It’s time to bring contrast back to our smartphone photos
A little while back, my colleague Mitchell Clark and I challenged each other to use our old iPhones for the weekend — mine was an original iPhone SE, and they had an iPhone 5S. I bailed a few hours in after my wireless connection flaked out, and I watched the phone battery drop 10 percent in a matter of minutes. (Mitchell saw the challenge through.)
But it wasn’t a totally futile exercise. When I looked back at the photos I took during those few fleeting hours, I noticed something I hadn’t seen much of in photos from newer phones — something I hadn’t even realized I’d been missing. That thing? Contrast. It’s been out of favor in smartphone image processing lately, but there are some easy ways to bring it back to your photos. I think...