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Transform Your Dark Photos with Pixelmator Photo Editing

2nd April 2023

2:34

iPhone | QuickTips

| Photomator
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iPhone 14 Pro
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iOS 16.3
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Jacob Woolcock

2nd April 2023

Jacob Woolcock

181 views

2:34

| Photomator
iphone-dynamic-island
iPhone 14 Pro
IOS_16_icon copy
iOS 16.3

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Description

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to take your iPhone photos to the next level with Pixelmator’s powerful editing tools. You’ll learn how to brighten dark areas and enhance shadow detail in your images, giving your photos a professional look. With easy-to-follow steps, I’ll walk you through the process of using Pixelmator to edit your photos and bring out the best in them.

I’ll cover a range of techniques for improving your photos, including adjusting brightness and contrast as well as increasing clarity and sharpness with Machine Learning to fine-tune specific areas of your image. Whether you’re a professional photographer or just looking to improve your Instagram feed, this tutorial will teach you everything you need to know about editing shadows and enhancing your photos with Pixelmator.

This step-by-step guide is perfect for beginners, but also offers plenty of advanced tips and tricks for more experienced users. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have a newfound confidence in your photo editing abilities, and you’ll be able to take stunning photos that truly stand out. So grab your iPhone and let’s get started with Pixelmator!

Transcript

How many times have you taken a lovely photo, only to have later looked back and realised actually it’s far darker than you wanted it to be?

Well I’m going to use Pixelmator Photo, this app here, to lighten up this photo I took of Tregenna Castle in Cornwall.

Now, as you can see with the sunset behind the actual castle itself is very, very dark – and you can’t make out much detail.

We can get straight into the nitty-gritty and use a lot of sliders and custom controls, but in Pixelmator Photo I really like to start by using their machine learning Magic Fix.

When you press this little magic wand on the top toolbar the machine learning built into the app will analyse your photo and it will do a pretty good job at making it look far better than the original one that you took,

In fact as you can see, that picture already looks like night and day difference than the one I had earlier.

The castle is lighter, the sky is more orange and saturated, and the whole pictures got almost a dreamy quality to it.

But I want to go in now and fine-tune that result, so I’m going to press the Filters button in the top right hand corner and from here I get a whole array of different options to use.

We want to work on the shadows, so I’m going to find the shadow slider and pull that one right slightly.

Instantly, you’ll be able to see the darker areas are now slightly lighter as it’s pulling out more detail from the shadows and again Pixelmator Photo is using machine learning to make sure it keeps that detail rather than overexposing areas.

I can adjust other settings as well and as you go along you can explore what they do and put them back if you don’t like them.

But, as a general rule, the way the machine learning Magic Fix works (our first step) – if the slider has moved to the right, move it further to the right – and if it’s gone to the left, move it further to the left move it further to the left.

That will more-or-less keep the balance in terms of tone in your picture.

I’m also going to go down and adjust the Clarity, this will make the image a little bit higher contrast and it’ll make it stand out more – particularly the detail on the castle.

Yes, that looks perfect!

I’m going to press the tick in the top corner and then Modify my original picture.

Doing that will automatically save it back into my Photo Library on my iPhone – my newly edited version.

And just to see how different it is, if I zoom in slightly and then press this button on the top toolbar we get a before and after preview of all the edits that we’ve made.

You can see just how much brighter the castle is, how much more detail is there and just generally it’s a much better photo.

Of course there are other videos about Pixelmator Photo on my channel – a couple of which are here now at the end.

But please do visit and Subscribe to my channel for even more iPhone QuickTips.

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About Photomator
The Photomator app is a photo editing tool that offers a wide range of advanced features for enhancing and retouching images on iOS devices. It includes powerful editing options such as colour adjustments, filters, and cropping tools, allowing users to create professional-quality photos with ease.
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Video Details

This QuickTip video was recorded on an iPhone 14 Pro
running iOS 16.3.

Thank You

All of my content is completely free to watch. However, to create these videos I require a steady stream of caffeine!  If you’ve found this QuickTip helpful then please do consider buying me a coffee. Thank you.

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Additional Information

The content used in this video is intended for educational and informational purposes only. All rights to the images, music, clips, and other media used belong to their respective owners. I do not claim ownership over any third-party content used. This video has not been authorised, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc.

iPhone, iPad and iPadOS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries and regions. iOS is a registered trademark of Cisco Systems Inc. Whilst I have done my best to list all applicable trademarks for this video, in the (hopefully unlikely) event that I have missed any you can find a full list of trademarks registered to Apple Inc. here.

Finally, please note that whilst every effort has been made to ensure the information contained within this video was correct at time of publication, please be aware that as future updates and software changes occur some or all elements of this video may become outdated. I will endeavour to remove videos which are completely obsolete so as not to cause confusion!

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