Images tell stories. For the whole society, press photos record some historical events. For us individuals, life photos remind us of the meaningful moments in our life, either joyful or sad when we are aging and tracing back to the past.

Thanks to the development of technology, one could take a random photo at any time and anywhere by simply picking up the mobile phone, iPad or camera and pressing the button. However, as it’s so convenient to snap a picture, people might pay less attention to the image quality. They just aim at the figure and shoot without carefully thinking about what makes a high-quality photo, after which they seek ways to enhance photo before sharing on social media. 

Tips to Improve the Quality of Your Photos

There’s so much to learn to be a photography master. Some might ask “How do I improve the quality of a photo if I’m not experienced enough?” post-editing would help. Additionally, sometimes photo retouching is required for purposes like personal collection, social media sharing, product displaying, business promotion and printouts. In this session, we are going to introduce some useful tips to improve photo quality, covering both software assistance and manual adjustments.

Tip 1. Choose the right software

There are a number of quality enhancer software available on the market, including desktop applications, mobile applications and photo enhancer online. Choosing the right software would be absolutely beneficial to improve efficiency. 

Photoshop: Photoshop is considered one of the most powerful “post” applications to fine-tune an unsatisfactory photo into perfection. Featured with great compatibility, Photoshop works well on Mac, Windows, Linux or other operating systems. Either amateurs or professionals could receive the best photo after bit-by-bit retouching. When it comes to how to I improve the quality of a photo in PS, it is so well-equipped that it provides multiple ways to enhance photo, such as hue and saturation adjustment, sharpening, filtering, layers, Super Resolution, etc.

The main difficulty is that users have to review lots of tutorials to get acquainted with the professional interface and complicated tools. Moreover, it is a commercial software which allows 7-day free trial and then US$20.99 per month or higher.

the background blurring page of Fotor

Fotor: Besides Photoshop, there are also many other apps with similar functions but more comprehensible and simple interfaces. For example, Fotor is a popular photo enhancer online. It provides a variety of image quality enhancer functions, allowing both free manual operation and paid AI features.

the background blurring page of Fotor

Remini: Wanna make operations easier? You can turn to Remini which is compatible with IOS or Android. It is available on mobile phones, so you can enhance photo on the go, like while you are traveling.

It provides features like unblur & sharpening, denoiser, old photo restorer, image enlarger, color fixer and face enhancer. The built-in advanced AI technology thoroughly changes the way people used to post-process images, making things easier and quicker. Users just need to download the app, upload photos and choose the desired services.

Tip 2: Use free and simple software

Manual editing usually requires post-processing knowledge, a huge investment of time, and sometimes even high subscription fees. 

With the development of artificial technology, AI image enhancer begins to emerge. AiPassportPhotos is one of the examples, featuring handy images enhancing functions and simple one-click operation. It would automatically increase pixels, recover original colors, unblur photos and improve photo resolution. 

the background blurring page of AiPassportPhotos

All you need to do is to upload the images, and AiPassportPhotos will enhance the photo quality automatically. You may preview the picture and download it to your device if you are satisfied with the result. Every new user gets five credits to try out the product. It only costs you one credit for a perfect enhanced picture.

the background blurring tool of AiPassportPhotos

Tip 3. Blur background

Blurring background is a common technique in great photography these years as a way to drag people’s attention to the most important subject. A well-blurring photo would not only cover defects of poor composition but also generate a sense of art.

Online Blur Background tool could automatically locate the subject and the background while some like Photoshop allow users to customize what to highlight. You can choose your favorite one according to the real needs.

a woman holding a maple leaf

Tip 4. Adjust the exposure

If you want to enhance photo, one more thing to do is to adjust the exposure. For photos taken in improper lighting, exposure should be increased to make it look sharper and brighter or decreased to make it look darker. In Photoshop, users can the Curves adjustment layer or Multiply blend mode. To make things easier, you can use online tools.

Tip 5. Crop, straighten & rotate

A poorly composed photo usually involves many necessary elements. Cropping is commonly used to improve photo quality. That is to say, you can cut part of it out of the frame so as to strengthen viewers’ focus. 

Photos taken from unsuitable perspectives would seem weird. By straightening buildings, figures or streets, the photo would be more visually comfortable and professional. Almost all photo editing tools allow users to straighten or rotate the images horizontally or vertically within grid lines.

Tip 6. Remove blemishes

Blemishes removal is an essential part of photo beautification, especially on the face.  Pimples, nevus, wrinkles and black eyes are top concerns of facial imperfections. As technology advances, photo enhancer software makes it easy to remove blemishes and make portraits look more polished. You can fix specific defects by applying Healing Brush Tool or using AI tool, but pay attention not to overdo it in case of changing the natural texture of the skin.  

the comparison between before-improving and after-improving

Factors that Affect Photo Quality

Taking an ideal picture requires not only advanced equipment but also skillful photography techniques such as taking advantage of lighting, properly arranging the composition, matching colors, etc. Let’s take a look at factors that affect photo quality. 

Equipment

The camera is closely related to the resolution, meaning the clarity of the photos. Low-resolution photos look blurry, which is not suitable for cropping, printing, or displaying on high-definition monitors. Moreover, using a stabilizer or tripod to hold your camera or phone can avoid minor movements that lead to unexpected blurring. However, if clear photos are compressed during transmission, you could turn to an image enhancer to improve photo resolution.

Lighting

Lighting not only influences the darkness and brightness of the images but also determines the atmosphere. Photographers are good at making use of lighting to improve photo quality. For example, they have to think about types or directions of the light source, intensity of lighting and so forth.

Composition

Composition means the arrangement of different elements in a picture. It’s all about balancing what to include, what to exclude and how to highlight the main part. A high-quality photo should exactly draw viewers’ attention to the subject.

Color matching

When there appears more than one color in an image, color harmony greatly influences how you look and feel about the picture. Actually, color is one of the compositional elements. Keep in mind that the more colors there are, the more chaotic scenes it would be (eg. keep less than two or three colors). If you have no idea about color coding, let the image quality enhancer be your assistant.

Wrap up

Generally speaking, there are multiple tricks to improve photo quality. Before taking photos, you can upgrade your device and then carefully arrange lighting, composition and color match. After taking photos, photo enhancement is also important, such as cropping, unblurring, adjusting colors, etc. We hope that the photo enhancer online we recommended could expand your mind in rescuing the so-called failed, damaged or old photos.