HOWTO |improve the look of your photos

1 Quickly edit a photo

Select a photo and press ® . The app’s interface turns dark to put the emphasis on the picture. OS X’s dark mode (in System Preferences > General) complements this look. Among the tools on the right, Enhance will try to improve your photo with a single click.

2 Adjust framing

Rotate turns a photo in 90° increments. The Crop tool can rotate to any angle while maintaining the overall rectangular shape. You can manually drag the white border to crop without rotating. Pressing Auto attempts to straighten things along a perceived horizon.

3

Apply a filter

The Filter tool offers a range of premade looks for your photos. Click one to toggle it on or off so you can judge its aesthetic. Click Done at the top-right to apply it. The same eight filters are available in Photos on iOS, so any you apply will be preserved as you move between devices.

4 Clear up blemishes

The Retouch tool clears up blemishes by sampling pixels from one area as the basis for filling in another. The tool picks a source area. Override its choice by holding å and clicking somewhere. Let go and then brush out the unwanted detail. []and adjust brush size.

5 Advanced adjustments

The Adjust tool displays adjustable attributes as horizontal bars. Click and drag along a bar to adjust that attribute. Moving the pointer over an adjustment’s title row reveals an Auto button which, like the Enhance tool, sets the attribute to a good level with just one click.

6 In greater detail

Click the arrow to the right of the Auto button and the components of that adjustment are revealed. They can be adjusted individually using the same click and drag action. Do this for Light, but drag on its main bar to see how this changes its components by different amounts.

7 Even more adjustments

Click the tick next to an adjustment to disable it, or click its name to reset or remove it. Click Add (top-right of the list) for other effects that work in the same way except for Levels, on which you drag the dots below the histogram to fix things such as colour balance and exposure.

8 Reuse a photo’s look

If you find you adjust the same attributes often, check them all in the list and choose ‘Save as Default’ in the list. To apply adjustment values from one photo to another, right-click the photo and choose Copy Adjustments, edit another, right-click it, and choose Paste Adjustments.