App of the Week: Photos

Apple’s Photos App Has a Hidden Feature for Tweaking Adjustments Even More

By Kirk McElhearn of Kirkville.com

I’ve been writing about Apple’s Photos app a lot lately, because I’ve decided to master this app rather than spending my time learning how to use Photoshop and Lightroom. Sure, those Adobe apps are powerful, but you can do a lot with Photos, and I’d rather spend my time taking pictures than tweaking them with complicated workflows and settings.

When you edit photos in Apple’s Photos app, by clicking the Adjust button, you see a number of sliders. They affect things like Brightness, Exposure, Contrast, and more. You click and drag the central lines of those sliders to increase or decrease each of these settings from -1.00 to +1.00.


However, if you press the Option key, then drag a slider, the scale increases, and you can move it from -2.00 to +2.00. Here’s what the Light adjustments look like after I’ve pressed the Option key and dragged the Brilliance slider.

You can also double-click any of the numbers that display on those sliders (this is tricky, since a single-click moves the slider; you may have to double-click a few times to get the number selected), and type a number from -2.00 to +2.00 to apply that setting.

And if you don’t like your adjustment, you can reset each slider by double-clicking anywhere on the slider (but not on the number that displays).

It’s probably rare that you’ll need to make such extreme adjustments, but it’s good to know that you can.

Do you have a favorite photo editing app? Tell us about it in the comments below!