The Edit tool
Looks
Looks at the top of the Edit tool give the photo a film-like style in one tap, as in VSCO: small previews of your own photo, in Colour (Soft Portrait, Golden, Clean, Vivid Slide, Matte, Cinema, Expired, Pastel, Forest, Instant) and B&W (Classic 400, Soft 400, Fine 100, Night 3200, Red Filter, Matte Mono, High Key, Vintage Ortho). On a phone they're in the Looks tab.
- Tap a look to try it; tap None to remove it. Each is one Undo step.
- Every look has a Strength slider. On a colour look, turn it down for a subtler look. On a black & white look, turn it down to fade the colour back in, toned by the film: a desaturated, film-like colour look. (The same control is Amount in the Colour Mixer when Black & White is on.)
- A look is a starting point: every slider still works on top of it.
Adjusting
Work down the sections roughly in order: get the light and colour right first, then add a look, then finish. The histogram at the top shows where the photo's tones sit; a red marker means detail is being lost in the brightest or darkest parts (press J to show those areas on the photo).
| Section | Controls | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| Light | Exposure, Contrast, Lights, Darks, Whites, Blacks, Fade, Highlight Roll-off | Set overall brightness and contrast. Lights and Darks change the upper and lower midtones; Whites and Blacks set the end points. |
| Curves | RGB, Red, Green, Blue curves | Fine tonal control. Click to add a point, drag to move it, double-click or flick it off the graph to remove it. Or use the picker (target button): press on the photo to put a point at that tone, then drag up to lighten it or down to darken it. |
| Colour | Temperature, Tint, Vibrance, Saturation, Pick Neutral | Fix colour casts. Pick Neutral (W): click something that should be grey or white. |
| Colour Mixer | Hue, Saturation, Luminance for 8 colours; Black & White | Change one colour, such as making a sky deeper blue. Pick Colour in Photo: hover to see which colours change, drag up or down to adjust. |
| Film stock | Film look, Strength | Apply a colour film look from a HALD file (Import… or make one in Film Lab). |
| Grain | Black & White Film, Amount, Size, Roughness, Soft ↔ Hard, Shadows, Midtones, Highlights | Add film grain. See Black & white film types below. |
| Colour Grading | Shadows, Midtones and Highlights wheels; Blending, Balance, Fade | Tint the dark, middle and light tones separately, like a film grade (teal shadows and warm highlights, a cool fade…). Drag a wheel's dot: the direction is the colour, the distance from the centre how strong; the sliders below fine-tune the chosen wheel, and Luminance brightens or darkens that zone. Blending softens where the zones meet, Balance moves the split towards the shadows or highlights, and Fade reduces the whole grade. Auto tries a ready-made grade (tap again for another); with a Harmony chosen, it makes a new grade in that harmony each time instead; choose one from the Grades menu, or save your own with the bookmark button. Match a Photo…, at the end of the Grades menu, copies the colour look of another photo (a film still, a photographer's picture): choose it, and the wheels are set to match its shadows, midtones and highlights, including faded blacks. Adjust from there, tap Use to keep it on this photo, or Save Grade to add it to My grades. Only colour is matched, not contrast or black and white, and a sample that's mostly one strong colour (a green forest) matches that colour, so photos with greys, skin or sky work best. Double-click a wheel to clear it. Harmony links the wheels like a painter's colour wheel: Complementary (shadows and highlights opposite, as in teal and orange; midtones free), Split-Complementary, Analogous (neighbouring colours) or Triadic (three colours evenly spaced); turn any linked wheel and the others follow. Protect People fades the grade off people so skin keeps its own colour: it finds them with AI (a one-off download the first time) and, if it finds no one, protects the photo's main subject. It makes a mask you can refine in Masks. Any mask can also turn the grade down or up where it selects, with its own Colour Grade slider. |
| Presence | Clarity, Clarity Masking, Clarity Tones, Dehaze | Add local contrast, or cut through haze and mist. Clarity Masking keeps clarity to stronger structure (buildings, bark, texture) and leaves smooth areas like skin and sky alone; Clarity Tones moves it towards the shadows (left) or highlights (right), midtones in the middle. Hold ⌥ while dragging either (on touch, press and pause) to see where clarity goes: white gets it. |
| Glow | Style (Diffusion, Bloom, Halation), Amount, Size | A soft glow from the bright areas. Diffusion softens the highlights into a dreamy haze; Bloom adds light in and round the brightest areas, like strong backlight; Halation puts a red-orange halo round bright lights, as on film (grey in black & white). Size sets how far it spreads. On iPhone it's in Effects. |
| Detail | Sharpening, Radius, Detail, Masking, Noise Reduction, Colour Noise | Sharpen, and smooth out the speckles of high-ISO photos. |
| Vignette | Amount, Radius, Feather | Darken (or lighten) the edges to lead the eye in. |
Section buttons
- Auto (Light, Colour, Detail) gives a starting point from the photo itself. It is one undo step, so try it and adjust.
