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Edit Photos On The iPhone - How To Use The iPhone's Editing Tools

Editing can be a controversial subject. Some believe photos should not be altered as then they are not "real". Others believe that photography is another creative art form and will take their editing to the extreme to express their own photography style. Have you ever taken a photo and looked at it and thought the colours did not quite resemble what your eyes are seeing? The camera can not always get all parts of the image right. Therefore, even if you do not want to change the image too much, altering it a little can just bring it back to what you were trying to capture in the first place. Or, who knows, by playing around with the editing function you may find a new style of expressing yourself through your photography.


The easiest way to edit with the iPhone is through its own camera app. Just tap "edit" at the top right corner of the image and you will be taken to a large selection of editing options.


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Edit iPhone photos

The iPhone's own editing function can be a little clunky, but it is still a good simple way to edit your iPhone photos. However, it does tend to adjust the whole image. There are no selective adjustment options, and the thing I miss most is there is no healing function. This can remove objects from your image. For example I often get a green dot when taking images into the sun. I easily remove these with another app restoring the image to what was there in the first place. A positive feature though is that you can always revert the edited image back to the original one if you do not like what you have done.


Cropping, Rotating, Flipping, Resizing, and Straightening The Image:


This is the first thing you should tackle when editing an image. That way you have removed any distractions from the edges, have the image at the correct size, and the image is straight before you start more detailed work on it.


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Crop, straighten, flip, rotate, and resize.

Tap edit above the image, then tap the right of the bottom three icons. Then you have access to all the options as part of this function.


iPhones Filters - Ready To Use Filter Options:


iPhone does also have a selection of its own ready to use filters.


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iPhone filters

Open the image and tap edit. Choose the middle icon of the bottom three. This will then open up a selection of filters. Scroll through the options to see how your image changes. When you have selected a filter, you can then use the slider underneath to alter the intensity of the filter. So you do still have some control over the editing of the image. Tap done or cancel after you have finished depending on whether you want to save the edit or not.


iPhones Editing Tool:


Tap edit at the top of the image, and then tap the left icon of the bottom three.


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iPhone editing tools

This then opens up a large selection of editing options. Each option has its own slider for adjustment. I will now work through each option describing its function and showing you what difference it makes. I have included images that are the original and adjusted so you can see the difference visually.


Auto: Use this to see how iPhone would edit your image with one tap. It does have a sliding scale underneath so you can alter it if you want to.



Exposure: This brightens or darkens the overall image



Brilliance: This function is here to enhance any details in the image.



Highlights: Use this function to adjust to brightness of the lighter areas of your image.




Shadows: Use this function to adjust the darker (shadow) areas of your image.



Contrast: Using this will increase the difference between the darker and lighter parts of your photo.



Brightness: This sounds and is very similar to the exposure tool. But it does work slightly differently. Exposure can have a bias towards the highlights, whereas brightness will affect all the tones.



Black Point: This option alters the darkest parts of your picture.



Saturation: This is one of the more popular options people like to play with. However, too much of this and it can lead very easily to an "over edited" look. It increases the richness of all the colours in the images. If you decrease the slider you will fade the colours to a point where you can convert your picture to a black and white image.



Vibrance: This function works on the mid tones of an image rather than all the colours which saturation does.



Warmth: Exactly as it says, it can make an image look warmer or cooler. ie a more yellowy tone for warmer, and a bluer tone for cooler - which is great for winter photos.



Tint: This adds a tint but it is to the whole image. Therefore sometimes this can look wrong or unnatural.



Sharpness: This is a great tool especially if some parts of your photo are out of focus, or you want to sharpen up some details in the image.



Definition: This is similar to sharpness and improves the clarity of any detail.



Noise Reduction: Sometimes images can have a "grainy" look. Especially if they have been taken in low light or you have over edited. This option can decrease some of that. However, be aware that decreasing this too much can also make the image look softer or more dreamy. Sometimes you might want this effect, but not at other times.



Vignette: This darkens or brightens the edges of your image. I use the darken option to draw people into my images. This example already had some vignette applied so there are three images; the original, one with even darker edges, and one with lighter edges.



The most important thing after all this tweaking is to remember to save your image. You do this by tapping "done".


This was a very brief overview of all your editing options within the iPhone camera app. If there is anything you would like to know more about let me know in the comments below. The next post will look at a slightly more refined way of editing your images so watch out for the next blog post.


The image I have chosen for this weeks focus is this one:


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A Winter Scene - Sweden

A lovely winter's scene from a dog walk with my Husky and twins the other week. When it is so cold we get these beautiful pink evening skies.


The image I have chosen to put the spotlight on from my shop is this one.





This is one of the most popular ones I sell from my shop. I love the way the sunset is glinting through the life ring. The sea is a big part of life here as we are surrounded by it, and this captures summer life on the island...sea and sun.


I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog post and learning a little more about some of the great things your phone camera can do, and thank you for taking the time to read it. I would love to hear from you in the comments, via email, or the contact form. If there are any topics you would like covered in the future, please leave suggestions in the comments. Please take a visit to my instagram page where there is a lot more to see. You can always request an order from there if you see an image you like that is not on my shop page. Lastly, it would be a huge favour if you could share this blog post for me. It would help my shop a lot!




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