Where do green or yellow dots come from in iPhone camera photos and how can I remove them?
You may have come across the fact that a photo taken with your iPhone of a beautiful sunset has suddenly been marred by a noticeable green or yellow dot. This spoils the whole impression of the landscape.
♥ ON-TOPIC: How to take RAW photos on iPhone and iPad (without losing quality).
This is a fairly common problem that many iPhone users encounter from time to time. It's hard to believe, but the appearance of a green or yellow dot in your photos is not at all an indication of a hardware problem on your smartphone.
In this article, we will try to explain what this artifact is, how to prevent it from appearing and remove it from your photos already taken.
♥ ON-TOPIC: Burst shooting on iPhone and iPad: how to take photos at 10 frames per second and choose the best image.
What is a green or yellow dot on iPhone photos?
As we've mentioned before, sometimes you can see a green dot on your iPhone photos. But there are also other problems of this type in the form of brightness or blur in your photos. In fact, they all refer to the same problem.
In most cases, green or yellow spots, fog, or glare occur when taking a photo with a strong light source in the background. For example, if you're photographing a sunrise, sunset, or anything else with the sun or bright light somewhere in your field of vision, or even out of your field of vision, you are likely to end up with that nasty smudge. green or yellow, the glare in the frame or the fog.
The problem is that the light rays travel at a certain angle and are reflected off the surface inside the camera or the lens cap. Regardless of the iPhone model that the user has (iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, iPhone 7, etc.), sooner or later they will run into this problem.
And it is not a fault of your smartphone at all. It's just physics mocking humans with its effects. Honestly, almost any camera, big or small, can be subject to the same problem. But on DSLRs complete with a UV filter or rotating polarizer, it's at least easier to fix.
♥ ON-TOPIC: Old Face in FaceApp, an application for iPhone and Android that ages a person in a photo.
How to prevent a green or yellow dot from appearing in your photos
Once you understand the natural causes of green dot in your photos, it will be much easier to get rid of it in the modeling phase of the photo itself. There are several things you can do to lessen the effect of spots or prevent them from appearing.
The preferred method seems to be this. You have to move the iPhone slightly so that the green dot hits the light source directly. Then it will disappear. For example, when photographing a sunset, the phone should be positioned so that the green dot is right in the center of the sun. This will make the artifact disappear without skewing the photo excessively.
Another solution is to cover the lens of your iPhone with an external lens or with your sunglasses. This method can be used occasionally, it doesn't always work, but it is a viable option.
♥ ON-TOPIC: How to take photos correctly: 12 simple tips for those who want to improve the quality of their photos.
How to remove green spot from iPhone photos?
If you have some photos on Photobooth that have been affected by this problem, you can remove the green dot from these photos quite easily.
There are many applications in the App Store that allow you to do this, but there is one that we think is the best, as well as being free. We are talking about Snapseed from Google. This program offers many photo editing tools, but it has a feature called Sanitation. This is exactly what will allow you to remove the green dot non-destructively.
1. Download Snapseed for free from the App Store.
2. Launch the application and upload the photo you want to retouch to it. Click on the tab Tools.
3. Select the tool Spot correction.
4. Use your fingers to bring the screen as close as possible to the area with the green or yellow dot.
5. When the green (yellow) dot is close enough, shade it with your finger. When you remove your finger from the screen, you will see that the app has magically removed the artifact. It seems like it was never there in the first place.
6. Click the check mark in the lower right corner of the screen to save your changes, then save the photo to the 'Photostream'.
Unfortunately, the green or yellow stain on iPhone photos is something that we will probably have to deal with for years to come as it is a problem related to the physics and nature of light. But once you figure it out, all you have to do to fix the problem is make simple changes to the way you take your photos. However, you can always use apps to retouch your photos and remove the green dot.
