Editing photos
Not released yet (comes after 1.6.0) LibrePhotos has a photo editor. Crop and straighten a photo, pick a filter, or work on light and colour with the controls you know from desktop photo editors. The editor has two modes: Simple, with a few plain sliders, and Advanced, with every control.
How editing works​
Editing never changes your photo file. An edit is a list of settings that LibrePhotos stores with the photo. When you save, the server makes an edited copy of the picture from your original and those settings, and the app shows that copy everywhere: in the grids, in the photo viewer, in downloads and to the people you share the photo with.
Because the original stays as it is, you can open the editor again at any time to change an edit,
step back through its history, or remove it with Revert to original.... The edited copies are
stored in the /edits folder of LibrePhotos' own files, next to the
thumbnails, not in your photo folders.
Which photos you can edit​
- Your own photos. Photos someone shares with you, and photos on a public link, have no edit button.
- Still pictures: JPEG, PNG, HEIC, WebP and the other image formats LibrePhotos shows, and RAW files (see RAW files).
- Not videos.
The editor runs in your browser and needs WebGL 2, which every current browser has. In a browser without it, the edit button stays visible but does nothing, and its tooltip says This browser can't run the editor: it needs WebGL 2. Turning on hardware acceleration in the browser's settings often helps.
Opening the editor​
Open a photo in the photo viewer and click the edit
button in the toolbar, next to Share link (tooltip Edit (E)), or press e. On a phone the
button is in the bar at the bottom of the screen. On a photo's own page,
the Edit button under the title opens the editor too. When you close the editor, the focus goes
back to the edit button.
On a photo you already edited, the button is highlighted and its tooltip says Edit (E). This photo is edited. The grids show no badge for edited photos: they show the edited picture.
The editor fills the window. The bar at the top holds the back arrow (Close (Escape)), the file name, the Simple | Advanced switch, undo and redo, the compare buttons, Reset all edits, the â‹® (More actions) and Save. The controls are on the right, or under the photo on a phone, where the mode switch sits above them and the controls can be hidden to see more of the photo. The editor remembers the mode you used last in this browser. Both modes change the same edit, so you can switch at any time without losing anything.
To look closer, scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to move around, and double-click to switch between the whole photo and 100 %. The corner of the photo shows the zoom, with Fit and 100%.
Simple mode​
Simple mode has three tabs:
| Tab | What you find there |
|---|---|
| Adjust | Auto, then Brightness, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Saturation, Warmth, Tint, Sharpness and Vignette. Reset adjustments sets them all back. |
| Filters | A small preview of the photo with each look: Original, Vivid, Warm, Cool, Fade, Matte, Punch, Golden, Cinematic, Mono, Mono contrast, Sepia and Film. Strength makes the chosen look weaker or stronger. |
| Crop & rotate | The crop frame, Aspect ratio, Straighten, and Rotate and flip. Reset crop and rotation takes them back. |
Auto sets the light of the photo from its histogram, as a starting point you can change. It reads the photo as you framed it, so it is not available while the crop tool is open. Brightness covers about two stops each way; a brighter or darker setting made in the advanced mode's Exposure shows as it is, and the slider moves on from there. Picking a filter replaces the filter you picked before instead of adding to it, and Original takes it off again. A filter never changes the crop.
In Crop & rotate, drag the frame, or one of its edges or corners, over the photo. With the frame
selected, the arrow keys move it, and Shift + an arrow key moves it further. Aspect ratio
locks the frame to Free (no lock), Original (the photo's own shape), 1:1, 5:4, 7:5, 3:2,
4:3, 16:9 or 16:10; Swap orientation turns a ratio between landscape and portrait. Straighten
turns the photo by up to 45° either way to level a horizon, and the crop shrinks so no empty corner
shows. The buttons next to Rotate and flip are Rotate left, Rotate right, Flip
horizontally and Flip vertically. Leave the tab (or press Escape) to see the cropped photo
again.
Every slider shows its value in a field you can type into. Double-click a slider or its name to set it back to where it started.
Advanced mode​
Advanced mode shows the histogram at the top and the controls in sections you can fold open and closed. A section you changed has a reset button (Reset and the section's name) that sets just that section back.
| Section | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Histogram | How the brightness of the edited photo is spread, in red, green, blue and overall. A marker in the left or right top corner lights up when shadows or highlights are clipped to pure black or pure white. |
| Presets | The same looks as the Filters tab, as a list, with Strength. |
| Light | Auto, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks: the brightness of the whole photo and of its bright and dark parts. |
| Tone curve | A curve for all channels together (All) or for Red, Green or Blue alone. Click the curve to add a point and drag it; double-click a point or drag it off the curve to remove it. |
| Color | Color or Black & white at the top, then the white balance (Temperature, Tint) and Vibrance and Saturation. Vibrance strengthens weak colours more than strong ones and spares skin tones. |
| Color mixer | One colour band at a time (red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple, magenta), with its Hue, Saturation and Luminance. A dot on a band says it holds a change. Shown for colour photos. |
| B&W mix | How light or dark each colour band turns in grey. Shown instead of the colour mixer when you chose Black & white. |
| Color grading | Four colour wheels, Shadows, Midtones, Highlights and Global, each with its Luminance, to tint the dark, middle and bright parts of the photo. Blending sets how far the three ranges overlap and Balance moves the split between them. |
| Effects | Texture and Clarity bring out fine detail and mid-size contrast, Dehaze cuts through haze (or adds it). Vignette darkens or lightens the corners, shaped by Midpoint, Feather and Roundness. Grain adds film grain, with Grain size and Roughness. |
| Detail | Sharpening with its Radius, and Noise reduction and Color noise for photos taken in low light. |
| Crop & rotate | The same crop tool as in simple mode. Opening the section shows the whole photo with the crop frame. |
| History | Every step of the edit (see below). |
Copying an edit to other photos​
Copy settings and Paste settings in the â‹® (More actions) of the editor, or
Ctrl + Shift + c and Ctrl + Shift + v, carry the look of one photo over to another:
everything except the crop, the rotation, the straighten angle and the flips, which belong to the
photo they were made for. Open the next photo in the editor and paste. The copied settings are kept
in this browser only.
