Try these top tips to fix photos

Pick a photo to fix

Often, the photos that we take when we're out with our friends capture the fun of the moment, but are not perfect. 

In this tutorial, we invite you to pick a photo that's not perfect, and apply these quick tips to straighten a photo, remove blemishes and unwanted objects from it, add a blur effect to draw attention to the main subject in your photo, and apply a filter to create warmth for your photo.

These simple changes can make good photos great, for printing or posting to social media.

Open Photoshop. Go to File > Open, or press Command+O (Control+O on Windows) on your keyboard.

Choose a photo from your computer, and click Open.

You can use the Crop tool to straighten crooked photos.

Select the Crop tool from the toolbar, or press "C" on your keyboard.

Position your cursor just outside of a corner or side of the image until you see your cursor change to a curved arrow. Click and drag to rotate the photo.

Press Enter on your keyboard when you're done.

Use the Spot Healing Brush Tool to clean up distracting areas or spots in your photo. Choose the Spot Healing Brush Tool from the toolbar.

Hint: Zoom into areas of your photo for easier cleanup by pressing Command and the plus (+) button (Control and the plus (+) button on Windows) on your keyboard. Zoom back out by pressing Command and the minus (-) button (Control and the minus (-) button on Windows) on your keyboard.

Click and drag on the areas you wish to remove. 

Hint: Press the right-bracket "]" on your keyboard to increase the size of the Spot Healing Brush Tool, or press the left bracket "[" to decrease the size of the tool.

Use the Patch Tool to remove larger distracting objects from your photos. To do this, you select what to remove, and then select a part of the photo to use as a replacement patch.  

Click and hold the Spot Healing Brush Tool and select the Patch Tool.

First, click and drag your cursor to select an area of the photo that you want to remove, releasing your cursor to complete the selection of what you wish to remove.  

Next, click and drag from within your selection area to an area of the photo that you want to use as your replacement patch.

In this photo, we clicked in the selected area for removal (arm and red cup), and then dragged below to the vertical line in the wall (clean part of the wall without arm and red cup). In short, we selected the clean part of the wall as the replacement patch. 

When you're done, press Command+D (Control+D on Windows) on your keyboard or go to Select > Deselect, which removes the selection path for the Patch Tool.

The Blur Gallery has blur effects, which you can use to add focus or emphasis to parts of your photo.

Go to Filter > Blur Gallery > Tilt Shift...

Click and drag the solid horizontal lines to change where you apply the blur effect. In this photo, we blurred the top and bottom of the image, but left the faces without blur, which creates a focus in the photo on the faces.  

Use the Blur slider to change the intensity of the blur effect.

When you're done, click OK at the top of the window.

To learn more about the different options in the Blur Gallery, see the tutorial, Add creative blur to photos. 

Photo Filters, similar to Instagram filters, give your photos a unique color effect.

Open the Adjustments panel on the right side of your workspace. If you can't see it, select Window > Adjustments.

Click on the Photo Filter icon. From the Properties panel, choose a Filter from the menu. In this photo, we applied a Sepia filter to warm the tones in the image. Use the Density slider to adjust the intensity of the filter.

When you're done, click the double arrows at the top of the Properties panel to close the panel.

Fix other photos  

Your cleaned-up photo is ready to share or print!  

Experiment with applying these tips to other photos, and check out the related links below, which will give you more ways to make your photos look great.