Taking Pictures

White Balance Options

Some Android phones will have a dedicated "camera" button, usually on the lower-right side of the phone as you would normally hold it. When you hold the camera sideways, therefore, the button is right where your right finger is used to feeling for a shutter button on a traditional phone. Some phones, like the EVO 4G, don't have a dedicated camera button, so you simply use the "Camera" or "Camcorder" app shortcut to access them.

When your camera is activated, the screen becomes a combination of viewfinder and control panel. On the Nexus One running the standard Android (2.2) Camera software, pictured above, the shot preview takes up the left side of the screen, and the controls are packed over to the right. In most cases, for most shots, you don't need to touch anything—your camera will automatically focus in the center and adjust all the levels it can to compensate for differences in lighting and color tone.

On the Nexus One, Android offers up a handful of settings you can change from shot to shot. The shot settings appear as white icons overlaid on the image preview. Press one, and a translucent strip appears, and a small menu pops out for the option you pick.

At the very top, there's a button that changes the focus mode to either Automatic or Infinity—in most shots, you can stick with Automatic, but play with Infinity to see what kind of shot you can get. Beneath that is a GPS icon that changes whether the phone tries to collect location data to embed in each picture, and in the middle, the "(A)W" button, controls the white balance. This lets you set the color and white balances in the camera's sensor to either automatically adjust, or to compensate for a few specific kinds of lighting. I've found that Automatic works most of the time outdoors, but when you're shooting indoors and seeing tints of blue or orange, setting the white balance manually can be a big help. Second to last toward the bottom is a camera flash setting—auto, on, or off—which I usually leave set at "off," since the flash on most phones does very little to help all but the darkest, grainiest, why-am-I-still-in-this-club-and-not-asleep pictures. Finally, at the bottom, there's a zoom setting that you can adjust with a sliding bar to get in closer to your shot. Take note, thought, that this is a digital zoom setting—your camera's lens doesn't actually adjust, and zooming in very close can sometimes leave your resulting shot a bit grainy or with digital "artifacts."

Because of the shape of your Android phone, and the way the camera was designed, most shots you take will probably be landscape-style, much wider than they are tall. You can, of course, change your grip and hold your camera upright to take vertical portrait-style shots. When you do so, your settings will rotate and move to the bottom.

Settings Bar in Upright Mode (Instead of Landscape)

On the Nexus One with the stock Camera app, the controls at bottom (or on the right when held landscape) are, from left (or bottom), the on-screen shutter control, the camera/camcorder switch, and a thumbnail preview of my last picture, which can be clicked to bring up a larger preview mode of recent shots.

Although my Android, and perhaps your Android, lacks a dedicated camera button, you can still do a "half press" on the shutter control on some phones to focus your lens and see what the resulting picture will look like (though this doesn't work at all on the HTC EVO 4G I've tested, and likely other HTC phones are left out, too). To try it out, press and hold on the shutter-style button, and wait for the image to focus and for the green framing bars that appear to show green. If your camera does have a dedicated camera button, you might be able to press it until you feel a small bit of resistance, but don't press it all the way:

Half-press shutter button to focus lens

This is a really helpful tool when you're trying to time a shot perfectly—if you've already focused and lined up your shot, all you have to do is release the button.

Now, as soon as you release your shutter button, the shot will fire. It's a handy trick for when you're trying to time a shot just right, or avoid wasting an exposure on an image that you know, from the preview, won't look right at all.

On Motorola's Droid X and other "Droid" phones, Motorola made a few changes to Android's stock Camera app, but not too many:

Camera View on Motorola Droid Models

Apologies for the picture-of-a-phone-taking-a-picture image; the Droid X Camera app didn't like my screenshot tool. The Scenes and Effects offerings here are pretty nifty, and more like a standard point-and-shoot digital camera. The Scenes include "Sports" for moving subjects, "Sunset" for low-light outdoor shots, and a "Macro" mode for up-close shots of, well, usually great restaurant food. "Effects" changes the color tint to an old-time-y sepia, a very cool blue, black and white, or a few other goofy-but-fun setups.

On HTC's EVO 4G with the Sense interface, the camera controls are in mostly the same places as the standard Android setup, but there are also some cool unique tools.

HTC Camera View

The right-side controls for the flash, zoom, shutter, and photo review are familiar, but the tab on the left? That slides out to reveal a whole lot of photo-geek options:

HTC Camera Options

But, wait! What was that bracket you saw in the viewfinder just then? That's the focus indicator. On some phones, the focus is always in the center, or automatic only. On certain cameras, however, you can either tap to set the point of focus in a shot (as with HTC phones), or drag the focus brackets (Motorola phones).

HTC Adjustable Focus Brackets

Take note, though, that on HTC phones, pressing and holding on a point of focus actually takes a shot—it's weird behavior, but, hey, it's their camera.

Shooting Video

Shooting video isn't all that different from grabbing pictures on an Android camera. On my Nexus One with the stock Android interface, in fact, it's exactly the same app—just flick the toggle from camera to video, and note that the zoom control becomes a video quality setting.

