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How to Edit Photos in iOS 8

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Both the iPhone and iPad are turning into excellent point-and-shoot camera killers, and Apple has kept improving the camera modules in its iOS devices with every new model, but what do you do with all of those photos that you took on your iPhone or iPad? You’ll probably transfer them to your computer in order to edit them in your photo editor of choice, but what you may not know is that the Photos app in iOS 8 can do some basic photo editing of its own.

Unfortunately, Apple killed off its iPhoto iOS app when it released iOS 8, and while it essentially provided users with even more options for editing their photos right from their mobile device, it seems the company ultimately decided that mobile users really don’t need that much photo-editing power on a smartphone or tablet.

However, the built-in Photos app in iOS 8 does pretty much the basics that you’d need anyway, so the loss of iPhoto on iOS isn’t too terrible.

And with the ability to edit photos right on your iPhone or iPad, the path from taking the photo to sharing it with friends and family is as frictionless as possible. We’ll show you how you can edit photos directly on your iPhone or iPad using the built-in Photos app.

Editing Photos in iOS 8

If you’re not quite happy with how a photo turned out, you can either take another, or edit the one you already took right on your iOS ,device.

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To make an edit on a photo, open up the Photos app and find and open the photo that you want to edit. Next, tap Edit in the upper-right corner to make changes to the photo. The Photos app can do basic edits, such as rotating a photo, enabling “auto-enhance”, adding filters, getting rid of red eye, adjusting exposure, and cropping the photo.

If you’re curious what auto-enhance is, it simply adjusts exposure and the color of a photo to make it look better — it’s pretty simple and just requires one tap.

Once you’re done editing a photo, tap on Done in the upper-right corner to save the changes.

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With iPhoto, it was basically just the built-in Photos app on steroids. It could do the basics, like cropping, adjusting exposure, and adding filters, but it took things to a whole new level.

There was a feature called Brushes that allowed you to perform edits in specific areas of photos by “brushing” your finger over a certain area of the photo. You could also add filters to photos, but the number of filters that were available in iPhoto was multiplied by 10 compared to what’s offered in the built-in Photos app. Furthermore, you were even able to adjust how much contrast that the filter applied to the photo.

Overall, you got a lot more control with iPhoto, but since it’s long gone, the built-in Photos app is the next best streamlined option.

Anyway, after you’re done editing a photo in the Photos app, you can tap on the Share button (a box with an arrow pointing up) and share it on Facebook and Twitter, or through email or iMessage, as well as through AirDrop.

Of course, importing a photo to your computer will allow you to use Photoshop or any other desktop photo editing software, which will give you a lot more options than the built-in Photos app in iOS will offer, but if you’re in a pinch and need to make a few basic edits to a photo, doing it right on your iOS device is the easiest and quickest solution.

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. Kelly Pierce

    11/22/2014 at 7:50 pm

    Adam, I appreciate your series of reviews on iOS and the iPhone 5. I am still with iOS 7.06. It is extremely stable, reliable and useful without any freezes. I value reliability over half assed innovation that I am limited to use.

  2. mattias

    11/25/2014 at 8:04 am

    its a good thing that you remained with ios 7.06. I wish I had done the same.

  3. sarah

    12/23/2014 at 4:48 am

    i’m devastated over the loss of iPhoto. I have horrible dark circles under my eyes and no matter the quality of the photo, iPhoto touched it up. i could care less about filters and cropping. is there another app I can use for this retouching? i’ve already downloaded several and they simply don’t work as well.

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