In this article
The wand makes one decision about your photo. The slider panel next to it is where you make them yourself — ten controls covering exposure, colour, texture and the edges of the frame.
Ten is more than anyone needs. In practice two of them fix most photos, two more are worth knowing, and the rest are style. This page is which is which.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Open the panel and recognise what each group of sliders is actually for.
- check_circle Go straight to the control that fixes the problem in front of you.
- check_circle Work in an order that does not fight itself.
- check_circle Apply the same controls to a video, which is where most people never look.
The row of controls scrolls sideways — there are more of them than fit on screen, which is why half of them go unused.
tune Four jobs, not ten sliders
The panel looks like a long undifferentiated row, and that is the reason it feels intimidating. It is really four small groups, each answering a different question about the picture.
Tone decides how light the picture is and how far apart its light and dark parts sit: exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows. Colour decides what the light looks like: saturation, warmth, tint, fade. Texture decides how crisp the surface is: sharpen and grain. Frame decides where the eye goes: vignette and blur.
Once you see the groups, the panel stops being ten decisions and becomes four, of which you will usually make one.
Which slider actually fixes this
Four complaints people have about their own photos. In each case one control is the answer and another is the one people reach for first.
contrast The subject is too dark
palette The colours look wrong
grain It looks flat, or slightly soft
vignette Too much going on around the subject
If you learn two: Shadows and Warmth. They fix more real photographs than the other eight together.
checklist An order that does not fight itself
The sliders interact, so the sequence changes how much work each one has to do. Set the brightness first, then the colour, then the texture, then the frame — the same order as the four groups.
Doing it backwards is where results go wrong. Saturation applied to an underexposed photo boosts the colour noise in the shadows, and then lifting the shadows afterwards reveals it. Sharpening before you lift shadows sharpens grain you were about to make more visible.
settings Opening the panel
- Attach the photo or video The paperclip in any chat, then tap the thumbnail to open it full screen.
- Tap the sliders icon It sits in the bottom toolbar alongside the crop and wand icons.
- Scroll the row sideways The controls continue past the edge of the screen. This is where the ones nobody uses are hiding.
- Drag a control, then check it against the original Press and hold the image to see the untouched version.
- Tap Done and send The adjustment is applied to the outgoing copy; the file in your gallery is untouched.
This page is the sliders and what each one is for. The curriculum step goes underneath them to the curve itself: reading the graph, recovering an exposure precisely, and getting a consistent look across a whole set of photos.
At a glance
- 1Four groups of sliders
Light, colour, texture and framing.
- 2Fix the real problem
Go straight to the slider that solves what you see.
- 3Work in order
Brightness, then colour, then texture, then framing.
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