Nowadays, smartphones can snap great-looking photos. Google, Samsung, and Apple have some of the best camera phones to date, demonstrating that owning phones is not just about texting and calling; these devices have the hardware to indulge a hobbyist’s pastime of photo-taking.
There’s a lot to learn about phone camera photography, especially if you’re trying to maximize your settings and improve your shots by educating yourself on all the terms related to smartphone photography. But before getting lost in what aperture and autofocus mean, you will want to better understand what composes a great shot. Our guide outlines the rule of thirds and how to turn grid lines on in your phone camera’s settings.
What is the purpose of grid lines?
Grid lines enable photographers to highlight a subject while presenting all the elements in the image. In photography, grid lines add a compositional guideline, referred to as the rule of thirds; you can think of grid lines as ways to impose balance in a photo. They help divide up sections of a photo between the elements and the subject. When you view an image, your eyes look at the first four centered points in the image (the focal point). But sometimes, only looking straight at these four points can cause the viewer to ignore the rest of the elements in the image.
If you want to balance the photo, center the object in a place that intersects any of the four points (see the example image below) so it only fills up a third of the photo, then use the rest of the four points to embed other elements, like the landscape/background and the supporting pieces. The idea is to give equal attention to every part of the shot. Adding grid lines also ensures your shots have a good level of symmetry against slants and vertical elements. You can turn these lines on and off as you please.
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Grid lines work regardless of the settings you use. You can snap photos with your phone’s manual camera settings, and the grid lines will stay on your camera’s viewfinder without appearing in your photos. So, if you take a picture in ultra-wide mode, the grid lines will still appear in the viewfinder.
How to add grid lines on a Samsung phone
Adding grid lines using a Samsung phone is simple. You just need to change a single setting inside the app. To learn how to do this, check out our steps below.
- Open the Camera app.
- Tap Settings (gear icon) in the left corner.
- Scroll down to General in the Camera settings and toggle on Grid lines.
To turn off Grid lines, return to Settings and tap the toggle. The grid lines will disappear in your camera’s viewfinder.
Grid lines in Expert Raw
If you own a Galaxy S20 or later, you may have downloaded the Expert Raw app from the Galaxy Store. The app improves the preservation of your high-quality images when taking professional shots. It also adds the multi-frame HDR benefit of importing RAW images into an app like Lightroom.
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So, if you’ve been using Expert Raw instead of your default camera app, we’ve outlined the steps below for adding grid lines while using Expert Raw.
- Open Expert Raw.
- Tap the Gear icon to navigate to the settings.
- Scroll down to General and turn on the Grid lines toggle.
To turn off the Grid lines, return to Settings and tap the Grid lines toggle.
How to add grid lines on a Google Pixel phone
Like Samsung phones, you can add grid lines by visiting the settings. It also allows you to customize the grid lines you place on your viewfinder. To learn how, see the steps below.
- Open the Camera app.
- Tap Settings in the bottom left corner.
- Select Grid type under Composition.
- Choose Grid type. You can select No grid, 3×3, 4×4, and Golden ratio.
Return to the camera settings to turn off grid lines and select Grid type > No grid.
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How to add grid lines on a OnePlus phone
We’ve included adding grid lines within a OnePlus phone’s camera app. Read our tutorial below.
- Open the Camera app.
- Go to More > Settings.
- Tap Grid and guides.
- Select Grid.
Return to the OnePlus Camera app and select More > Settings > Grid and guides > None to turn them off.
Can you add grid lines to photo editing software?
A significant part of taking better photos is lightly touching them using photo editing software. By changing the lighting, you can turn a bland-looking image into one brimming with new life. But you may prefer to turn on grid lines within the software to ensure you’re applying a good balance to your photos. It also helps you gain more insight into the composition and make slight adjustments. Fortunately, the best editing software (Lightroom, for example) offers grid lines within its options.
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Post your best photos online
Once you’ve mastered the art of photo-taking, it is time to show off your results online. But before you do, it requires some planning; not every image you take will fit your social media page. For example, the ideal size of your X’s profile image must be 400×400 pixels with a maximum size of 2MB. The recommended size of the header should be around 1500×500 pixels. Then, if you plan to post on your timeline, the ideal sizing should be closer to a 16:9 aspect ratio, which may be different from a 4:3 taken on your phone. All in all, you want to avoid odd cropping when changing the image size, which requires you to properly resize your photos without compromising the quality (and the shot itself).
