Why are my Iphone6 photos never as sharp as those posted?

I normally shoot with a couple of Nikon dSLRs, but occasionally take the odd snap with my iphone6. No matter how I edit, either on the phone or by emailing the image and editing in Photoshop CS6 with Nik plugins, I seem to have a lot of noise and poor image sharpness/definition, at least when compared to other images I see posted on the net. Certainly the quality would not be good enough for a 10"x8" print, or on a PC screen. What trick am I missing?

A couple of days ago I took the attached image with my iphone as I did not have my dSLR with me. Image taken in to the light of a low setting sun, using IPhone 6 and "RAW" by 500px app, exported at full size by email in to PS CS6, increased from 72dpi to 300dpi and processed with additional help from NIK plug-ins, Silver Efex in particular. I tried removing noise with NIK Dfine2. results are ok at small scale, but when I tried to zoom in to view at actual pixel size (- see the close-up of the central part of the image), I noticed that a lot of the noise is in a regular square grid form over the entire image.... which is surely not a result of my editing effects, or is it?

Does anyone have suggestions as to what this effect is caused by, and how I can eliminate it please?

I think it's a software issue with Apple, something that has been around a few years. I use an app called Pro Camera which avoids Apple's "smearing" and keeps a RAW/TIFF file. It's a well-complained about thing and I'm surprised they haven't got their act together with it, especially when are selling their iPhone 7's on the back of image quality. iPhone 7/7+ is exactly the same except in the very best lighting.

Might need to see some better examples. They look like low res versions that aren't the original files taken by the phone. I haven't used the phone in question but you should be able to set the resolution in the camera options, make sure it's max (it might give options like low-med-high).

When you're processing images that will be viewed on computers or mobile devices ignore DPI and PPI (only useful when it comes time for printing). What size is the image in pixels? Greatly enlarging a small image will get you a low-res, not sharp look.

The ones you're showing have the sun directly in front of you and suffer lens flare (probably) which will wash out the whole image.

Thank you for this, I will check the PRO CAMERA app. My own fault for not having a proper camera with me.

Thanks, the image was take by the phone but I'll see if I can set the resolution somewhere in settings, admittedly the image was cropped about 50% so that would lose some quality when enlarging the resultant crop. The image was deliberately taken in to the sun, to get the flare and silhouettes, but still disappointed to find the grid appearing on the image - that should not be present surely. Thank you for the feedback, much appreciated.

Dartmoor Mike wrote in post #18197244
Thanks, the image was take by the phone but I'll see if I can set the resolution somewhere in settings, admittedly the image was cropped about 50% so that would lose some quality when enlarging the resultant crop. The image was deliberately taken in to the sun, to get the flare and silhouettes, but still disappointed to find the grid appearing on the image - that should not be present surely. Thank you for the feedback, much appreciated.

I see the grid you're talking about now, I thought it was just stretched pixels when I looked at it briefly this morning but it seems to be more than that. See if it happens just using the default camera at highest resolution (no cropping or resizing).

Thanks, will try today. Unfortunately on the iphone6 the camera is a fixed resolution, except for video when there is a choice of two, subject to fps choice for slomo. So o way to change the resolution apparently. Whatever the cause of the grid, it certainly adds a lot of noise at normal viewing resolution.

Odd. I've never seen pics like that on my 6. I upgraded to the 7 about 2 months ago and the low light pictures are 300% better.