It's easy to take better photos with your Android smartphone, you just need to learn the tricks. Below are some simple ideas that users of any level can try out with their device. Improve your smartphone photography skills today with these top tips.
1. Clean your lens
The first place to start when trying to take a good picture is to clean your smartphone's camera lens. These frequently become dirty and the results will be a blurry image. Every time you go to take a picture, give the lens a quick wipe on your T-shirt first to sweep away any grime.
2. Use touch-to-capture or volume shutter for selfies
When shooting a classic selfie, it's all-too-easy to drop your phone when attempting to press the capture button. By enabling touch-to-capture, it's hard to miss the trigger: it becomes the whole screen.
Alternatively, depending on which is your preferred hand, it may be easier to reach the volume controls. This option isn't available on every device, but if it's on your handset you should find it in the settings menu under volume control function, or use volume control as.
3. Never miss a shot with quick-launch
Many Android smartphones have a shortcut to launch the camera, rather than entering the dedicated app. The native Android solution to this is a camera icon located at the bottom of the lockscreen which you can swipe but on some devices all you need to do is double-tap the power/lock button.
On later Samsung phones, a double-tap on the home button will do the trick.
These shortcuts are there to help you access the camera as quickly as possible. Though they won't guarantee your pictures will be better, they could help you capture a shot you would normally miss.
4. Shoot in landscape
We have become accustomed to a 16:9 media format and as a consequence, pictures shot in portrait just tend to look awkward now. Unless there is an important reason that you would need a taller shot (like, say, shooting a picture of theFernsehturm from a close distance), pictures are almost always better in landscape.
5. Avoid using the flash (most of the time)
Even on a DSLR camera, the flash function is generally best saved for emergencies. If you can use natural light to illuminate your picture, you always should, because you want your pictures to look natural, don't you?
There is a time and a place for the LED flash on smartphone cameras, but because it tends to be located very close to the lens, it can have a nasty glaring effect. If natural light isn't quite enough, increase the exposure value (EV) and ISO on your camera. Bear in mind that increasing ISO will also increase the graininess or 'noise' in your pictures.
Natural light is the best light for photos: avoid using flash (like in the picture above) when you can.
The exception to this rule, as suggested by BruinGuy, is when taking pictures in daylight when the sun is behind the subject of your picture. Of course, where you can help it, the sun should be behind your camera, but when you can't avoid this, try using the flash to illuminate the faces or details that would otherwise be in shadow.
6. Don't use digital zoom
Digital zoom is notorious for destroying smartphone photos. Unless your camera has an optical zoom, where the camera lens actually protrudes out of your device (like the actually-not-great Samsung Galaxy K Zoom), all zooming does is enlarge and crop the picture.
"Can't I just do that after I've taken the photo?" I hear you ask. Well, yes, you can – that's the point! Digital zoom merely narrows the editing options for your picture. Take fully zoomed-out photos, then crop them manually if you want to.
Digital zoom on the Moto E (2015) is disastrous, but it's not much better on high-end handsets.
7. Check details of your best, worst and Auto photos
We all have some photos that come out incredibly well and others that are pretty awful. Whenever you take either a great or terrible photo, check the 'Details' of the photo to see what ISO, exposure time and aperture it had.
This way, you'll slowly learn which settings on your smartphone work best with which light conditions. This is particularly useful for 'Auto' photos, so you can get a feel for the settings your camera resorts to by default and adjust them accordingly.
Check the details of your photos so you can find out which settings work best with which lighting conditions.
8. Use HDR mode
HDR is a great mode for taking photos of stationary objects, as long as you have steady hands. HDR (high dynamic range) mode ensures that the lighting and shadows in the photo are evenly exposed. This is particularly useful for photos with high contrast.
HDR mode takes two or more pictures of varying exposures almost simultaneously, then combines the best and brightest bits of both into one photo. You need to keep the camera super-steady, otherwise, your photo will come out blurred.
