Chapter 5. Edit Your Photos

Photo editing encompasses a broad spectrum. You may only need to crop a photo to focus on someone in the scene, or you may want to radically change the tone and color of the shot to match a mood or compensate for less than ideal shooting conditions. The Photos apps for OS X and iOS offer surprisingly sophisticated controls for correcting images.

I say “surprisingly” because Apple could have made the editing tools extremely basic to appeal to the widest array of customers. They didn’t. In fact, the tools in Photos for OS X are some of the best I’ve seen in terms of applying sophisticated adjustments using a simple interface.

This chapter goes into detail about the Photos for OS X editing capabilities and also covers those in Photos for iOS. There’s a lot of overlap between the two, as well as features that are unique to each platform.

In the Adjust tools, what you initially see are the “easy” controls. For finer-grained control over each adjustment type, click the arrow to the right of the tool name (which appears when you move the mouse pointer near it); additional sliders appear for specific edits (5.3).

In order to present as much of the image as possible, the toolbar is hidden in Full Screen mode. Move the mouse pointer to the top of the screen to reveal it. Or, choose View > Always Show Toolbar in Full Screen.

To exit Full Screen mode, click the Zoom control, choose View > Exit Full Screen, or press the Esc key.

For example, I recommend turning on the histogram, which details the levels of light and dark pixels in each color channel (red, green, and blue). It’s a good reference to make sure your photo is balanced well. Unlike the other options in the Add pop-up menu, Histogram doesn’t offer any controls for manipulating the image, but it’s helpful regardless.

If you find yourself turning to other tools often (such as White Balance), make sure the ones you want are visible and then choose Save as Default from the pop-up menu. That set appears whenever you use the Adjust tools.

However, reverting is the nuclear option: it removes all adjustments from a photo. When you make an adjustment, a blue checkbox appears next to the name. To hide the adjustment without removing its settings, click that checkbox to turn it off (5.6). To reset the adjustment to its unapplied state, click the adjustment name and choose Reset.

A new image appears with “Version 2” appended to the title. When you edit that new version, either build upon the edits you made on the first one or click Revert to Original and start over. Making duplicates doesn’t create new image files on your hard disk—each revision is based on the original file (5.7).

Most cameras that support shooting in raw also include a Raw+JPEG mode, which makes two image files for each capture: the raw file and a separate JPEG file. When imported into Photos for OS X (or Photos for iOS), the Raw+JPEG pair are treated as a single image. On the Mac, a badge in the lower-left corner tells you which version you’re seeing (5.8).

The JPEG version is the default, but you can edit the raw version instead. That can be done only when the editing view is active: Open a photo in the editing view, and choose Image > Use RAW as Original. Or, right-click or Control-click the image in the editing view and choose Use RAW as Original from the contextual menu (5.9).

The appearance of the image will likely change (as you can see in the previous figure), because Photos for OS X processes the file using the raw profile for that camera’s raw format. That happens because the JPEG portion of the Raw+JPEG pair represents how the camera did its own processing of the image data.

To switch back to the JPEG version, go to the same menu and choose Use JPEG as Original.

Enhance is literally a one-click “make better” tool. Open a photo in the editing view and click the Enhance button. Photos evaluates the image and makes whatever corrections it deems appropriate.

If you don’t like the result, Choose Edit > Undo (or press Command-Z), or click the Revert to Original button.

The Crop tool deals with both situations. In the editing view, click the Crop button and do any of the following:

• Click the Auto button to let Photos attempt to straighten the image for you.

• Drag the wheel control to the right of the image to straighten the image manually (5.10). Photos crops the edges automatically so the entire photo fills the frame.

• To crop the photo, drag an edge or the corner of the bounding box. Remember, the edits are non-destructive, so you can change the crop later if you want.

• Normally, the crop control is freeform, meaning you can change the border to any size you’d like. If you’d prefer to use a specific aspect ratio, such as square or a common photo print size, click the Aspect button and choose from the options that appear (5.11). When you make any selection other than Freeform, the bounding box locks to that aspect ratio as you drag an edge or corner.

• To reposition the photo within the frame, drag the middle of the image.

• Click the Flip button to flip the photo horizontally; Option-click it to flip vertically. You can also choose Flip Horizontal or Flip Vertical from the Image menu.

In the event that Photos didn’t properly register the orientation of a photo during import, you can rotate it in 90-degree increments. The Rotate button, just below the Enhance button, turns the image counterclockwise; hold Option and click it to turn clockwise.

