How to Take Photos of Computer Screens Without Moire

The Challenge of Screen Photography

Taking a picture of a monitor, TV, or smartphone screen is the most common cause of Moire in the modern age. Whether you are a developer sharing a bug, a gamer showing off a high score, or a student capturing a lecture slide, you've seen those ugly wavy lines.

You are essentially taking a grid (your camera sensor) and placing it over another grid (the screen's sub-pixels). Unlike fabric, which has a microscopic weave, screen pixels are relatively large and emit light, creating harsh, high-contrast interference patterns.

5 Proven Tips to Prevent Moire

1. Change Your Distance and Angle (The "Zoom and Tilt")

The easiest fix is to physically move. Moire patterns depend on the specific alignment and ratio of the two grids.

Zoom In/Out: By changing the focal length, you change the size of the screen pixels relative to your sensor pixels. Often, just taking a step back and zooming in (using optical zoom, not digital) will eliminate the pattern.
Tilt the Camera: Rotate your phone or camera slightly (about 15-30 degrees). While this makes the screen look crooked, it breaks the perfect grid alignment. You can always straighten the image later in editing, which re-samples the pixels and helps destroy the pattern.

2. Focus Slightly Off

Moire thrives on sharp, high-frequency detail. If you manually focus just a tiny bit in front of or behind the screen pixels, you "soften" the grid of the screen without making the text unreadable.

This acts as a physical "low-pass filter." The goal is to make the individual red-green-blue sub-pixels of the monitor blend together into a single color before they hit your sensor.

3. Use a Smaller Aperture (Higher f-number)

If you are using a DSLR or Mirrorless camera:

Stop down your aperture to f/11, f/16, or even f/22.
At these small apertures, a phenomenon called diffraction kicks in. Diffraction naturally softens the image and reduces resolution slightly.
While landscape photographers hate diffraction, in this specific case, it is your friend because it kills the aliasing that causes Moire.

4. Adjust Shutter Speed (For Flickering and Banding)

Sometimes what looks like Moire is actually PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) flickering or refresh rate scanning.

Screens refresh at specific rates (60Hz, 120Hz, 144Hz).
If your shutter speed is too fast (e.g., 1/4000s), you might capture the screen mid-refresh, causing dark bands.
Slow your shutter speed down to 1/30s or 1/60s to capture a full cycle of the screen's light emission.

5. Smartphone Pro-Tips

Most people are taking these photos with iPhones or Androids. Here is how to handle it on mobile:

Use the Telephoto Lens: Switch to your 2x, 3x, or 5x lens and stand further back. The compression and resolution change often fixes the grid overlap.
Tap to Focus (then slide down): Tap the screen to focus, then drag the exposure slider down. Screens are bright; overexposing them blooms the pixels and exaggerates artifacts. Lowering exposure preserves text sharpness.
Third-Party Apps: Apps like Lightroom Mobile or Halide allow manual focus control, letting you apply the "slight blur" technique mentioned in Tip #2.

The Ultimate Solution: Screenshots

It sounds obvious, but it needs to be said: If you can, take a screenshot instead of a photo. A screenshot grabs the digital data directly from the video buffer, bypassing the screen's pixel grid and the camera's sensor entirely.

However, we know this isn't always possible (e.g., photographing a BIOS screen, a kiosk, or someone else's device). In those cases, if you still end up with Moire despite your best efforts, AI post-processing tools like Morie are specifically designed to detect the geometric regularity of screen moire and remove it while keeping the text legible.