Some flowers without HDR. / The same flowers with HDR – see the difference?/
9. Use the post-processing filters
There are plenty of people out there who pour scorn onto all the lovely filters you can enhance your photos with. But for casual smartphone photographers, those retro, black-and-white, Windmere, Islandia, and other filters can really add character to a photo. Most Android smartphones come with a great selection of filters, but if you're running a bit short, try Pixlr (formerly Pixlr Express) for a great selection.
Those hipster filter names may be irritating, but they can look fantastic.
10. The 'reflective sunglasses' trick
If you have a pair of sunglasses with a reflective coating on the lens, you can use them to capture a good perspective for your shots, like in the example below. The light source should always be reflected off the lens to help you better capture the scene or action that's in your view.
A reflection in a pair of mirrored sunglasses can create some pretty cool perspective shots.
11. Make one subject appear several times in a Panorama shot
The Google Camera app has been available in the Play Store for some time now, so anyone running Android 4.4 KitKat or higher can grab it for their Android device. In the app, you can use the Panorama function to pan horizontally across a scene and capture an entire landscape.
For a spooky effect, get the subject of your panorama shot to move with the camera so that they appear more than once in the image. The key to making this work is holding the camera steady while you're also moving the subject, so it's good to have someone helping you.
12. The rule of thirds
This is one of the simplest rules for photography, yet it's invaluable for making your photo compositions look great. The idea is that our eyes are naturally attracted to images that are divided into thirds, where the subject of the photo is slightly off-centre.
To help you achieve this, most smartphone cameras let you use a grid of two horizontal and two vertical lines when taking photos. The subject of your photo should be at one of the four intersections of these lines to theoretically get the most visually pleasing photo. Give it a go!
Colorify Augmented Reality is a fairly unknown app in the Google Play Store. With it, you can change the color of a garment or object to anything you want. The more contrast in the photo, the better it works.
It's also worth noting that Colorify will replace the color on all objects in the photo from the same palette, as can be seen in our example photo below, where the app changed the color of the denim as well as the trainer.
This is one of the cooler photo-editing tricks. You can turn your panoramic photos into globes, in an effect known as Tiny Planet. We recommend two apps that you can use to accomplish this effect.
The first one, Tiny Planet FX, isn’t free, but has some spectacular options for customizing the effect. The second app, Small Planet, is free. It takes a little fiddling around in order to get used to it, but once you do, you can create some truly spectacular snaps.
There are hundreds of ways to boost your smartphone photography. Which are your favorites? If you have a tip on how to take better photos with your Android phone that you'd like to share, let us know in the comments below.
The Google Play Store is a big benefit for owning an Android device. It gives you a wide variety of apps to choose from. To get the most out of your shopping experience, we've gathered some Google Play Store tips and tricks to help you test drive apps, save money and more. Check them out below.
1. Install an app that isn't available in your country
If you're really keen to get an app that's not available in your country then you can still get your hands on it by using a VPN. 'VPN' means 'virtual private network'. It gives you a secure internet connection via private networks in locations outside of your current one.
Basically, a VPN service can make it look like you're accessing the internet from a different location. It's important that you choose a credible VPN. We regularly feature VPN deals in our AndroidPIT Store if you're looking for a good one at a low price.
Once you've downloaded a VPN, select the country whose Play Store you want to access in the VPN app, get the VPN up and running, then open the Play Store app. It should land on the Play Store homepage of the country you selected. Now you can get the app you desire.
2. Manage your apps in the Play Store
The Google Play store has an area called 'My apps & games'. From here you can look at which apps you've downloaded, which were pre-loaded and the apps that you need to update. This is an excellent place to manage your apps within the Play Store and getting to it is easy.
Open up the Google Play Store on your Android device. Open the menu (the three horizontal lines at the top left of your screen). Under the Apps & Games section you'll see the My apps and & games link, tap this. Now you should see a list of your installed apps.
From here you can hit the button Update All in the top right hand corner of your screen. You can monitor what you've downloaded and manage these apps. If you go into the All section you can see which apps were on your device and what could be removed.