However, you don’t need to wait until you switch to the editing view to rotate one or more photos. In the Moments view or the single-photo view, choose Image > Rotate Counterclockwise (or press Command-R) or Image > Rotate Clockwise (or press Command-Option-R) (5.12).

As with the other main Adjust controls—Color and Black & White—Light is presented in two ways: as a single slider and also broken down into component sliders that target specific areas like shadows and contrast.

Now, click the expansion arrow at the upper-right corner of the control to view the different components. You’ll see that Photos hasn’t merely increased the Exposure or Brightness levels to make the image lighter; the Exposure value was even reduced from its original zero setting (5.15).

Photos calculates how each setting affects the image and adjusts them independently to end up with an image that’s still pretty well balanced. In this case, making the shot brighter could easily blow out the bright areas of the sky to pure white, but instead, it’s not overdone. Drag the main Light slider—the controls below fluctuate as you drag as Photos works to make a good exposure.

The photo in the previous figures is a good example of how the camera compensates for a bright light source (the sunset) by making the overall image dark. To bring up the light levels in the foreground so we can see the beach and the couple better, drag the Shadows slider to the right (5.16). You can also hold the mouse pointer over the number at right until it turns white, and then click it to enter a numerical setting. Although the sky does get brighter, it doesn’t blow out completely to white. (And in this case, I’m fine with the sun and the immediate area around it being brighter—because it’s the sun!)

Experiment with the other Light controls until the photo looks the way you’d like. Here’s a description of what each slider does:

• Exposure: This control affects the overall light levels within the photo.

• Highlights: The brightest areas of a photo are controlled with this setting. Pulling the Highlights value back can often avoid blown-out areas when you increase exposure, shadows, or brightness.

• Shadows: Increasing the Shadows value reveals detail in dark areas.

• Brightness: This control affects the overall brightness of the image. Exposure and Brightness appear to be overlapping controls, but they do work differently; Exposure affects all tones in the image, whereas Brightness affects the general lightness of the shot (5.17).

• Contrast: This control affects the difference between light and dark values.

• Black Point: The black point of an image is the level at which dark pixels turn to pure black. By changing the black point, you can make dark areas darker, without resorting to adjusting the exposure for the entire photo.

The left side of the histogram represents black pixels, and the right side represents white pixels. In the histogram in Photos for OS X, you also see the brightness values of each color channel (red, green, and blue). A photo is generally considered balanced when the histogram looks like a mountain: low on each edge and rising in a bump in the middle (the midtones).

A quick look at the histogram can tell you a lot about what’s going on—and what can be improved—in the image. For example, let’s take a photo that is underexposed (5.18). The values are bunched up against the left side of the histogram; there are a lot of black and dark tones, and little or no white or bright tones.

Move the handles to edit the photo (5.19): In this case, I dragged the right-most handle, which represents the image’s white point (note the white dot on the handle). Any pixels on the spectrum to the right of the white point are turned to pure white, and everything else is shifted lighter.

The center handle adjusts the midtones, and the smaller in-between handles affect shadows and highlights.

The handles at the top allow even finer adjustments, based on the setting of the handles at the bottom: For example, drag the top shadows handle to affect the shadows in smaller increments. You can also hold Option and drag a handle to move the top and bottom handles in unison, keeping the relationship steady between the shadows and the fine-tuned shadows settings.

The Levels tool also affords a degree of specificity in working with the image’s luminosity—its overall brightness—as well as working with the individual red, green, and blue color channels, which I detail in the next section.

• Saturation: This control adjusts the intensity of color in the image. Boosting saturation can give life to muted photos or give regular shots some kick, but it’s also easy to overdo.

• Contrast: Color contrast involves increasing the separation between similar colors.

• Cast: If a photo has a color cast—in many cases, being too warm or cool—the Cast slider can help compensate.

1. From the Add pop-up menu, choose White Balance.

2. Click the Auto button to attempt an automatic fix. Or, if you don’t like the result, click the eyedropper button to select it and go to the next step.

3. Click a neutral gray area of the photo (5.21, on the next page). Don’t worry if it’s not strictly a neutral gray; the software will accommodate. You can also click other areas until the image looks right.

Expanding the tool reveals a Warmth slider that you can use for manually adjusting the warmth or coolness.

