Is there any way to make my phone camera not smooth out my skin?

Its important to know what actually makes the phone camera smoothed-out your skin before we know how to not to do it.

The smoothness in the skin is nothing but lack of details in the photograph. These lack of details are caused due to two reasons:

• Small and less powerful camera sensor
• Improper lighting

The phone camera has a small sensor which is not capable of capturing the complete details of your skin and extremities like the pupil structure etc. And hence out of these two reasons, you can't do anything for the first reason, as you can't change the sensor unless and until you change your phone.

The type of lighting matters a lot when subject details in the photo are matter of concern and it's the only thing that you can play with when you are constrained by the phone camera and desire to get details in your photo. When the subject is properly exposed to good quality of lighting, then the phone camera automatically shoots at lower ISO as per its pre-programed algorithms. And when the ISO is low while shooting the photo the details in the photos are bound to be much more than shooting at higher ISO.

Here I have uploaded and image that I had shot, to exemplify what the Details in photo actually mean. This photo was shot in the natural light, on a cloudy day, giving abundant diffused light. Also, this is not shot by a mobile phone, but my Nikon D810 camera while has one of the most powerful sensors in the world. But still my point is, the photo can be studied and the texture of the skin, especially the details in the eyes are so evident due to proper lighting and lower ISO. The second image shows the zoomed version of this photo where the details of the pupil can be seen along with the skin texture.

So if you intend to get the skin texture please keep these points in your mind before clicking.

Photography is an art of Making a photo, so enjoy it while paying minute attention to the details.

Happy clicking!