3. Put a parental lock on Google Play
If you don't want your child or dependent downloading inappropriate apps on the Play Store you can set up parental controls to prevent your Android device from being misused. This could include games with copious amounts of violence or gore. Apps that could put them in danger like dating apps or chats that give out their location.
It's easy to put a parental lock on the Google Play Store. First, open the Play Store and tap the menu icon. Go into the Settings and tap Parental controls and hit the slider so it says 'On'. From there you will be asked to create a parental lock PIN code. Create one and then go through the list of things you can download on the Play Store and tap the ones you want to set restrictions for.
Once the restrictions are set, your child or dependent will need to enter your PIN code each time they try to download something that triggers the restriction. As they get older and are able to handle more content you can go back in and change their privileges.
4. Get refunds on the Google Play Store
You can get refunds for Play Store purchases with a single tap; so long as you do it within two hours of buying the app. This should be plenty of time to find out if that new weather app actually works, or whether that game is as fun as the garish pictures made it out to be.
Once you've purchased an app, on its Play Store page you'll see options to Install or Open. In addition, a Refund option should appear to the left of it. Tap the refund button within two hours of your purchaseto get your money back, no questions asked.
If you notice that a child or dependent made this purchase without permission you can always change their privileges. Just head into the Play Store, tap the menu icon and hit Settings. Toggle Require authentication for purchases then choose For all purchases through Google Play on this device.
5. Check out the 'Indie Corner'
Both big and small developers are important for a vibrant Android app ecosystem. The big developers are not struggling, it's the small developers who have difficulties. Part of the problem is that it can be tricky to find independent apps. But now there is the Indie Corner in the Google Play Store.
Indie Corner can't be found from within the Play Store itself. Instead, open a web-browser on your Android device and search for 'Indie Corner'. The first result should be 'Discover Indie Corner' from Google Play. Head in and you should see the list which is refreshed with new apps every month or so.
WhatsApp, the most famous instant messaging app, would permit users for adding animated GIFs while chatting shortly.
As per News18.com, after its rival Viber introduced this feature, WhatsApp is also making plans for integrating GIF support. Pastebin, a popular coding website, made a list of more than 30 improvements as well as modifications for accompanying the beta release.
According to the report, it will enable users to reply straight to GIFs, save GIFs to camera roll along with peek and pop support feature and encryption support to share GIFs.
Besides these, the new feature incorporates auto play GIFs support when shared as a link in conjunction with option of saving GIF as a normal pic.
Beta release (v2.16.7.1) for iOS will comprise much advancement together with many bug fixes. There’s not any fixed date for the release of this new GIF feature. However, one thing is certain, it will make communication more interesting and not only this, couples will have a chance to get more romantic by sending romantic GIFs!!
Can’t wait for the new feature? It will be interesting to see what excitement it adds among WhatsApp users!! Do you think it will attract more people to use WhatsApp? Let us know your views in this connection in the comments section below.
Internet connection is a must for every household today. It is worth saying that – in today’s generation a person can live without food but can’t survive without a smart phone and obviously the internet connection. It has become so important that we carefully choose the pack and pay for the desired pack from the Internet Service Provider (ISP).
But have you ever wondered or checked why your downloading speed is always lesser than what your ISP promises? Actually it is myth that our speed is always lesser than what our ISP promises. Confused?
Smart marketing strategy of Internet Service Providers
The Internet Service Provider (ISP) always lures people by their marketing strategy so as to buy their service. In other words ISP always gives you the speed in terms of Bits per second but when downloading a file from internet, the downloading speed will be shown in Bytes per second. This leads to so much confusion in the mind of a common man and he thinks I have been cheated.
To make it simple we will take an example:
Let us consider that your ISP has promised a download speed of 2 Mbps, it means they provide you 2 Mega bits per second but not 2 Mega Bytes per second.
Now coming to the conversion of bits into bytes, 1 Byte = 8 bits i.e divide by 8 to convert bits into bytes.