Neutral Gray is only one method of setting white balance. Click the pop-up menu to reveal two other options:

• Skin Tone: Use the eyedropper tool and click a person’s skin to ensure that the skin tone remains natural and the rest of the scene’s color adjusts accordingly.

• Temperature/Tint: Choose this option to set a specific color temperature or to balance a green or magenta tint in the image (5.22).

In the Adjust tool, click anywhere on the Black & White slider to apply the effect (5.24). (This is also a good opportunity to click the Auto button and see what Photos comes up with.)

Now, drag the slider left and right—you’ll notice some dark areas turn light and vice versa (5.25). Depending on the image, the effect may be subtle or dramatic.

Unlike the sliders found under the Light and Color controls, which reflect the setting in the main slider, the ones that support the Black & White control are there to build upon the slider’s setting:

• Intensity: This adjustment increases or decreases the black and white effect you’ve chosen. With a dark treatment, increasing Intensity makes it darker; with a light treatment, increasing Intensity makes it lighter.

• Neutrals: Drag this slider to darken or lighten the gray midtone areas.

• Tone: The Tone adjustment increases or decreases the contrast.

• Grain: This slider adds simulated grain that approximates the look of some black and white film stock.

You can fine-tune the sharpening by expanding the control to reveal the following options:

• Edges: To sharpen an image, the software looks for edges within a photo. The Edges control tweaks how the adjustment defines an edge; increase the value to be more aggressive about how the tool sees those borders.

• Falloff: This slider softens or accentuates the sharpening effect.

It’s ironic that the Definition tool’s effects should be so vague. Think of it as a general “make better” tool that increases contrast and sharpens the image at the same time. The Definition tool has just one slider, Amount, which dictates how much definition is applied to the photo.

The Strength slider makes the vignette darker as you drag it to the right. Dragging it to the left, however, can be corrective: Apply a negative Strength setting to a photo with an existing vignette caused by a lens to undo the effect.

Clicking the expansion arrow reveals two more controls for changing the appearance of the vignette (5.29):

• Radius: The Radius slider determines how tight or wide the middle of the vignette appears. A higher value makes the visible area smaller; a lower value pushes the vignette to the outer edges.

• Softness: This slider changes whether the vignette is tight and dark or diffused.

In the figure below, I’ve pushed the Radius and Softness sliders further than I’d normally be comfortable with in order to show their effects.

Noise Reduction has its own tradeoff: The control softens and merges noisy pixels so they don’t stand out as much, which leads to an overall softening of the image. So as you experiment with the Amount slider, find an acceptable compromise between noise and smudge.

The tool fixes circular areas, so after you’ve identified a problem spot, drag the Size slider to make it just a bit bigger than the spot (5.30). Then simply click; the tool fixes the spot.

In addition to making spot-fixes, you can drag the tool over an area to remove something that doesn’t fit into a nice, clean circle (5.31).

If you’re familiar with other programs’ retouching tools, there are usually two separate types: one that attempts to fix an area automatically when you click it, and a Clone tool that lets you sample a nearby source area to replicate over the spot you want to fix. The clone approach is good when you want to preserve textures; sometimes the spot-fix technique ends up with a soft blob that’s almost as annoying as the thing you tried to remove.

Photos smartly combines the two into one tool. To clone an area, hold Option and click to define a source. Simply doing that tells the software that you’ll be copying from the source area. Then, click the area you want to fix.

Although Retouch won’t match the more sophisticated features found in something like Adobe Photoshop, you may be surprised at what it can do. Maybe you noticed in “Adjust light,” earlier in the chapter, that the beach photo included a ghosted image of the woman watching the sunset, because she moved during a long exposure. (The couple was enjoying the moment; I wasn’t going to be a jerk and ask them to hold still for my camera.) Here’s how to correct it:

1. Press Z to zoom in on the area you want to edit. In this case, I’ll press Command-+ to zoom in one more step, too.

2. Choose a size for the control.

3. Option-click the source area; the mouse pointer becomes a plus sign (+) to indicate you’re adding a source (5.32). Fortunately, there’s a block of trees in the background that will provide a good pattern.

4. Drag to paint the area to remove (5.33).

Photos uses the texture of the source area to fill the area (5.34). You may need to re-clone the area to clean up the area, or to do the area in a couple of passes. If the cloning doesn’t work, click the Reset button to undo the retouch work.

