Edit Photo on iphone xs | iphone photo editing | photo color grading

Edit Photo on iPhone xs | iPhone photo editing | photo color grading

Today I'm going to show you step by step how to edit this photo to make it look like this.  And all directly on the iPhone. Of course, this is just an example. It's just to show you the most important tools of photo editing on the iPhone. I'm going to use these three apps today. All of them are free in their basic version. The first editing steps I usually do with Snapseed. The so-called color grading I do in Lightroom. And with this app LD from Lens Distortion, we will add some effects at the end. Snapseed is my favorite app for editing photos on the iPhone. And you'll see this app is extremely powerful. With the plus, you'll start a new project. And now here I open the photo with the horse that I took last year with an iPhone 12  Mini. This photo is unedited, so it's straight out of the iPhone. Down here, Snapseed gives you a bunch of filters for a quick edit. We're not interested in that today, because I want to show you the actual editing tools. When you tap on  Tools, the menu with the different editing options opens. As you can see, there are a lot of them. I  don't use all of them and today I'm only going to 

explain the tools that I find particularly useful. I usually start with Tune Image. With this, you can 

make basic adjustments to your photo. As you can  see, you can change the Brightness, Contrast, 

Saturation and so on. By swiping up and down you select the respective function. Let's start with 

Brightness. By swiping right and left you can now make changes. With Brightness, you can make the 

image darker and brighter, of course. I increase the brightness slightly. Now I add some contrast. 

And I also increase the saturation slightly.  Not too much, because the colors are already 

rather saturated. With Ambiance, you create a kind of HDR effect. The dark areas are brightened, 

and the very bright ones are darkened a bit. Too much looks a bit strange and quite unrealistic. 

With Highlights, you can change the brightness of the bright areas in the image. Usually, you 

reduce them a bit to get more details in the bright areas. With Shadows you change the dark 

areas in the image. For example, the field or the trees in the foreground. I brighten them up a bit. 

As you can see, we now get much more detail in the trees here. And with the warmth, you can make your 

image a little warmer or cooler. I'm going to make it a little warmer. If you tap on the image you 

will now see the effects of your edits. With the checkmark in the lower right corner, you confirm 

them. Under Details, you will find two features:  Structure and Sharpening. Both increase the 

contrast at the edges. I prefer Structure. Since  iPhone photos are usually already very sharp, 

I never use Sharpening. If we increase the value with Structure the image looks much more dramatic, 

but also a bit more artificial. That's why  I would be more cautious here and increase 

the value only slightly. Curves can be an extremely powerful tool. 

Here below you will again find a set of presets to make quick changes. Basically, the upper part 

of the curve refers to the bright areas and the lower part refers to the dark areas of the image. 

By raising the bright areas a bit and lowering the dark areas a bit, we add some more contrast. 

If you drag the lower left end up, the blacks will be lifted and the image will have a slightly 

faded look. Before After. If you drag the top end down, the whites will be slightly darkened. 

With WhiteBalance you can make the image a little warmer or cooler, similar to the Warmth slider 

from before. And with Crop, of course, we can adjust the framing of the image. I'll crop the 

image a little bit on the right and left and make sure the horse is on the bottom line. 

That way I can follow the Rule of Thirds. As you can see, we've already made some pretty important 

adjustments. With Rotate you can rotate the image and make the horizon straight. There is nothing worse than a picture with a tilted horizon.

The selective tool is extremely cool. With it,  you can select an area in the image with a tap. 

With two fingers you can make this area, which is now displayed in red, 

larger and smaller. And now you can make changes that are limited to this area. 

You can change the brightness, contrast,  saturation, and structure. For example, 

I desaturate the sky, which is now gray and no longer blue. 

I also reduce the Structure in the sky, which looks less dramatic but a little more realistic. 

And I might make it a little darker. I  also want to adjust the meadow a bit. 

So I'll add one more point. I think I'll make the meadow a little bit brighter. 

A lot of these tools that you see down here relate to different filters. 

But what I want to show you here is lens blur.  With this, you can blur certain areas in the image. 

Make sure that this makes sense. For example,  if you shoot wide open with a larger camera, 

the foreground might be slightly out of focus. For this, I change the shape of the blur. To do this, 

tap on the icon at the bottom left. Now I pull the area apart and move it up. As you can see, 

the lower, front area now remains slightly blurred. This is only a minor change to the image, 

but it can make a difference. Two tools I want to show you today are Healing and Perspective. 

But I don't need both of them for this image.  Therefore I open another image. For this, I save 

the changes in this image by creating a copy. Here you can see again the adjustments we have made to 

this image so far. To show you the Perspective  tool, I'll open a picture I took last year in 

Tuscany. As you can see, distortions occur when taking pictures of buildings or even trees. 