2 Mega bits per second = 2 Mbps / 8 = 2048 Kbps / 8 = 256 Kilo Bytes per second (KBps)
So the actual download speed you get is just 256 KBps (which is equivalent to 2 Mbps) but not 2 MBps.
So don’t be confused about your download speed next time and don’t forget to share your views in the comments section below.
Microsoft Windows or simply Windows is an operating system which is developed, designed and sold by Microsoft. It is a graphical operating system. It dominates the world’s personal computer market with over 90% of market share overtaking its rival Mac OS. There have been different versions of Windows like Windows 98, XP, Vista, 7, 8 and most recent one is Windows 10. But one of the common options in all these is “Refresh” option which appears when you right-click the mouse.
Have you ever wondered – what really happens when you click on refresh?
Some non-techie people might think that it will improve your system performance or it will make your system run faster but this is absolutely wrong. When you hit the refresh button the memory of your system is reloaded with the up to date information. In simple words refresh will redraw everything present on the screen pixel by pixel and displays the latest data.Refresh option is not meant for speeding up the performance. Then the question arises when does refresh is useful?
Refresh is useful in the following cases:
When your data is not up to date.
When the desktop or other folders don’t display the files you created, moved, copied or deleted.
When the realigned icons or files on the desktop or other folders don’t show up.
When files created by 3rd party applications don’t show in the folder.
When the name of a file is changed but it doesn’t show the new name.
When you change any appearance settings. etc
In fact, by clicking the refresh button the system will take few extra microseconds to display the latest data and if you press it continuously the system will slow down a bit in order to read and write the cycles it has to perform inside the hard disk.
At whatever point somebody discusses adaptation, constantly, the principal thing that appears into the brain is Google AdSense. Keeping in mind there's nothing especially amiss with that—it is, all things considered, the world's biggest advertisement system, however to sit on a supposition that AdSense can't be beaten by anybody isn't insightful. The promotion tech industry is exceptionally troublesome and it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Google has contenders who give them a decent keep running for their cash. It might take a great deal of hit and trial to make sense of which promotion organize, or even mix of advertisement systems, create the most astounding income for you, however when you at long last do make sense of it—it would have been certainly justified regardless of the exertion. Here are a couple systems that you should look at in 2015.
Adsterra is one of the quickest developing premium promotion systems and as of now serves more than 10 billion geo-focused on advertisement impression every month. They bolster distributers from all verticals and assurance 100% adaptation of their advertisement stock.
Adsterra offers an immense assortment of powerful advertisement designs in all well known sizes for both web and portable including: Pushup, interstitial, show standards, popunders, sliders, and direct connections. Every crusade is tried hourly through a computerized check programming planned by GeoEdge, guaranteeing the most noteworthy conceivable promotion quality and security.
Distributers additionally appreciate on-time installments made bi-week by week by means of real installment frameworks, and additionally an individual record director and continuous measurements.
Revcontent is one of the biggest content recommendation platforms on the internet, currently serving 100 billion content recommendations a month across the globe with a growth rate of 900% last year. Revcontent is notoriously difficult to join as it rejects almost 98% of websites that apply – focusing more on the quality of its publisher network rather than the quantity. This strategy has helped Revcontent generate higher revenues, better engagement rates, and loyal audiences for their partners. As part of product improvement efforts, they’ve just launched Revcontent v2, which features an intuitive user interface that enables transparent reporting and easier customization of widgets. Model: CPC
Traditional banner ads have one big problem that results in big revenue losses: many users either consciously or subconsciously ignore them because ads are usually viewed as an intrusion.
Infolinks is a great ad network that gets around this problem by offering an innovative set of free to use and profitable ad units: InFold (overlay ads), InText (text links ads), InTag (tag cloud ads), InFrame (banner ads in margins and frames) and InScreen (smart interstitial ads). That result in better SEO, less intrusion to your users, increased relevance and better space utilization.
Infolinks generate high monthly revenue for over 200,000 publishers in more than 130 countries today, and they work with the biggest advertisers in the world such as Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Ebay. Their platform is very simple to integrate into your site and is open to any publisher, with no setup fees and no minimum requirements for page views or visitors.
