom Mobile

For those who want professional-grade control, Adobe Lightroom Mobile is the industry standard. While it has a subscription for premium features, the free version is extremely capable. Its main advantage is its unparalleled control over color. Using the Color Mix panel, you can adjust the hue, saturation, and luminance of individual colors. This means you can make the blue in the sky deeper or the green in the trees richer without negatively affecting your subject’s skin tone. Its masking tools also allow for incredibly precise selective adjustments. This level of control is invaluable when you’re aiming to Master Travel Photography.

VSCO

If you’re looking to achieve a specific aesthetic or mood, VSCO is renowned for its beautiful, film-inspired filters (called “presets”). Unlike the often harsh filters on other platforms, VSCO’s are designed to be subtle and artistic. The key is to apply a preset and then use the intensity slider to dial it back for a more natural look. A few filter packs that work consistently well for portraits include:

• The A Series (A4, A5, A6): Known for clean, analog-inspired tones that are very flattering for skin and provide a timeless look.
• The M Series (M5, M6): Offers slightly desaturated and faded looks, perfect for creating a more moody or nostalgic portrait.
• The C Series (C1, C2, C3): These provide vibrant, chromatic tones that emulate classic portrait film, making colors pop in a pleasing way.

Advanced Techniques and Creative Ideas

Once you’ve mastered the fundamentals of light, composition, and your phone’s camera modes, you can start pushing your creative boundaries. These advanced techniques, simple accessories, and troubleshooting tips will help you elevate your smartphone portraits from great to truly unforgettable.

Using Simple Accessories to Boost Quality

While your smartphone is a powerful tool on its own, a few inexpensive accessories can unlock a new level of quality and control, especially in challenging situations. For more on this, check out our guide on Travel Photography.

• A small tripod: A compact, portable tripod is invaluable for eliminating camera shake. It’s essential for capturing crisp, sharp portraits in low light when the shutter needs to stay open longer. It’s also a game-changer for self-portraits, allowing you to use the higher-quality rear cameras and set up your shot perfectly with a timer or remote shutter.
• A portable LED light or reflector: Don’t rely on your phone’s harsh built-in flash. A small, battery-powered LED light provides a continuous, soft light source that you can position anywhere to fill in shadows or create dramatic effects. Alternatively, a simple collapsible reflector can bounce existing light (from a window or lamp) back onto your subject’s face, brightening their eyes and softening shadows for a professional look. This ties into our tips for Manipulating Light and Shadows.

Creative Portrait Ideas to Try

Break free from standard headshots by incorporating creative elements into your portraits. These techniques add depth, mood, and a unique artistic flair to your images, making them stand out. Consider exploring Creative Mobile Photography Compositions.

• Shooting through objects: Create a natural frame and a beautiful sense of depth by placing something in the foreground, between you and your subject. Shoot through leaves on a bush, a chain-link fence, or the condensation on a glass window. The object in the foreground will be out of focus, creating a soft, dreamy blur that draws the viewer’s eye directly to your sharp subject.
• Playing with dramatic shadows and silhouettes: Instead of avoiding harsh sunlight, use it to your advantage. Position your subject so that strong shadows from blinds, leaves, or architectural elements fall across their face or body, creating intriguing patterns and a moody atmosphere. For a silhouette, place your subject in front of a bright background (like a sunset) and expose for the background, turning your subject into a dark, expressive shape. This is a great way to Manipulate Light and Shadows.
• Using reflections: Reflections add a compelling, often surreal layer to your portraits. Look for them everywhere: a rain puddle on the street, a shop window, a car’s side mirror, or even a polished tabletop. Capturing both your subject and their reflection in a single frame can tell a more complex story and create a visually stunning composition.

Troubleshooting Common Smartphone Portrait Problems

Even the most careful photographers run into issues. Knowing how to identify and fix common problems is key to consistently producing high-quality portraits. For those looking to master their craft, understanding the Master Travel Photography techniques is essential.

• Fixing blurry or out-of-focus images: The most common culprit is a missed focus point. Always tap on your subject’s eye on the screen to set focus before shooting. Use the AE/AF Lock to ensure it doesn’t change if you or your subject moves slightly. Also, make sure your lens is clean—a quick wipe with a microfiber cloth can make a huge difference. Finally, hold your phone with both hands or brace your elbows against your body to minimize camera shake.
• Correcting unflattering skin tones: If your subject’s skin looks too orange, blue, or green, you have a white balance problem. This is caused by mixed or poor-quality artificial lighting. The best fix is to find better light, like moving closer to a window. If that’s not possible, you can often correct it in post-processing. Most editing apps have a White Balance or Temperature/Tint slider that lets you neutralize color casts and restore natural, healthy-looking skin tones.
• Dealing with digital noise in low-light photos: In dark environments, your phone’s sensor increases its sensitivity (ISO) to capture enough light, resulting in a grainy or speckled look called digital noise. The best solution is to add more light to the scene. If you can’t, use your phone’s dedicated Night Mode, which takes multiple exposures and combines them to reduce noise. In editing, apps like Lightroom Mobile and Snapseed have excellent noise-reduction tools that can smooth out the grain without sacrificing too much detail. For more on mobile photography, consult our Mobile Photography: Complete Guide for Beginners and Advanced Photographers.