[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/HJCfQDFj6lE” title=”Editing%20Photos%20in%20Apple%20iOS8″ autohide=”1″]

Last week, Apple rolled out iOS8, the latest version of their mobile operating system for iPhones and iPads. Of all the new features mentioned, somehow the photo editing tools managed to escape notice. Check out my video above, and read on to learn about these new features.

In previous versions of iOS, you only had three editing options:

• Crop
• Auto Enhance
• Filter effects

Personally, I really only used the crop/rotate tool and occasionally used the filter effects. I found the Auto Enhance option to be mostly useless. But with iOS8, users gain a full range of image editing tools. To access these tools, click the “Edit” button from any photo. Then click the “knob” icon located at the bottom of the screen.

Image adjustment tools

In iOS8, you get three new controls for adjusting your images:

• Light: Includes exposure, brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, and black point adjustments

• Color: Includes saturation, contrast (color contrast only) and cast (temperature)

• Black and White: Black and white conversions with controls for intensity, neutrals, tone (contrast) and grain (film grain effect).

Each of these controls starts with a universal slider (the topmost control) that adjusts all the sub-controls simultaneously. Or, just adjust each sub control individually.

Auto-straightening

The crop tool in iOS8 now offers an automatic straighten tool. When you open the crop tool, this adjustment is applied automatically. Click the “reset” button if you want to manually straighten the image.

Having these controls directly in the native photos app is a nice addition to iOS8, and they work in the older phones, too. I didn’t usually use the iOS photo editing tools in the past, because they were quite limiting. Now that I’m on iOS8, I’ll be using the on-board photo editor a lot more!