What You Need

Phones from Apple, Google and Samsung include the company’s own photo-editing apps that use A.I. to enhance pictures, but you may get additional features based on your hardware model.

For example, some Samsung Galaxy phone models have an Object Eraser option. Google’s recent Pixel phones include software with built-in tools to “unblur” images, erase background distractions and adjust the look of portraits. (This year, the Magic Eraser feature was added to the Android and iOS Google Photos apps for subscribers to the Google One cloud-storage service.)

If your phone’s default editing app doesn’t include the controls you crave, you can download third-party apps to get the job done; many are dedicated just to making your self-portraits look good. Among the many software options for Android and iOS are Adobe’s Photoshop Express or Lightroom, which are free with in-app purchases; Lightroom skews more toward advanced photo-editing work. TouchRetouch ($15 a year) is another dedicated editing app.