Better phone pictures: Save the RAW file

In your phone's settings, find how to save the RAW file. Normally, when you take a picture your phone decides how to best "edit" the picture and then saves that relatively small file on your phone. The RAW file is a much larger file and is not processed by your phone to make a nice looking image. The benefit of the RAW file though is that you have much more room to edit it to your liking. Areas of the picture that are dark (shadows) can be brightened much more, and areas that are very bright (highlights) can be brought down in brightness to reveal more detail.

You will need to edit the raw files in a program like Lightroom to makes these adjustments, including saturation, contrast, clarity, highlights, shadows, etc. The above photo has the highlights brought down and the shadows increased.

If these posts get some attention then I will put some effort in to creating some higher quality content so please vote, comment and share! Thank you!