In this example, I wasn’t able to completely remove the ghost using Photos, but it’s certainly minimized and looks more like subtle movement during a long exposure than like a noticeable shift (5.35).

Normally, the Red-eye tool doesn’t even appear in the editing view. My guess is that it comes up so infrequently that Apple’s designers didn’t want to clutter the interface with something you’d hardly use. That’s why it was a surprise the first time I loaded a red-eye photo and saw the Red-eye tool automatically show up—Photos detects red-eye automatically. You can also opt to see the tool each time you open the editing view by choosing View > Always Show Red-eye Control. Or, press the E key. (I recommend that you also zoom in.)

To make the correction, click the Auto button to let Photos try first (it’s pretty accurate). Or, use the Size slider to match the mouse pointer’s circle to an eye’s diameter, and then click the eye (5.36).

1. After you’ve edited a photo, choose Image > Copy Adjustments or press Command-Shift-C. You can also right-click or Control-click to choose Copy Adjustments from the contextual menu (5.37).

2. Open the photo to which you want to apply the same edits.

3. Choose Image > Paste Adjustments (Command-Shift-V), or choose Paste Adjustments from the contextual menu (5.38). The settings are applied to the image. You can paste the same adjustments on other photos until you copy another image’s settings.

When you open a video clip and move the mouse pointer in the window, the video controls appear (5.39).

Pressing the Step Previous and Step Next buttons take you through the video one frame at a time. If you’d prefer to review the video using fast-forward and fast-rewind buttons, click the Options button and choose Show Scanning Buttons. With those active, repeatedly clicking one accelerates the speed: 2x, 5x, 10x, 30x, and 60x.

1. Click the Options button in the playback controls and choose Trim. The controls change to a filmstrip surrounded by a yellow border.

2. Drag the handles at the start and end to define the footage you want to keep (5.40). Clicking the Play button plays only the selected portion so you can preview the new clip.

3. Click the Trim button to remove the footage outside the selection.

Remember that video edits are non-destructive, just like photo edits, so you can adjust the trim later by choosing Trim from the options pop-up menu. Or, choose Reset Trim from the menu to return the clip to its original length.

After you’ve trimmed the clip, optionally choose which frame appears as the preview in Photos and when shared with others. In the playback controls, move the playhead to the frame you want to use and then choose Set Poster Frame from the Options pop-up menu. That frame is used as the clip’s thumbnail (5.41).

Drag the handles of the slow motion controls to indicate where the effect begins and ends (5.42).

1. Using the playback controls, locate the frame you wish to export.

2. Click the Options button and choose Export Frame To Pictures (5.43).

3. The image file is not added to your photo library; instead, go to the Finder and locate the image in the Pictures folder within your Home folder (choose Go > Home). The filename is the timestamp of when you exported the image, such as “Frame-29-06-2015-11-09-51.tiff” (which translates to June 29, 2015 at 11:09:51 a.m.).

4. If you want to include the still image in your photo library, import it by dragging it to Photos or choosing File > Import and selecting the file.

Not all of the same tools are available on both platforms, though. The iOS version doesn’t include the Retouch tool, for example, and several of the additional controls in the Adjust tool, such as Vignette, don’t have a mobile counterpart. However, you’ll have no trouble picking up the techniques.

With iCloud Photo Library enabled (see Chapter 4), your edits transfer between the Mac and mobile devices. Since adjustments are non-destructive, what gets passed through iCloud are the instructions to make the edits, not revamped versions of the images themselves. That makes edits update quickly and allows you to revert to the original photo at any time, on any device (but read the sidebar on the opposite page for an important limitation).

You can import Raw+JPEG photos to an iPad using one of Apple’s camera adapters, or you can import the files to an iPad or iPhone wirelessly using a variety of methods (some cameras include built-in Wi-Fi that can be controlled via apps; another option is to shoot using a Wi-Fi–enabled Eyefi card). The Photos app doesn’t indicate which are Raw+JPEG, raw, or just JPEG—they’re all just photos in the library.

However, iOS itself doesn’t directly support raw files. Apple didn’t build in the system-level translators that read raw files and construct images from the data. So, instead, when you import just a raw file, iOS uses the JPEG preview that the camera created (for you to review on its LCD). Often, that’s a lower-resolution file than if you were shooting JPEG directly.

The advantage of shooting Raw+JPEG is that Photos for iOS displays and edits the high-resolution JPEG image that’s bundled with the raw file. When you import and edit on an iPad, for example, you’re working with a better image file.