On other phones, there's a separate "Camcorder" app shortcut, but it's almost always the same as opening the Camera and changing the mode to video, as on this HTC phone:

e HTC Video Capture View

All the same lighting, balance, and other options are available, and you've only got one button to use to control the action—press once to record, press again to stop. Some phones might have additional offerings, such as Motorola's "Scenes" that do neat things like adjust the microphone levels for windy outdoor settings. In general, though, you point, shoot, and save.

Reviewing Your Shots and Clips in the Gallery

Just nabbed the perfect shot? It's easy to share it with friends, whether they're right next to you or thousands of miles away. On some cameras, right after you capture an image, you'll see it on your phone's screen for a few seconds. While it's up there, you can tap one of the on-screen buttons to keep it there, or quickly share it through the web or one of your apps:

Instant Options on HTC

In the case of an HTC phone, pictured above, you get these options, from left: Bring the image up in the full "Gallery" display (more on that in just a bit); Share the image through email, SMS, or other means; Delete it, because you're not a fan; or quickly head back to the regular shooting Camera mode.

But if a few seconds go by, or you take quite a few pictures and want to review them all, you can press the thumbnail in the corner of your Camera mode to get a bigger, more functional view of your photos and videos. This is the Gallery, which you can also get to through the shortcut in your app tray:

Droid Gallery View

Like the Camera mode, the Gallery has been customized in different ways on most Android phones. Among all the galleries, though, there's a basic operation. You can "flick" through your photos by swiping left and right on most any modern Android phone. Tap an image for a closer look, and hit the Menu button to get a menu of options like those you saw above: Share, Delete, go back to Camera, etc. Some phones will have unique options; the Droid X, for example, offers a "Quick Upload" option for automatically sending your photos to a default sharing location: Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, etc.

Image Options in Gallery 

That's how you see your photos when you review from the Camera. If you want a wider look at all the images on your phone—downloaded from the Internet, grabbed from email attachments, and stored on your SD card—open the Gallery app from your home screen's app tray, then, if it opens on a particular photo, hit your Back button until you end up at the larger view of your photos:

Nexus Gallery

Above is the view from my Nexus One gallery, with the standard Android interface. Of all the apps that phone makers like HTC and Motorola chose not to port over to their own phones, this one is the strangest. It aggregates photos from both your phone's microSD card and your Picasa Web Albums, and offers a few neat tricks, like shifting its perspective slightly when you tilt the phone, and expanding the photos in an album like a deck of cards when you pinch and expand your fingers over an album.

Selecting Whole Albums

But let us put aside my personal platform differentiation gripes for the moment. If I wanted to take an action with multiple items here, I'd press and hold on an album, then notice a check box appear in the corner of each album. After that, you can let go and start checking off other albums you wanted to select for sharing, deletion, or other action.

Click an album, and you'll see, well, all the pictures in it. You saw the Motorola carousel-style view previously, with the date ("Today") shown images as you flip through them. On an HTC phone, you get either Grid or Filmstrip style views, which you can switch with an option under the Menu button. HTC's Gallery also provides a built-in browser for Facebook, Flickr, or other networks you've connected to.

Selecting Albums on HTC

When you click an individual photo to view it, you'll often have the option to make a few adjustments right there on your phone before sharing it or stashing it away. On the stock Android Gallery, for example, you can hit the "More" menu on a photo, then select "Crop" to trim a shot down to its essentials. Use your fingers to expand the margins of the cropping area:

Cropping an Image

Cropping and rotating are helpful, but you can also use the "Set As" function found on most phones to set an image as a contact icon, a wallpaper, or as some other photo background on your phone. You'll use the same finger controls to set the margins of your wallpaper, which varies depending on your phone resolution and screen size.

Desktop Apps for Managing Photos

As noted in the tutorial on "Getting Media On and Off Your Phone," some Android models come with software for your Windows or Mac computer that help manage your phone's files, including pictures. When you plug in a Droid model, for example, a screen appears indicating how many new pictures have been taken since you last connected your phone via USB, and offers to open up a program to import and manage those photos.

If you already know and use a great photo management software, go ahead and keep using it. When you plug in your phone, simply mount it as a USB drive, or "mass storage," as explained in that tutorial. Your photo app will think it's just like any camera card, and can import the photos from your phone.

If you don't have a photo management application, or don't really dig how Windows or Mac handles photo importing, try Picasa. It's free software from Google, for both Windows and Mac systems (and Linux, too, though that version's a bit backdated). It's great at importing photos, doing helpful edits that don't require advanced Photoshop knowledge, and, perhaps most helpfully, batching together photos and resizing them for easy email sending.

Importing Photos to your Computer with Picasa

On a Windows system, it's easy to make Picasa the default photo importer for your Android. Just plug in your phone and select the USB/mass storage mode from your phone's menu that pops up (or pull down the Notification Bar and tap the USB option, as previously described).

Using Picasa through a USB connection

Windows will pop up with a box noting that it's found a storage device with pictures on it. If you have Picasa installed, you'll see an option to "Copy pictures to your computer and view them," with a multi-color Picasa icon next to it. Before clicking that option, check off the "Always do this for pictures" box at the top of the prompt. Now, whenever you plug in your Android phone, or any digital camera, Picasa will offer to import your photos. More importantly, though, it will batch your photos by shooting date, let you give them proper names, and provide smart tools for making them look better. If nothing else, check out the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on the photo editing page—it's a real lifesaver.

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