History, undo and redo​
Every change is a step: moving a slider, picking a filter, a crop, Auto, a paste or a reset.
Undo and redo in the top bar, or Ctrl + z and Ctrl + Shift + z, go back and forward one
step. The History section of advanced mode lists every step, newest at the top and Original
at the bottom; click one to go back to it. The steps after it stay listed, dimmed, until you make a
new change.
The history is saved with the edit, up to the last 200 steps. When you open the editor again, on this or any other device, the history is still there and you can go back to any step.
Comparing before and after​
- Hold to compare: hold down the compare button in the top bar (tooltip Hold to see the photo
before its adjustments, with its crop and rotation ()), or the
\key, to see the photo without its adjustments. It keeps the crop and rotation, so you compare the same framing. - Before and after side by side: the button next to it, or
y, splits the photo into Before on the left and After on the right. Drag the divider, or move it with the arrow keys. The split view is not available while you crop.
Saving​
Nothing changes on the photo until you click Save. While the server saves, the editor says Saving the edit… and takes no input, so what is saved is what you see. When the server has answered, the editor closes, says Edit saved, and you are back in the photo viewer:
- The thumbnails and the photo viewer show the edit right away.
- The server makes the edited picture at full size in the background, which can take a few seconds for a large photo or a RAW file. Until it is ready, zooming in shows the display-size version, with the label The edited photo is still being prepared at full size.
If the save fails, the editor says why and stays open with your changes, so you can try again.
If you close the editor (or press Escape, go back or follow a link) with changes that are not
saved, it asks Save your changes?: Discard drops them, Keep editing stays in the editor and
Save saves them.
Reset all edits in the top bar (in the â‹® on a phone) sets every control back in one step. Like any step, you can undo it, and it is only kept when you save.
Reverting to the original​
Revert to original... in the editor's ⋮ removes the edit for good: its settings, its history and the edited copies. LibrePhotos asks first (Revert to the original?); while it reverts the editor says Reverting to the original…, then the photo shows its original again everywhere. The option is shown once a photo has a saved edit.
Rotating an edited photo with the rotate items in the photo viewer turns its edit, crop included, and adds the turn to its history.
Downloads and sharing​
On a photo you edited, the photo viewer's â‹® (More actions) and the Download button of the photo's page have two downloads:
- Download edited: the edited picture at full size, as a JPEG named after the original with
-editedadded. It is available once the server has made it. - Download original: your untouched original file.
Download from a selection in a grid gives you the original files.
Everyone else only ever gets the edited picture: users you share the photo or an album with, members of an album, people you share your library with, and visitors of a public link. That holds even when you allow them to download original files, and while the full-size picture is still being made, when they get the smaller version. The edited picture carries no metadata from the original file, such as the GPS position.
RAW files​
A RAW file is developed by the server from the RAW data, with a neutral starting look. While the editor opens, it shows the photo as the viewer did; the editable picture follows within a second or two. It can look different from the JPEG your camera makes, which has the camera maker's own colours and contrast. There are no lens corrections and no camera profiles yet. RAW data holds more detail in the highlights than a JPEG, so Highlights and Exposure can bring back bright areas that look white at first.
When a photo has a RAW and a JPEG of the same shot (a RAW+JPEG pair), the editor works on the JPEG, the photo's main file. A RAW file on its own is edited from its RAW data.
Faces and recognised text​
Face boxes follow a crop, a turn or a flip: they stay on the faces, and a face cropped out keeps its name and comes back when you widen the crop again. Reverting puts the boxes back where they were.
On a photo whose crop or rotation you changed, Select text in photo is not offered, but the text found in the photo stays searchable.
When the photo file changes​
When a scan finds that the file of an edited photo was replaced on disk:
- Only its metadata changed (for example a date written into the file): the edit stays as it is.
- The same picture, saved again (for example after a small touch-up in another program): the edit is applied to the new file.
- A different picture: the edit is removed, because a crop made for one picture does not fit another.
Limits​
- No local adjustments: no brushes, masks, healing or red-eye removal. Every control works on the whole photo.
- Videos cannot be edited.
- The mobile app shows edited photos, but has no editor yet.
- While you edit, the preview is a smaller version of the photo (up to 2560 pixels on the long side). The saved photo is made at full size, so very fine detail, such as the effect of sharpening or noise reduction, can look slightly different.
- The editor needs WebGL 2 in the browser (see Which photos you can edit).
Keyboard shortcuts​
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
e | Open the editor (in the photo viewer) |
Ctrl + z (⌘ + z on macOS) | Undo |
Ctrl + Shift + z or Ctrl + y | Redo |
\ (hold) | Show the photo without its adjustments |
y | Before and after side by side |
Ctrl + Shift + c | Copy settings |
Ctrl + Shift + v | Paste settings |
| Arrow keys | Move the crop frame or the split view's divider; Shift moves further |
Escape | Leave the crop tool, or close the editor |
The keys do nothing while you type in a value field.
For how the editor works inside, see the developer page Photo editing pipeline.