Media.net serves ads from the Yahoo! Bing contextual ad network, which comprises of a large pool of national and local advertisers, ensuring a 100% fill rate across all verticals and ad formats.
Some of Media.net’s publishers include Forbes, Elle, Reuters, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and more. The network supports standard IAB sizes and has access to high quality ads from all major DSPs.
In addition to display units, Media.net also supports desktop interstitial, in-content native, and mobile docked ads.
AdBlade is a premium, brand-safe ad network with a focus on quality over quantity. Fox News, Hearst Corporation, Yahoo!, and ABC are among the 1,000 or so publishers that comprise the network. AdBlade supports standard IAB units, as well as proprietary NewsBullets® units that claim to deliver up to 3x better performance.
Revenue Hits uses contextual and geo-targeted ad serving technology to deliver better revenue for their publishers across different types of properties such as websites, mobile sites, add-ons, widgets, toolbar, and many more.
It serves over two billion ad impressions each day with a promise of 100% fill rate across all geographic regions.
Other than display ads, Revenue Hits also lets publishers monetize their website using text ads, pop ups, apps, widgets, XML feeds, and other custom formats.
Undertone specializes in providing several high-impact ad formats in addition to standard IAB—including IAB rising stars, several video formats, and its own range of flagship display formats designed for higher user engagement.
This coupled with the fact that many of Undertone’s proprietary ad units use your ad inventory in non-traditional ways, ensuring there’s no cannibalization of existing ad products, means that Undertone can offer CPMs 100%-1500% higher than traditional display ads.
Though your mileage may vary, Bidvertiser is an ad network with an interesting monetization model: In addition to earning money for each ad that is clicked, the publisher also earns additional revenue when the click leads to a conversion (i.e. sale) for the advertiser.
BidVertiser supports multiple ad formats including banners, skyscrapers, rectangles, and mobile. You can use the provided point-and-click tool to customize the layout of these units to match your website’s look.
A bidding system ensures that publishers always get the highest possible revenue from each unit. Using the reporting interface, you can easily monitor your ads performance, clicks, click-through rate, and the total amount you’ve earned.
Vibrant Media is another ad network that offers specialty ad formats such as in-text, in-image, lightbox, storyboard, mosaic, and brand canvas in addition to the standard IAB display ad units.
Depending on your needs, you can choose to use Vibrant Media as your primary display ad network or you can employ their native ad solutions to increase revenue without changing your existing ad configuration
Ads are responsive so they can be delivered across multiple platforms seamlessly.
Clicksor serves over 900 million ad impressions on over 100,000 specialized websites that comprise its publisher network. In addition to regular banner ads, Clicksor also offers in-text ads, rich media, interstitials, and pop-unders as alternative ad formats.
Under the hood, Clicksor scans the text on your website and serves ads using the latest contextual technology, resulting in a higher click-through rate.
Installation is a breeze with Clicksor’s plugin for Blogger, WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla that you just need to download and activate to get going.
Advertising.com, is the technology, data and insights arm of AOL Advertising. It has relationships with 70+ of comScore’s Top 100 ad-supported sites, with a publisher network spanning 30+ content verticals and monetizes nearly 2 billion ad impressions per day on average.
If you’re looking for a specific set of advertisers, Advertising.com offers ad blocks by advertiser, industry, media, and category to ensure the best fit for your site.
Creafi Online Media serves over 300 million ad impressions daily and hinges its USP on advanced audience targeting methodologies such as behavioral targeting, retargeting, and semantic targeting.
When advertisers can customize who sees their ads based on behavior and context using these tools, ad performance shoots up and it’s a win-win for both them and the publishers. To publishers, Creafi offers multiple ad formats and revenue streams and a greater degree of control over ad inventory.
Epom Market is a cross-platform ad network associated with leading advertisers and publishers in over 40 countries across 15 verticals. The network serves 13 billion ad impressions reaches an audience of 320 million unique monthly visitors per month.
