Applying Effects to Photos

With the Effects pane, you can alter a photo to give it a unique look. Evoke the colors of an old, faded tintype. Turn a color photo into a black-and-white one. Blur the edges of a scene to create a gauzy, romantic look. Juice up the colors in a photo or tone them down.

As the tips at right describe, you can apply more than one effect to a photo, and you can apply an effect more than once.

Keep in mind that applying an effect to a photo changes that photo everywhere it appears—in albums, books, slide shows, and so on. If you want to retain the existing version of a photo, be sure to duplicate it before applying an effect: select the photo and choose Duplicate from the Photos menu or use the -D keyboard shortcut.

And there’s a local editing angle, too: you can apply black-and-white, sepia, or antique effects in slide shows and print projects.