Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On this episode let's take a look at the editing tools in the new Photos app.
Editing a photo is pretty straight forward but there is a lot of hidden controls.
So let's take a look at it.
Let's select a photo here and I'm going to double click on it to bring it up.
Then I'm going to hit the Edit button.
This brings us into the photo editing mode.
The first thing I want to point out is that there is this handy control over here where
you can bring up the sidebar and it shows you all of the photos in the collection you
are looking at.
It allows you to quickly swap between them so you can edit.
Notice I'm in editing mode for both of these photos.
So I can quickly edit a group of photos this way.
Let's focus on this one right here.
We can see the editing controls here on the right.
This is a picture of our new puppy Jack, one-eyed Jack as we call him, and we're going to go
and edit this photo in all sorts of different ways.
Let's start with the Enhance button here which is just a one click and it tries to, basically,
make the picture better by adjusting all sorts of different things.
So you can see how there is the difference there.
I can click this Revert to Original Picture here and go back and forth and see how it
just brightens the colors up there.
The next button down here is the Rotate button.
This allows me to go in 90 degree increments.
It is handy when you have a picture that somehow is in the wrong orientation.
You can quickly adjust that.
Now when you have made a change with either the Enhance button or the Rotate button you
click Done and it will save the photo and the photo will appear like that from now on.
However the original is still there.
So let's click the Enhance button there.
Then click Done and I am out of editing mode here.
But if I go to Edit again notice that Revert to Original is still there.
I click on that and I can go back.
So it is not like when you leave editing it permanently applies the changes.
It will keep the original in your Photos collection, or in your iCloud Photo Library so it is in
the Cloud, and you always have that original to fall back on.
So this makes it real easy to make adjusts and not worry about the fact that you may
need to go back to the original at some point especially if you are cropping a photo or
doing some pretty extreme color adjustments.
Now let's look at some of the other things you can do.
Under Crop we can adjust the borders of the photo.
So we can get rid of some things out of the photo and will adjust with us there.
Now notice also I can adjust the rotation right here by moving this dial.
So I'm just clicking and moving it there.
So there is a lot of different things that you can do here with the crop tool.
You can use the aspect ratio tool to actually go to a certain aspect ratio.
So if you wanted it to be 16 x 9 for instance I can do that and you can see it will stick
to 16 x 9 now that I've selected Aspect.
I can free it up again by going to Custom or Freeform here and now I can adjust Freeform
again.
I can also Flip the photo and I can use Automatic to try to automatically rotate and crop a
photo which in this case isn't going to do anything for this particular photo but it
could in another photo that has maybe something where the subject is somewhere in the middle
and the background can easily be cropped or something where the horizon line is visible
and it can adjust rotation to straighten the photo.
So I can leave this mode here by simply jumping to another mode.
I can move the cursor over here and I can see the other modes appear.
I can jump say to Filters.
Filters is pretty basic.
Just a small set of filters here.
I assume companies can build extensions and you will get more filters here.
This is the default set that comes with and we'll have to see if we actually do get more
in the future.
You can also jump straight to Adjustments.
This is where it gets really interesting because you've got lots of different adjustments here.
It appears you just have three.
Light, Color, and Black and White.
You can move these dials back and forth or hit the auto button.
So I can hit the auto button for color, for light, for black and white.
But I actually have a lot more than that because I can use any of these little arrows here
to show me some of the sub adjustments.
So I can adjust different things in black and white for instance and I have controls
for everything.
So under Light here I've Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Brightness, Contrast, and Black Point.
I've got lots of different things that I can do.
Let me go back to the original here and you can see how I can adjust some of these specifically.
So it is all the adjustments that you had in iPhoto but instead of overwhelming you
with tons of choices it just starts you off with the basics here of these three sets and
allows you to go in to detail if you want.
So you also have a Retouch tool here.
This gives you the circle here where you can adjust the size of the circle and you can
decide to retouch something.
So you can click and drag over spots to remove them.
You can see I was able to easily remove that object there.
The larger area that you use the worse it is going to actually work.
But it still does a fairly decent job.
You can also choose a source area.
So I can Option Click here and do that and you can see it does a better job of painting
in what I want.
If you didn't know that there was something there you wouldn't really know by looking
at the photo.
At a glance anyway.
There is one hidden tool.
That is the Red-eye tool.
If you go to View you can turn this on and you get the extra Red-eye tool down here.
Then you can adjust the size and use that to get rid of red-eye.
Red-eye is becoming rarer and rarer in photos as cameras are getting better and better in
not including red-eye.
Unfortunately there is no way to edit a photo in an external editor.
I'm sure that is something we will be able to do in the future probably through the Share
menu here.
There could be extensions added that will allow you to go and take this photo, bring
it right into say PhotoShop, and then bring it back in to Photos.
It may be up to the third party developers, like Adobe for PhotoShop or Pixelmator or
whoever makes the image editing app you like, to create these actions here that are in the
Share menu or they may have to work with Apple to do that.
But for now what you need to do is when you have the photo there you can export the unmodified
original right here and that will give you the raw one or the original photo at full
resolution.
Export that as a file.
Put that in some folder on your desktop or in your Documents folder or your Pictures
folder.
Then open that up and edit in PhotoShop or whatever tool you are using and then drag
and drop that finished product back into the Photos app.
That is the only way to do an external edit right now.