Hi everyone,
I'm hoping to get some advice from the iPhone users here.
I enjoy taking selfies, but as a VoiceOver user, it can be really difficult to get a decent shot. I often end up with photos where my face is partially cut off, or I'm looking completely off-center.
Does anyone have any specific tips, techniques, or app recommendations (besides the built-in Camera app or the well-known SelfieX) that you use to take good selfies?
Specifically, how do you make sure your face is properly framed and not chopped off at the edge? Any clever tricks or best practices would be hugely appreciated!
Thanks in advance for your help!
By Indra, 19 October, 2025
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
I would need tips as well
Using camera is a nightmare. I even have difficulty to scan documents and setup FaceId at first setup.
Couple of things
For a spontaneous--not staged--picture, I take several individual pictures--not bursts--with slight angle differences and go through them in Seeing AI to ask various questions. The Camera app will give sound and spoken feedback on whether the phone is level. Seeing AI will rarely tell you if something is cut off by an edge, so you need to ask specific questions and use the Explore by touch through the Brows photos in the description tab of the app. If the subject is in the frame, but not quite where I want it, I crop the picture in the Photos app. Lots of practice aiming the camera helps too. And ya, it's a lot of work, but you can get that one great picture...
This is where the model of iPhone might make a difference. My SE3 only takes a wide angle shot, and all zooming and such is just digital auto cropping. In that situation, I turn the phone on its side with the power button on top sometimes, then crop the picture into a portrait orientation and the aspect framing I want from the landscape. Also, I use a remote camera button or clicker because pressing the volume button to take the picture, or tapping the screen sometimes moves the camera. I'll spare you the rambling on picking aspects for posting on social media, as well as, applying filters and depth of field etc.
Surprised, no one mentioned Seeing AI
I’m not sure exactly how it would work as far as selfies go but if I remember right, Seeing AI does have a section in there where you can use the back camera to take a picture and it guesses your age or something like that, but I remembered to sink leave it telling me if it with my face was in the center or left or right hope that helps
This *used* to be a VoiceOver feature
it used to be that to take a selfie as a VoiceOver user, all you had to do was have the camera app open, point the camera at your face, and voiceover would announce the position of your face in relation to the camera. When it would say 'face centered', you would snap your pic and voilà .
At some point Apple broke this. You can still try it, but it is no longer accurate. ðŸ˜
Seeing AI
OK ya, Seeing AI, in the Describe tab where you can take a picture, does guide you for taking a selfie. Thanks, @Rixon Smith, for pointing that out. I have not checked to see how accurate it is. You can then save the picture and there is an album in the Photos app. It only guides you for faces--I don't have a dog or cat to test it on--tells you a distance estimate and I think it saves it in JPG format. Once it's in the Photos app you should be able to manipulate it, if it isn't up to professional composition standards, and you are obsessive about such things.
I tried to work with the Camera app's view finder in VO focus, but other than a general and very vague idea of what might possibley be in the frame, it is just a distraction. Nice feature though for just pointing the phone at things, and I am glad it's there. Do a single tap on the middle of the screen if the descriptions start lagging behind what is currently being seen by the camera.