Apple’s new iPhoto for iOS may be just the thing you’re looking for to sprinkle fairy dust magic across your digital images, but you’ll still have to do some of the heavy lifting yourself, particularly when using the brush tools. Here’s what you can do -- and how to get started using them on your own iPad 2 or new iPad.
One of the most innovative components of the new iPhoto for iOS are the brush tools, which use multitouch to make short work of complicated tasks such as patching areas of a photo, removing red-eye and controlling saturation, exposure and sharpness. Apple has made it amazingly simple to do using only one finger, so let’s have a look at each tool and what it can do for you.
To access the brushes, enter Edit mode and tap on the Brushes icon, which is the second from the right (sandwiched between Color and Effects). When you select the Brushes icon, eight brushes will fan out from the bottom of the screen (on the iPhone, they’ll appear on the left edge in portrait mode).
Repair
The first brush is Repair, which is intended for patching areas of a photo using pixels from the surrounding area. A similar tool exists in the Mac version of iPhoto, and it’s comparable to the Heal tool in recent versions of Photoshop. The Repair brush is your go-to tool for clearing up skin blemishes and other unwanted artifacts on an otherwise fine photograph.
To use the Repair brush, select it from the brushes offered -- the selected brush will appear with a blue glow. Now, use one finger to “paint” around the area you want to correct; your stroke will appear in red, which will then vanish as the area magically heals itself. If you’re not happy with the results, tap undo and try again -- you’ll want to make sure there are enough surrounding pixels to make the correction. Use two fingers to move around the image or zoom in closer to make selection easier.
Red Eye
The bane of all digital photos where a flash is in use, iPhoto’s second brush makes short work of removing red eye from images. Select the Brushes icon and choose the second, which looks like a red marker with a black tip. With the tool selected, you can use two fingers to zoom into your image, then tap on each pupil -- in a moment, that red-eye will be a thing of the past. If you mistakenly tap somewhere without red-eye, the brush will make a sound and shake from side to side to let you know. Want to undo a red-eye correction? With the brush selected, tap on the gear icon and choose Clear Red Eye Repairs.
Saturate and Desaturate
While iPhoto for iOS already includes some awesome multitouch tools for increasing or decreasing the colors in your image, the Color palette affects the overall image (or specific areas such as blue skies, greenery or skin tone). If you’d rather adjust saturation selectively, that’s where our third and fourth brushes come into play.
Saturate (the brush with the rainbow bristles) allows you to increase the strength of colors in your photo, but only the areas you choose with your finger. Likewise, Desaturate (the brush with the grey bristles) allows you to decrease the strength of colors in a photo, but again only where you choose to touch. These tools are perfect for touching up areas of an image where the color is overwhelming -- or alternately, where it needs a little boost. (The image above uses the Saturate tool with Show Strokes turned on.)
Lighten and Darken
If your goal is to tweak the exposure of certain areas of an image rather than the color saturation, iPhoto’s fifth and sixth brushes will come to the rescue. Lighten (the brush with the white bristles) does exactly what you’d expect: Lightens areas of a photo. The Darken brush (with black bristles) does the opposite, and makes the selected area darker. These brushes are perfect for backlight faces that could use a little brightening up, or a bright area that you’d prefer to mute just a bit. Keep in mind that the Darken brush can’t work miracles -- if parts of your image are overexposed, it will simply muddy up the area instead. (The image above uses the Darken tool with Show Strokes turned on.)
Sharpen and Soften
The last two brushes help define objects in your images with ease. Sharpen (the brush with the thin tip) increases clarity in a photo by strengthening hard edges -- perfect for making text more readable or accenting the details on someone’s face. If you’d rather tone things down a bit, the Soften brush (the wide black one) does the opposite, blurring and softening edges in a photo, which can include wrinkles or just making a portion of your photo look more dreamlike. (The image above uses the Soften tool with Show Strokes turned on.)
Brush Tips
iPhoto for iOS is powerful stuff, but Apple had to make a few concessions when it comes to brush effects. If your image was previously cropped or had other color adjustments applied before using Brushes, you’ll notice these previous tweaks will be hidden while using brush tools -- denoted by a red glow above the respective icons for Crop, Exposure, Color or Effects. But don’t worry: These are only temporary while you’re using the brush tools. When you exit the Brushes mode, you’ll see the fully effected image fly down into place, ready for additional edits. The same applies if you use Brushes, then enter another edit mode -- the Brushes icon will have a similar red glow.
If you’re working on a specific area and want to keep your brush strokes confined to it, be sure to tap the Detect Edges icon, which is located to the right of the brushes themselves. Tap on the color you want to work on, and your strokes will then be applied only to the area using the same color and lightness as that selection, which is perfect for adjusting backgrounds while leaving subjects in foreground as they are.
Brush strokes can be removed with ease by using the Erase tool, located between the Detect Edges and gear icons. If you’ve made a few strokes but don’t want to undo everything you’d just done, tap the Erase tool and use your finger to remove the offending area.
The gear icon at far right also holds a number of useful features, depending on which brush you’re using at the time. With the Saturate, Desaturate, Lighten and Darken brushes, you’ll get the option to adjust the strength of your brush strokes with a slider or even adjust the entire image. Sharpen and Soften tools instead get Low, Medium or High options. Some of these brushes can be tricky to use without visual feedback, so turning on Show Strokes allows users to temporarily “see” brush strokes to help guide you (as shown above).
With the Repair and Red-Eye brushes, users can clear strokes entirely by selecting the brush, tapping on the gear and selecting “Clear [Brush Type] Strokes.” Last but not least, all of the brushes include “Erase All Strokes” under the gear icon, which nukes everything you’ve applied with a specific brush so you can start all over again.
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