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Tech Tip

You Took Lousy iPhone Photos. Here’s How to Make Them Beautiful.

Not every shot on your smartphone will be Instagram worthy, but you can often salvage middling snaps with just a few taps. Here are six easy steps.

We spend a lot of time trying to tame our technology or wean ourselves from its ills. But tech at its best can help us create new things and express ourselves.

That’s why Tech Tip is evolving from a daily Q. and A. with readers into a monthly illustrated guide for people who want to use tech to hatch and produce stuff that makes them happy. First up: how to improve those mediocre iPhone photos — you know, the ones that are crooked or too dark — into images that we are proud to share.

Say you were in Washington and snapped a photo of the Jefferson Memorial that did not come out the way you intended. The first thing to do is to go to Apple’s Photos app, open the picture and tap the Edit button in the upper-right corner of the screen — when holding the phone horizontally. In iOS 11 on an iPhone 8, this takes you into the Edit mode, where the wand-shaped Enhance button in the upper-left corner can be used to brighten the image and enhance the color. (You can also edit photos when holding the phone vertically, and icon placement may vary by iPhone model and iOS version.)

But what if you don’t like instant fixes? Here’s where you take control.

To really dive under a photo’s hood, select the dial-shaped Adjustments icon on the right side of the screen, the third one from the top, below Crop/Rotate and Filters and above the More menu for using third-party apps.

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The Edit screen in the iOS Photos app. The Enhance button is in the upper-left corner, while the icons for Crop/Rotate, Filters, Adjustments and More (to open third-party tools) are along the right side of the screen.Credit...J.D. Biersdorfer/The New York Times

Once you tap the Adjustments icon, you will see three main categories: Light, Color and B&W.

Touch a category heading to see all the elements of the image you can edit independently. Tap the name of a control for an onscreen slider to make your modifications.

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Tap Brilliance or Exposure or whatever you want to adjust in the Light category. The numbers tell you the current setting.Credit...J.D. Biersdorfer/The New York Times

In the Light category you can change the photo’s Brilliance, a setting that can make the picture look more vibrant without intensifying the color saturation. You can also adjust the picture’s overall Exposure. And you can fiddle with the amount of detail visible in both the Highlights (bright areas) and the Shadows (dark parts) of the image, as well as the Contrast, which is the scale difference between the photo’s light and dark tones.

Finally, you can move the Black Point, which makes the contrast better in washed-out images by defining the point where the darkest part of the photo becomes totally black.

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Move the slider until you like what you see on screen. When adjusting light and color, keep away from windows and work in neutral light.Credit...J.D. Biersdorfer/The New York Times

The Color category has preview sliders for adjusting the overall saturation, or intensity, of the color in the photo. You can also change the contrast between similar colors in the scene to make them “pop” more.

Does the picture have a noticeable green, pink, yellow or blue tint? Move the Cast slider to get rid of it. Want to summon your inner Berenice Abbott and convert your color photos into artsy monochrome shots? Select the B&W category and adjust the intensity, tone, grays and grain in the image. For a more automatic approach, tap the Filters icon on the Edit screen to try out new looks.

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The Saturation controls in the Color settings adjust the intensity.Credit...J.D. Biersdorfer/The New York Times

Many photos improve instantly if you cut out distracting elements and tighten the framing. Tap the Crop tool icon and drag the corners of the white box around the part of the picture you want to keep. Want the traditional Instagram square crop? Choose an aspect ratio by tapping the icon that looks like a stack of squares in the bottom-right corner.

The Photos app may automatically straighten the image so horizontal and vertical elements in the scene are roughly parallel to the edges of the picture. If it doesn’t — or you want to make your own changes — slide your finger on the protractorlike dial on the right to find your preferred alignment.

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Tap the Crop icon on the right side of the screen to get to the cropping and straightening tools.Credit...J.D. Biersdorfer/The New York Times

Sometimes it’s easy to go overboard — or maybe you were just experimenting anyway. If you are dissatisfied with your work, hit the Cancel or Reset button while still in the Edit mode to undo an adjustment.

Even after you have saved an edited picture and change your mind about it, Photos lets you restore the picture to its unedited state. Just open it again, tap the Edit button and choose Revert to Original.

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If you don't like your changes, you can undo them all -- even after you saved the photo the first time.Credit...J.D. Biersdorfer/The New York Times

When you are happy with all your changes, tap the Done button in the upper-right corner of the Edit screen. Voilà, that saves your newly enhanced photo.

You can find more information online for using Apple’s Photos (and Google Photos for Android and iOS), but you’ll probably learn the most by tinkering — and seeing which of the improved photos gets the greatest reactions from friends and family. Enjoy.

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At last: The photo is edited, and you look like a better photographer.Credit...J.D. Biersdorfer/The New York Times

J.D. Biersdorfer has been answering technology questions — in print, on the web, in audio and in video — since 1998. She also writes the Sunday Book Review’s “Applied Reading” column on ebooks and literary apps, among other things. More about J. D. Biersdorfer

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: You Took Lousy iPhone Photos. Here’s How to Make Them Beautiful.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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