Photos lack the correct colour

[Meus Me]

It's as if there is not enough colour saturation. This applies to taking photos of colourful objects. Even when taking photos of myself (I'm brown), the photo looks as if there is too much brightness applied. I do not 'tap' to focus or anything, but I have tried that and it generally makes no difference.

This is for the 4S by the way

 

[eajames]

A couple thoughts:

Poor contrast can arise from light outside of the field of view affecting the sensor - try shielding the lens with your hand.

Many on-board meters are calibrated to average exposures to "18% grey"; if your face is darker than this and it is positioned in the composition such that it heavily influences the meter, the image will be overexposed. Look a for camera app with exposure compensation - "Slow Shutter" is one (kinda). Alternately, you can use tap-to-focus but tap on an area in your composition that is ~18% grey - your facial tone should be rendered more accurately.

 

[TL24]

It's as if there is not enough colour saturation. This applies to taking photos of colourful objects. Even when taking photos of myself (I'm brown), the photo looks as if there is too much brightness applied. I do not 'tap' to focus or anything, but I have tried that and it generally makes no difference.

This is for the 4S by the way

That's due to the display/screen of your iPhone 4S. If you compare your iPhone 4S to other 4S's or other phones, you'll be able to tell that all screens have a different tint/hue that'll impact the overall picture quality. To some the less saturated, less contrast heavy screens works best for them - for others they want the colors to pop out at them like the screens found on the Galaxy Nexus, SGS3 and HTC one X.

Honestly the only thing missing from our 4S is the contrast level, the colors are more natural in my opinion and look better on my 4S then they do on say a GSG3 or Galaxy Nexus.

To overcome this I'd suggest jealbreaking your phone and go purchase "Color Profiles" from Cydia. Once you've purchased the tweak/app open it up and set the color Profile to "Bold" and tweak how "Bold" you want your screen to look. With "Bold" you'll notice that your dark get darker and the colors pop out at you more. My "Bold" slider is right in between the E and R for the word Temperature. Give it a shot, you might just fall in love with your 4S all over again like I did lol