Paint effects on to your photos with the
Brushes tool
Zoom in
Paint
effects on to your photos with the Brushes tool
For detailed work, pinch to zoom in, then
use a two-fingered swipe to move around the image.
Brush strokes
From the home screen, tapping the brush
icon brings up the full Brushes palette – each brush enables you to paint a
sophisticated effect on to areas of your image.
Limiting an effect
Switching on ‘Detect Edges’ here will help
keep your brushwork precise, limiting the effect to a specific figure or area
of your photograph.
Damage limitation
Not happy with how some of your effects are
working out? Undo the damage by using the Eraser tool to paint over the
undesirable effects.
Vital info
Device: iPhone/iPad
Difficulty: intermediate
Time required: 1 hour
What you need:
·
iOS 5.1 or later
·
iPhoto ($4.50)
Brushes, iPhoto’s retouching toolkit,
allows you to paint effects directly on to specific areas of your photos. It
won’t let you introduce new elements, but instead it enables you to deepen
shadows, sharpen edges or pick out details to get your photography picture
perfect.
We like Brushes best when used at a fairly
low intensity: we’ve found that when they are turned up to maximum strength,
the results quickly look artificial and it becomes obvious that an image has
been doctored. It also had to be said that some effects are more effective than
others: although the Red-Eye brush is straightforward and self-explanatory, we
found its results were patchy and sometimes verged on the bizarre. Similarly,
the Repair brush, which appears to be heaven-sent for removing unwanted
elements, is far from fail-safe: when used for larger areas, it led to visible
blurs on the photos.
Still, this is a powerful toolset which,
when used with care and restraint, allows you to bring out the very best in
your photos, whether they are arty images or casual snapshots.
Step-by-step guide: brush up on your photo editing
Step 1 – The magic fix
Step
1 – The magic fix
The Repair brush enables you to remove
elements from your images: iPhoto uses the surrounding pixels to guess what
should replace it, so here, a distracting flower has been removed from the
foreground. It’s useful, but works best when used on small areas away from the
focal area of the photo
Step 2 – Ramp up the colour
Step
2 – Ramp up the colour
You should use colour to make the most
important elements of your image stand out with the Saturate and Desaturate
brushes. In this image, we’ve picked out the central model by painting
saturation on to her face and chest, while fading the background figures using
Desaturate.
Step 3 – In the shadows
Step
3 – In the shadows
Here, we’ve heightened the contrast between
the ballerina and the backstage area, building up the shadows with the Darken
brush and then highlighting key areas of the ballerina using Lighten. These
brushes only heighten existing lighting, so Darken won’t eliminate the bright
vertical stripe.
Step 4 – In focus
Step
4 – In focus
The sharpen tool helps to correct errors
that are in focus. It’s one of the more subtle brushes, and won’t rescue blurry
or out-of-focus photos, but it’s useful for picking out details. Meanwhile, the
soften brush smooth out areas of an image – here we’ve used it to lessen
wrinkles on the curtain.
Step 5 – Red alert
Step
5 – Red alert
The Show Brush Strokes option in the cog
icon is a handy way of keeping track of what you’ve done in each brush: if
you’re in the Desaturate brush, for example, it will show all of the areas you
have painted with that brush. There’s also an option for applying effects to
the whole image.
Step 6 – Show your brushwork
Step
6 – Show your brushwork
As you use each brush, a dot will appear
above it in the Brushes palette. You can turn off all your brush strokes with a
particular effect by double-tapping on the dot. While this is useful for
tracking the impact of various tools, we found this very precise double-tap
fiddly to master.