The wall is not straight but tilted. This can easily be corrected with Perspective. 

To do this, I simply swipe my finger slightly downwards. And as you can see, 

the walls are now straight. A simple but important correction. And now I want to show you another 

extremely powerful tool. As you can see in this photo you can see the ropes of the cable car. 

The photo was actually taken out of a cable car.  These ropes are disturbing. So I will show you how 

to remove them very easily. I select the Healing tool and zoom in on the area where the ropes are. 

Now I just brush my finger over the ropes and they are gone. It works pretty well here because 

the sky lends itself well to such a correction.  However, it doesn't always work. For example, 

it's hard to remove a car from a road with this.  Ok. Back to our original image. Now let's take 

a closer look at the colors. And for that,  as I mentioned at the beginning, I use the 

app Lightroom. Lightroom is a very well-known desktop app. In the mobile app, all the features 

that I use are available for free. So I open the photo that I'd already edited with Snapseed. 

Of course, you can also make basic changes to exposure or sharpness with Lightroom, 

but we've already done that in Snapseed. What we're interested in here, though, is Color. 

And here are the two features, Grading, and Color. Grading is easy to explain. 

There are three color wheels. One for the shadows,  one for the midtones, and one for the highlights. 

The three wheels refer to the dark tones,  the midtones, and the highlights in the image. 

To each of these areas, you can now add a color. Let's start with the Shadows. 

I add a dark blue to the shadows. The further you drag the color to the edge, 

the stronger the effect. When you have adjusted the intensity you can also adjust the color again. 

To the midtones I add some orange. This also balances out the blue of the shadows a bit. 

And to the highlights, I also add some blue. This time, however, a lighter blue, 

in the direction of teal. Also in this app, you can use Tap to check the effects of your changes. 

The Color feature, on the other hand,  lets you change the individual colors. 

Here you can see the individual colors: red,  orange, yellow, and so on. For all these colors, 

you can now use Hue to change the color itself,  Saturation to change the saturation of this hue, 

and Luminance to change the brightness of the hue.  So this is a very complex and powerful tool. My 

image has predominantly green, yellow, and blue.  So let's start with green. As you can see, with 

the Hue slider, I can change the hue of green. I  drag it all the way to the left. Saturation and 

Luminance I adjust only slightly. Let's have a  look at blue. I drag blue slightly to the left.

This gives the blue a slight teal look. I also reduce the saturation and the luminance. To 

understand especially the effects on the colors a bit better you have to use this feature a few 

times. But after all, it's easy to use. And then  I change to yellow. Again, I pull the slider for Hue 

a bit to the left. This gives the meadow an orange tone. If you tap on the crosshairs here 

you can also select a color in the image directly.  You then make changes by swiping up and down. 

For this type of editing, select Saturation or  Luminance at the bottom here. Now when we review 

the changes you'll see that these adjustments make a huge difference. I don't particularly 

like the sky here yet - it looks a little strange. I'll take another look at that later. 

For now, I'll save the image. And now let's take a look at the Lens Distortion app. 

We can use it to make the image even more interesting. Of course, 

this app also has several features. Personally,  I actually only use two of them. Color lets you 

put one of these matte tones over the image.  These are very nice, really cinematic filters. 

There are different shades of gray or even matte blues or greens. If you swipe right here, 

the LDplus icon will appear. For these filters, you have to pay for an upgrade. But 

I used one of the free grays for this picture today. Hmm, I think I like this one the best. 

But the best part of this app is the Light Hits.  Again, the first ones are free. Basically, the 

Light Hits simulate the sun and lens flares, which only come in this form with higher-end cameras 

or lenses. You can drag the sun to the right place with your finger and also zoom in and out. 

I think it should fit like this. Here you can make different adjustments. For example, 

you can change the softness. Or of course the brightness. This is an incredibly great feature. 

It makes the image much more interesting.  That's how I'm satisfied. Using Export, 

you save the image. Now I usually make the final adjustments again in Snapseed. For example, 

I still don't like the sky here. This orange and the color blobs look anything but natural. I think 

I'll just remove the color here and desaturate the sky. For this, I use the Brush Tool. With that, 

you can just swipe your finger over the particular area that you want to change. I'm going to select 

Saturation down here and choose a negative value there. I want to remove the color, not add it. Now I  

just swipe several times over the affected area. I do that until most of the color is 

gone. And with that, we've completed the edit. If you are looking for creative photo ideas for 

your iPhone photos or want some more tips for photography with your iPhone check out my related videos. And give me a  like as feedback if the video was interesting for you. There will be more iPhone tutorials to come. So stay tuned and see you next time.