Using the Adjust Panel

If you want to manually adjust your photos, such as changing the brightness and contrast or adjusting the color saturation, iPhoto provides a complete set of controls that allow you fine control over your photo’s appearance.

Press the Control key anytime after you’ve made changes to see the difference between the original photo and your adjustments.

Tips

Adjust contrast to make interesting photos

If a photo includes shadows, adjusting the contrast can make the shadows darker, which can make your photo more interesting. Adjusting the contrast also makes busy photos even sharper. If a photo’s colors and tones are flat, adjusting the contrast can make the colors stand out more (or as photographers say, make the colors "pop").

Straighten crooked photos

Every once in a while you might take a picture that is crooked, and you want to straighten it before you make a print. This is easy to do in iPhoto. With the Adjustments window open, use the Straighten sliders to straighten your images. When you slide the slider to the left or right, the image will rotate and show a grid to help you align your image properly.

Change the exposure level

When you use the automatic settings on your digital camera, occasionally you might find that a photo is overexposed or underexposed, meaning there was too much or too little light. On a bright, sunny day, you might find that your photos are slightly overexposed. In photos where your automatic flash didn’t go off, you might find that your photos are a little underexposed. You can fix these types of photos with the Exposure slider in the Adjust panel. If your image is underexposed, slide the Exposure slider to the right. This will bring some light back to your photo. If your image is overexposed, slide the slider to the left, evening out the light and bringing back the details.

Viewing the histogram and editing levels in your images

At the bottom of the iPhoto Adjust window you’ll see the image histogram. When looking at the histogram, all the way to the left represents black, and all the way to the right is white, and the height or the colors represents the amount of that color in the image. So if you see the red in the histogram higher on the right hand side, the reds in the image are going to be brighter and more intense. If the reds are higher on the left side they will be darker. You can also edit the image color levels in the Histogram. Sliding the slider to the left or right will change the tonal range of the image, changing the amount of blacks or whites in an image.

Steps

Manually adjust a photo

Select the photo you would like to change, and click the Edit button.
Click the Adjust button to open the Adjust panel.
You can adjust any of these settings: Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Temperature, Tint, Sharpness, Straighten, Exposure, and Levels.
Return your photo to its original state by clicking the Reset Sliders button.
When you’re done, you can save your changes by clicking the Done button.