- Eye hides a section's effect so you can compare; its settings are kept. Hidden sections are not exported.
- Reset arrow (on hover) puts that section back to its defaults.
- ⌥-click a section title to open only that one; ⌘-click opens or closes them all.
- Double-click a slider to reset it, or type an exact value in its number box.
Arranging the panels
Put the panels in the order you work, and hide the ones you don't use. Choose Customise Panels… at the bottom of the Edit panel (or in the … Panel Options menu). Use the switches to show or hide each panel and the arrows to move it up or down. Reset to Defaults puts everything back. You can also right-click a panel's title and choose Move Up, Move Down or Hide This Panel.
Hiding a panel only tidies the Edit panel: its settings still apply to your photos. The layout is remembered in this browser. On phones, the section tabs follow the same order.
See what a slider does
Hold ⌥ (Option/Alt) while dragging a slider with an eye button (Exposure, Lights, Whites, Darks, Blacks and the sharpening sliders) to see what it affects. On a touch screen, pause on the slider: the view appears, keep dragging, and let go to see the photo again. The eye button keeps the view on until you tap it again.
Setting the white and black points
- Whites: pause on (or ⌥-drag) the Whites slider. The photo turns black; drag right until the first specks of colour or white appear (highlights starting to clip), then back off a touch.
- Blacks: do the same on Blacks. The photo turns white; drag left until the first dark specks appear (shadows blocking up), then back off a touch.
- Contrast: now shape the tones in between with Lights and Darks (and Contrast). Lights and Darks show the same clipping views, so you can check you haven't pushed past the points you set.
Auto on each slider
Hold Shift to show an Auto button on Exposure, Contrast, Lights, Darks, Whites, Blacks, Temperature, Tint and Vibrance; or Shift + double-click a slider. Each sets just that slider from the photo, keeping your other settings. On a touch screen, choose Show Auto on Sliders in the … Panel Options menu. Undo puts it back.
Black & white
Turn on Black & White in the Colour Mixer. Each colour slider then sets how light that colour becomes in grey, like a coloured filter on a lens: darken Blue for dramatic skies, lighten Orange for brighter skin.
Black & white film types
Choose a film in Grain → Black & White Film. It switches to black & white and sets three things you can then adjust:
- Grain: its size, clumping and how crisp it is.
- Colour sensitivity: how the film turns colours to grey. Ortho 80 is blind to red, so skin and red clothes go dark; SFX 200 makes skin glow and skies darker.
- Contrast: each film's tone curve, from the deep blacks of Tri-X to the soft, lifted shadows of Delta 3200.
The list runs from the finest grain (Pan F Plus 50) to the coarsest (Delta 3200). Click Check Grain at 100% to judge the grain at its true size; that is how it will print. The films are teaching approximations of each stock's character, not exact copies.