This one finger tap is the most vital part of taking smartphone pics

Most of the time, hitting the shutter button is enough to take the best shot your phone can take. But it often pays to tap on your subject first. — Florian Schuh/dpa

Just hit the shutter button. The automatic system will fix it.

You're not wrong. Smartphones have never been better at automatically adjusting photo settings to get you lush shots and perfect exposures. Even at night, the latest flagships from Apple and Google will turn on night mode to magically brighten up dark scenes with software.

But when it comes to manually improving your photos, nothing beats a simple tap on your subject before you take the photo.

If you notice that the main subject of your photo is drowned in brightness or sinking into darkness, you'll get a much better result if you tap on the motif with your finger.

The camera will then refocus and remeasure the exposure.

That means if you're trying to get a photo of a dog in the park and your phone thinks you want those people in the distance, the dog might be out of focus and too dark until you tap on it on your screen.

This simple tap will also help you get cleaner close-up shots of flowers or other objects that might not always be completely in focus.

If this does not work, the exposure should be corrected manually. Some phones will let you tap a sun or plus-minus symbol that appears in the image. If you're still not getting results, you'll need to play around with the settings in the professional mode or camera app settings.

The slider for the exposure setting can usually be recognised by the abbreviation EV for Exposure Value. – dpa