If you’ve enabled iCloud Photo Library, the raw and JPEG files for each photo are stored at iCloud and delivered to your other devices—including Photos for OS X, which can work directly with the raw files. Any edits you make on iOS are transferred and apply to the raw version, as well, once you choose Image > Use RAW as Original.

What’s good about this arrangement is that you don’t need to worry much about what’s going on in the background. The only complication arises when you’re editing only raw files, only on iOS, where you’re likely working with low-resolution versions.

• When you tap the Crop button, Photos automatically tries to straighten the image if there’s a clear horizon line. If that doesn’t happen, click the Auto button or drag the wheel control at right to manually straighten the shot (5.47).

• To recompose the photo by cropping it, drag the image borders. Click the Aspect button to select an aspect ratio and choose a size you want the border to be constrained to when you drag.

• If the photo was imported with the wrong orientation, tap the Rotate button to turn the photo 90 degrees counterclockwise. There’s no clockwise option, so you may need to tap the button three times to turn an image right-side up.

Tap the name of an adjustment to view its slider (5.50). Unlike on the Mac, under iOS the slider itself moves; the red line indicating the current setting stays in place in the middle of the screen. The gray dot indicates the photo’s original setting.

Drag the slider to adjust the overall light levels of the scene.

To edit using the individual Light controls, do the following:

1. Tap the list button ().

2. Tap the specific control you want to use (5.51).

3. Drag the slider for that control until you like how it affects the photo.

4. To choose a different control, tap the list button again and choose the one you want.

5. When you’re finished using the controls, tap Close.

The other Light controls function the same as they do in Photos for OS X. Here’s a recap of what each slider does:

• Exposure: This control affects the overall light levels within the photo.

• Highlights: The brightest areas of a photo are controlled with this setting. Pulling the Highlights value back can often avoid blown-out areas when you increase exposure, shadows, or brightness.

• Shadows: Increasing the Shadows value reveals detail in dark areas.

• Brightness: This control affects the overall brightness of the image. Exposure and Brightness appear to be overlapping controls, but they do work differently; Exposure affects all tones in the image, whereas Brightness affects the general lightness of the shot.

• Contrast: This control affects the difference between light and dark values.

• Black Point: The black point of an image is the level at which dark pixels turn to pure black. By changing the black point, you can make dark areas darker, without resorting to adjusting the exposure for the entire photo.

• Saturation: This control adjusts the intensity of color in the image (5.52).

• Contrast: Color contrast involves increasing the separation between similar colors.

• Cast: If a photo has a color cast—in many cases, being too warm or cool—the Cast slider can help compensate.

What you won’t find is a dedicated White Balance tool; the Cast slider compensates for that.

Once you’ve settled on a black and white treatment you like, use the following controls to enhance it:

• Intensity: This adjustment increases or decreases the black and white effect you’ve chosen. With a dark treatment, increasing Intensity makes it darker; with a light treatment, increasing Intensity makes it lighter.

• Neutrals: Drag this slider to darken or lighten the gray midtone areas.

• Tone: The Tone adjustment increases or decreases the contrast.

• Grain: This slider adds simulated grain that approximates the look of some black and white film stock.

If you have apps installed that offer extensions, you need to enable them:

1. Tap the Extensions button in the editing view.

2. In the dialog that appears, tap the More button (5.55).

3. Choose which app extensions to include by tapping the activation switches at right (5.56). Tap Done.

Now that the dialog is populated with more options, you can use one to edit your photo. Here’s how:

1. Tap the Extensions button.

2. Tap the icon of the editor you want to use (5.57).

3. Choose a tool from the bottom of the screen (5.58) and use it to adjust your image.

4. Tap Done to exit the extension and return to the Photos editing view.

1. Tap the Edit button.

2. Touch and drag one edge of the filmstrip at the top of the screen to enter the Trim mode; the filmstrip gains a yellow border.

3. Drag the edges of the filmstrip to define the portion of the clip you want to keep (5.59).

4. Tap the Trim button.

5. When asked, tap Save as New Clip to continue. Photos automatically saves the original clip.

1. Open a video and tap the Edit button.

2. Tap the Extensions button.

3. Tap the app whose features you want to use (5.61).

4. Edit the clip using the tools from the other app (5.62).

5. Tap Done when you’re finished.