It offers category-targeted, mobile, and local ads to ensure better user targeting, which lead to higher eCPM rates. In addition to standard banner ads, Epom also supports footer, in-text, and mobile-specific ad units.
Haxhax is a premium, brand-safe private marketplace with over 100 handpicked premium publishers serving video, rich media, mobile and traditional display. Haxhax provides comprehensive reporting, multi-screen ad servicing, and an auto-invoicing system to get your payouts on time.
PropellerAds support banner ads in all standard sizes such as 728×90, 300×250, 160×600, 120×600, and more apart from onclick and in-banner video ad formats. If the ads are positioned strategically, you can expect CPMs as much as 1-2$ for US and UK inventory.
They have 3,000 active campaigns worldwide and perform manual checks to remove all unsafe and suspicious advertisers—ensuring high ad quality.
Publishers get the benefit of a 100% monetized inventory, in-time payouts, a personal account manager, and detailed real-time reporting.
An ad network that specifically caters to bloggers, BlogAds represents thousands of premier blogs such as PerezHilton, DailyKos, Wonkette and Cute Overload. Set up is easy and you can manage multiple sites from one account.
BlogAds offers a high level of control over your advertising by letting you determine which ad sizes to offer, set your own prices, customize the appearance of ads, and accept or reject ads.
There are no monthly fees; instead, BlogAds keep 14% of sales made to your readers. Most common IAB ad sizes are supported. It’s worth a try if you’re a blogger who wants to try an alternative to AdSense.
PulsePoint is an ad network that processes 110 billion ad transactions each month across its platform. They’re big on data-driven ad optimization—crunching about 20TB of it every day.
Their proprietary contextual ensures better ad targeting and increase relevance, giving publishers the opportunity to monetize impressions buyers would normally overlook. There are no sign up fees or hidden costs.
Model: CPM Minimum traffic: NonePulsePoint is an ad network that processes 110 billion ad transactions each month across its platform. They’re big on data-driven ad optimization—crunching about 20TB of it every day.
Their proprietary contextual ensures better ad targeting and increase relevance, giving publishers the opportunity to monetize impressions buyers would normally overlook. There are no sign up fees or hidden costs.
Conversant runs campaigns for 5,000+ brands every month, increasing the chances of finding an ideal fit for all content verticals. A real-time publisher interface offers fully transparent campaign reporting along with activity and revenue data.
Their cross-platform advertising solutions ensure that publishers are able to maximize their revenue from mobile devices.
In addition to standard display, they offer ads in multiple other formats such as in-text rollovers, static, rich media, banners, over the page and more.
AdCash is one of the foremost advertising networks and provides high-quality ads from leading brands and exclusive pricing models designed to effectively monetize their online content and increase revenue.
AdCash supports all industry standard as well as exclusive display formats such as site under, footer, interstitial, slide-in, background, and more. It has over 1,000 ad campaigns running on its platform—the big inventory means better ad targeting.
A popular alternative to AdSense, Chitika has over 350,000 publishers on its network and serves over four billion ads per month, making it one of the largest ad networks in the world if you were to go by those metrics.
Its proprietary targeting and optimization technology uses programmatic buying to serve precisely the right ad, at the right time. The approval process for new publishers is usually pretty straightforward and takes little time.
The CPM rates of Tribal Fusion is amongst the highest in the industry and they offer reliable payments, dedicated account manager, real-time reporting, and free ad-serving technology.
You can control the content of ads by blocking ad categories (i.e. gambling, religious, political, alcohol, flashing, warning, etc.) or by specific advertiser domain names.
Based on content of the website, Tribal Fusion’s server finds the best advertiser-audience fit in real-time, benefitting both the advertiser and the publisher.
WWW Promoter offers publishers high fill rates, competitive CPMs, advanced targeting, and efficient ad serving using its proprietary ad serving technology.
They focus on building a network that comprises of trusted brands and advertisers, eliminating the possibility of low-quality ads being served. The inhouse ad platform has a reporting tool that helps publishers track their CPMs in real-time.
