- When taking iPhone portraits
with Apple studio lighting effects,
it's all too often the same old story.
(upbeat music)
Unprofessional photo effects.
(upbeat music)
They're all bad.
(bang)
But with just about $30
worth of household items,
you can take much more professional
and natural looking portraits.
Hey Siri, make me professional.
(twinkling)
Good headshots matter,
especially if you're applying for jobs now
and trying to look the part.
Or if you're just trying to
impress somebody on the 'grams.
So, if you can't swing
a professional photographer right now,
you can just use your iPhone.
Our iPhone cameras have gotten so good
and that's not just the Pro models.
You can take good photos with pretty much
any recent iPhone.
To take a photo like this, all you need
are a few things from the hardware store,
a special app that lets you shoot in Raw,
which is a different image format,
and some fairly common household items.
So, let's get started.
Step one, buy a quality light bulb.
Head online or to your
local hardware store
and buy an LED bulb with
a high CRI and R9 rating.
You can find them at Home
Depot, Lowes, and even Amazon.
The gist is CRI is short
for color rendering index.
It measures the light's ability
to illuminate colors accurately.
The bottom line, the
higher a CRI and R9 rating,
the better and more
flattering the light will look
on you and your skin.
Chances are you don't have
this kind of bulb at home,
but if you wanna check
a bulb that you do have,
try and find the original box.
Some sort of rating
should be printed on it.
Or you can just Google the model number.
So, what's this gonna cost you?
About 20 bucks for this high CRI LED bulb
and about $10 for this clamp light.
Step two, download a raw friendly app.
Today, we're gonna be using Halide,
which is available for
$5.99 in the app store.
Halide gives you more manual controls
than the iPhone's built-in camera app,
like ISO and shutter speed.
It can also capture
images in standard formats
like JPEG or HEIC, but adds
an important third, raw.
Raw also gives you tremendous
power over your images
after you've taken them.
You can easily change
colors or the white balance
and recover dark shadows
or bright highlights.
Step three, set up your lighting.
Believe it or not, you
can accomplish a lot
with just one light and some curtains.
First, find a space
where you can black out
all available light.
A dark wall or fabric is
great if you have one,
but if not, just use any old
wall, curtain, or fabric.
The less reflective, the better.
Second, find something you
can afix the clamp light to,
like a coat rack.
(upbeat music)
Third, put your light at
a 45 degree angle above,
and a 45 degree angle to
the side of your subject.
Now you're gonna want to diffuse the light
until any shadows across
your face soften up.
Without any diffusion,
the shadows are way too
harsh and unnatural.
Let's add a piece of parchment paper
to help soften it up a little.
Ah, that looks a little better.
Now let's add a white t-shirt.
If you don't have anything to
put the diffusion shirt on,
you'll need another person to hold it.
Sadly, cloning isn't possible.
Ah, that looks much better.
You can use pretty much
any sheer, white fabric
to diffuse light.
Sheets work really well, too.
Now, either with the help
of a friend or a tripod,
open Halide and frame up your shot.
If you don't have someone
to help you take the photo,
but you do have a tripod,
why not have Siri lend a hand.
Open the app's advance settings
and set up the Siri shortcut feature.
Hey Siri, make me professional.
(camera shutter clicks)
You can use the auto settings in the app
or you can adjust the manual controls.
If you don't wanna get fancy
with all this raw stuff,
you can use the default
camera app as well.
Those photos turned out
pretty darn well, too.
Don't worry if that raw
image looks a little flat,
we'll get to that in the next step.
Step four, edit your photo.
Since raw isn't a standard format,
you're gonna need a special application
with a raw processor to open it.
For the sake of cost, let's
go with one of my favorites,
Darkroom, which is free.
But if you wanna use the fancy filters,
it'll cost you a few bucks.
First, I cropped the image.
You lose some resolution,
but for most web applications
and social, this is fine.
Then I used one of Darkroom's filters.
From there, thanks to the power of raw,
I was able to heavily adjust the exposure
and bring in some of the highlights.
And voila!
A studio lit portrait
that now won't make you the
laughing stock of LinkedIn.
This is just a tiny glimpse
into the wonderful world
of studio lighting.
Try it out on your own or
with friends, kids, whomever.
Send them to me.
Have fun.
