- We've rounded up the most effective photography tips for Xiaomi phones, from Leica profiles to RAW shooting.
- Learn how to recover deleted photos from your phone using Recycle Bin, Google Photos, Mi Cloud, and specialized apps.
- Learn how to create animated videos with your images by leveraging Google's Gemini and VEO 3 AI integration on Xiaomi.
Applying photography tricks to your Xiaomi phone can make all the difference between an ordinary image and a striking shot. The Chinese brand's phones, especially the latest models like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, offer powerful tools for those looking to take their photography to the next level. Whether you use your camera purely as a hobby or have more creative aspirations, knowing all the available features will help you get the most out of your device.
In this article, we'll review the best tips for improving your photos: from choosing the right lenses for different scenes and taking advantage of Leica color profiles , to recovering accidentally deleted images and discovering new AI features for turning your photos into videos. Everything is explained simply so you can apply each trick as soon as you finish reading.
Master Leica lenses and profiles for a professional result
The latest Xiaomi phones let you experiment with various lenses and color modes, a feature that can significantly influence the tone and atmosphere of your photos. The wide-angle lens is perfect for capturing expansive landscapes or architecture, allowing the entire building or surroundings to fit within the frame. For portraits or urban shots, the 3.2x zoom lets you isolate subjects without intruding on their space, while the 5x zoom lens is ideal for capturing distant details, such as tall sculptures or spontaneous scenes.
But the real differentiation comes from the collaboration with Leica . This partnership provides exclusive color modes that you can select before shooting:
- Leica Vibrant: intensifies and saturates colors, ideal for vivid scenes.
- Leica Authentic: offers a cinematic aesthetic, with more nuanced tones.
- Leica Natural: balanced and realistic colors, without oversaturation.
- Leica BN HC: High contrast black and white, to play with light and shadow.
- Leica BN: traditional black and white.
- Leica Sepia: vintage atmosphere with brown and warm tones.
- Leica Blue: focuses on cool tones, perfect for minimalist photos or foggy environments.
Selecting these profiles before shooting allows you to tailor each image to the story you want to tell, achieving professional results with ease.
Advanced Tricks: RAW, Manual Focus, and Exposure Management
For those who want to control every last detail, Xiaomi's Pro mode allows shooting in 14-bit RAW . This provides more information in each shot and gives you the freedom to recover shadows, adjust highlights, or modify colors in post-processing without loss of quality. Simply activate the RAW+ format and edit with apps like Lightroom or Snapseed.
Manual focus is another essential tool for artistic or narrative photography. With it, you can highlight specific subjects, such as reflections in puddles, views from a café, or details behind glass. The virtual assistant highlights the focused area in green before you take the shot, helping you achieve the desired result without surprises.
An underappreciated trick is controlling exposure to avoid blown-out skies or overly deep shadows in challenging lighting conditions. Slightly underexposing using exposure compensation (EV) and checking the histogram in real time can achieve a perfect balance. If you want to take it a step further, you can take several photos with varying exposures and then combine them on your computer.
Play with long exposure and stabilization on Xiaomi
Xiaomi's long exposure function is incredibly easy to use and doesn't require a tripod, thanks to the device's optical image stabilization. Try capturing moving water—like waterfalls, fountains, or the sea—or creating light trails in nighttime photos. You can also remove people from busy scenes to achieve "ghost" effects. The camera app's presets make the process even simpler, and you can adjust them to your liking.
This combined hardware and software turn Xiaomi phones into pocket-sized cameras capable of adapting to different situations, both during the day and in low light, without the need for additional accessories.
Recover deleted photos easily: trash, clouds, and apps
It's not always about taking new photos: recovering deleted images can be just as important. Xiaomi offers several built-in options for this. If you accidentally deleted a photo:
- Check the trash in the MIUI gallery, where deleted items remain for 30 days.
- Check the trash can Google Photos, which keeps deleted photos for up to 60 days, or recovers saved versions if you have an active backup.
- Accede to We Cloud from your Xiaomi account settings; there you can restore files synced to the cloud.
- In more difficult cases, use apps like DiskDigger o DigDeep Recovery to scan memory for lost files. They work on most non-rooted devices, although caution is advised.
- Check WhatsApp and Telegram, as many photos are stored there and can be downloaded again if they are not in the main gallery.
If all of the above fails, a backup to a computer or microSD card may be a last resort. Additionally, enabling cloud backup and performing regular backups help prevent losses.
Bonus tip: Discover hidden photos in the "unsaved creations" section
There's a little-known trick in Google Photos to find compositions and animations that the app automatically generated but never saved. To find them:
- Access Google Photos from the browser in desktop mode.
- Go to settings (nut icon).
- Look for the “Unsaved Creations” section in the suggestions.
- From there, you can save or download outdated collages, movies, and animations without even realizing it.
This way, you can recover forgotten memories or automatically generated images that you never saw on your phone.
From still images to video: Gemini AI and VEO 3 arrive at Xiaomi
Did you know you can now turn a photo into an animated video with music and narration on your Xiaomi device? The integration of Google's Gemini AI with Xiaomi devices—along with VEO 3—makes it easy to transform any image into a mini-video production in seconds.
To use this feature, you just need to install the Google Gemini app, go to "Tools," select "Video," and choose the photo you want to animate. The interface is intuitive, and the process is automatic. You can download clips of up to 8 seconds in landscape format, ideal for social media, with AI-generated sound effects and voiceovers. Visible and invisible watermarks are added to identify AI-generated content.
For now, this feature is only available to Gemini AI Ultra and AI Pro subscribers in select regions, with plans to expand its availability to all supported devices.
