Photo editing is something that was once reserved for the PC elite. Programs like Photoshop and Paintshop Pro ruled the market and provided functionality that you couldn’t get anywhere else. Nowadays you can get most standard photo editing tools on your mobile device, which comes with the added convenience of not having to transfer between devices and take the extra time to do all the steps included. While the mobile experience isn’t anywhere near as powerful or robust as the desktop one, many simple modifications can be made in a matter of seconds, and Xiaomi’s built-in photo editing app on MIUI 6, which is available on its own Mi4 phone and plenty of others out there too, really provides a simple yet powerful editing experience.
To start off just open the gallery app and find the photo you want to edit. Click anywhere on the screen to bring up the menu icons at the bottom and click the edit button. From here that’s a myriad of options you have to choose from, so we’ll just work left to right on the list. On the bottom of the screen you’ll find four icons that correspond to Transformation Tools, Adjustments, Filters and lastly Frames. Tranformation Tools include things like crop, rotate, flip, adjust, fisheye and doodle. Doodle is particularly interesting here because it allows you to draw on the picture using your finger, and you can select any color from the color slider too.
The next set of tools is adjustments which covers thins like red eye removal, sharpening, highlights and shadows, color saturation and more. There’s even a hue setting here to tint the whole picture warmer or cooler as you see fit, and you can vignette the photo as well to keep it focused more on the center of the image. Auto Fix will automatically adjust the sharpening, highlights, contrast and saturation values to reflect what the software thinks is the best looking picture. This also makes it an easy way to start off adjusting your picture, as you can press auto fix and then fine-tune settings as needed.
Filters are similar to Instagram style ones, but of course will keep your photos at full quality rather than resizing them as Instagram does. If you want to put a digital frame on the picture you can do that in the last tools category, but there are really only a few to choose from anyway. Clicking any frame drops it on your picture and there’s not much else you can adjust in this section. Lastly you’ll notice at the top of the screen there are undo and redo buttons, and finally a save button when you’re satisfied with the result. That’s it for photo editing, have fun and make some great pictures!
If you’re looking in to getting your hands on MIUI 6 right now, the Xiaomi Mi4 is the easiest way to get an officially supported phone with MIUI 6 available for it right now. If you don’t have your own Xiaomi Mi4 you can buy the 16GB version here, and the 64GB version here.