Samsung Silhouette Photography: Settings and Steps

Silhouettes, when part of your photo is supposed to be black, are an exception. Here, you want your subject to be nothing more than a dark shape without detail against a brighter background.

The trick, on a Galaxy phone, is getting your camera to not try to save your subject. Galaxy’s recent flagship phones take multiple exposures and merge them to reveal detail in dark areas, which is usually a good thing but defeats the point of a silhouette.

A silhouette in six steps

1. 1

   Put the light behind the subject

   Position yourself so that there’s a bright background behind your subject, as silhouettes don’t work if the light source is behind you! A window will work just as well as the sun, but make sure it’s much brighter than the foreground.

2. 2

   Get the subject against open sky

   Get low or move to one side until the entire outline of your subject is framed against plain sky. This is particularly important if there are hills or trees in the background, because if these are dark they’ll merge into the silhouette.

3. 3

   Tap the bright area beside the subject

   Tap on an area of bright sky (not on the sun though!) near your subject to set focus and exposure. This should expose for the sky and darken the overall picture.

4. 4

   Lower the brightness

   Drag the brightness bar (by the focus circle) down until your subject is nicely silhouetted (black). Try around a one-stop underexposure to start with, making sure the sky still looks reasonably colourful.

5. 5

   Lock exposure

   Press and hold on the screen until you get an AF/AE lock indication; according to Samsung’s S26 user guide, this setting is maintained after taking the picture, so subsequent exposures should be similar.

6. 6

   Shoot a series and check the outline

   Take a few pictures as your subject moves or changes position, zooming in on the screen to make sure limbs are separated from the main body for maximum effect.

Keep holding the lock frame on Galaxy S26 series until it’s separated into AF/AE. Then, you can drag AE (exposure) to the sky to set exposure and keep AF (focus) on your subject for sharpness. The AE/AF lock guide explains the split on other phones.

Settings by situation

In both Pro rows you’ll have to set the ISO and shutter speed manually (according to Samsung’s guide to Pro mode, once you select the shutter speed the ISO will no longer remain on Auto, as it is down to you to select the appropriate combination to give you a correctly exposed image), and you should use the preview to see if your blacks are OK.

Why the subject comes out grey

Samsung has had HDR on by default in Photo mode on Galaxy flagships since One UI 4.0. HDR takes multiple exposures and merges them to retain detail in dark areas, but sometimes this results in blacks that should be pitch black looking a little greyed out.

HDR is disabled when you shoot in Pro mode according to Samsung’s camera FAQ, so Pro mode is the easiest way to make sure blacks aren’t compromised.

• Select Pro mode, use low ISO and a fast shutter speed. HDR won’t come into play this way, so the shadows will be as dark as the exposure indicates.
• Disable Auto HDR in Samsung’s Camera Assistant app. Samsung explains that it helps take photos with more details in both bright and dark areas of the scene. On Galaxy S25 Ultra with One UI 9 (checked in November 2026), Auto HDR is under the Photos heading. Our HDR guide indicates its position.
• Check Scene Optimizer. According to Samsung’s support page, Scene Optimizer can detect scenes such as sunsets, night scenes, food and backlit subjects. On One UI 9 it’s named Scene detection and it’s under Photo enhancer in Camera settings. See our Scene Optimizer guide for information on how to turn this off.
• Watch for bright objects in front of the subject. Light will reflect off pale-coloured objects (e.g. white walls or sandy beaches) onto the subject, lifting it out of black.

Lens choice and the size of the sun

The apparent size of the sun changes depending on where you position yourself and the lens you choose. Shoot from farther away with a telephoto lens and the sun will appear relatively large (compared to your subject). Move closer and use an ultra-wide-angle lens and the sun will look relatively small, especially if you include a lot of sky in the composition. For portraits that keep the face lit in the same low sun, see our golden hour portrait ideas.

• Try framing a small person against a big landscape (think of someone standing on a pier or on top of a sand dune) with the 0.6x ultra-wide camera available on all Galaxy phones.
• The 1x camera handles most trees or people silhouetted against a sunset as it has the biggest sensor and will perform best at dusk.
• On the Galaxy S24/S25/S26 you can use the 3x telephoto and on the S24 Ultra/S25 Ultra/S26 Ultra the 5x to make the sun appear bigger behind your (far away) subject. With the telephoto guide you can move through the zoom levels one by one.
• If your Galaxy doesn’t have a telephoto (this is the case for Galaxy A phones as well as the Z Flip), get further away from your subject, shoot in decent light and use a 2x crop.

Use a fast shutter speed to take a picture with a big sun behind the subject. If possible have the sun partially covered by the subject’s head or an outstretched arm. This will greatly reduce the amount of glare in the picture.

Shapes that read clearly

Try and keep arms away from the body and have everyone stand in profile so you can see a definite nose and chin rather than facing the camera where they will look like round blobs.

Remember, with a silhouette there is no detail, texture or colour to help identify who’s who, so make sure there’s a clear and distinct outline.

• Negative space helps the silhouette read better, so make sure to separate the different parts of the body from each other, e.g. there should be space between the arms and the body. If the different parts overlap they will form one blob.
• Silhouette against the sky. Shooting from a low angle will help you achieve this and also get rid of clutter in the background.
• Silhouettes work best with simple backgrounds and a lot of negative space around them. The negative space guide explains how much room to leave, and our negative space photo ideas show plenty of examples.

Fixes for common silhouette problems

• If the sky blows out to white, tap closer to the sky for metering and adjust brightness down.
• If the flare is ruining the contrast balance, try shading the lens with your hand or blocking the sun with your subject. Make sure your lens is clean too!
• Separate your subject from another person/object (ask them to move, or move yourself).
• If the outline is soft, meter and focus separately on the S26. Otherwise, try tapping along the edge of your subject and locking focus.

Editing a silhouette

In Samsung’s Gallery app editing function (tap the pencil icon), increase the contrast slider, then bring down the brightness just enough to render the person completely black. Make sure the sky doesn’t look too drab.

For more precise adjustments, try the free Snapseed app. Drag the left-hand point on the graph in the Curves tool down until the person’s outline is black. In Selective, you can add brightness and/or warmth just to the sky. For sunset colour itself, the sunset guide covers exposure for bright skies.