How to use Photoshop on iPhone

iPhone photography has far exceeded camera photography as a way to capture life’s most special moments, but capturing the perfect image is only the beginning. There are also dozens of photo editing apps to choose from, with varying levels of cost, difficulty, and results. 

Adobe’s Photoshop has set the gold standard for photo editing for years, and their app, Photoshop Express, provides next-level photo editing for free. While it’s not as robust as the desktop version, Photoshop Express can handle heavy tasks like cropping random photobombers out of your shots, layering two photos, or even changing someone’s eye color. 

Let’s take a look at how to use Photoshop on your iPhone so you can create the best images possible without a lot of effort. 

Can you use Photoshop on your iPhone?

Adobe’s Photoshop Express is a simplified version of their professional editing software, but it’s designed for smaller touch screens. Do you need to use Photoshop to edit your images? Of course not, but Photoshop Express is far superior to Apple’s native editing app, and it’s entirely free to use. 

Photoshop Express provides basic tools for cropping your photos, as well as adjusting light, color, and contrast, but you can also remove objects, layer photos, and add filters for creative manipulations of your favorite shots. 

How to use Photoshop on iPhone: The basics

The first thing you’ll have to do is download Photoshop Express from the App Store. The app is free to download, but you do have to create an Adobe account if you don’t already have one. 

After signing into your account, you will have to give Photoshop Express permission to access your photos. The best way to experiment with the editing tools is to choose a photo and play around with all the different features. If you make a mistake, you can always tap the back arrow button to undo your edits. 

Here are the steps to access the basic editing features with Photoshop Express:

1. Open Photoshop Express on your iPhone.
2. Tap ‘Photo Editor & Retouch’ and choose a shot you want to work on.
3. Your photo will appear on the screen, and you will see a dashboard of tools beneath it, including Looks, Adjustments, Smooth, Face, Reshape, Heal, Crop, Text, Draw, Touchup, and Makeup. Choose ‘Crop’ to make adjustments to the size and composition of your photo.
4. Drag the lines of the photo edge to crop out items or change the shape of your photo.
5. Now, choose ‘Adjustments’. This is where you can change the brightness, shadows, highlights, saturation, and more.
6. Simply tap the feature and use the slider to make adjustments.
7. You can also choose to work on specific parts of your photo by choosing Subject, Background, Sky, Object, or Clothes.
8. When you are happy with the results, tap the download icon at the top of the screen, and your new photo will be saved alongside the original.

Once you’ve got the hang of the basics, you can move on to more advanced editing techniques. 

Get rid of photo clutter to make editing easier

Editing photos and saving new ones on your iPhone takes up a lot of storage space. You can save yourself some time and headaches by downloading CleanMy®Phone to clear up the digital clutter and delete photos you don’t need. CleanMy®Phone makes the chore of tidying up photos quick and easy. It divides your photos into categories so you can easily find blurry and duplicate images and other clutter. 

How to crop someone out of a photo on iPhone

We’ve all experienced random people accidentally caught on an otherwise great photo. These photobombers can usually be removed from your photo pretty easily. More complicated are the exes that might take up a significant amount of photo real estate. How difficult it is to remove a person from a photo really depends on the image’s composition and background, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

Here are the steps to removing someone from a photo using Photoshop Express on iPhone:

1. First, open Photoshop Express on your iPhone.
2. Tap ‘Photo Editor & Retouch’.
3. If the person you want to remove is on the edge of your photo, the easiest way to do so is to crop them out. Tap ‘Crop’.
4. Now, drag the borders of the image so that the person is no longer in the frame.
5. Make additional edits as necessary and tap the save icon.

Of course, removing a person from an image is rarely as simple as cropping them out. Here’s how to remove someone from a photo using the ‘Heal’ tool. Note that this will be easier with a simple background. 

1. Open Photoshop Express on your iPhone.
2. Choose ‘Photo Editor & Retouch’ and open the photo you want to work on.
3. Choose ‘Heal’ from the toolbar at the bottom of the screen.
4. From here, you can choose ‘Basic’ or ‘Advanced’ depending on the complexity of your image.
5. Choose a brush size that matches the item or person you are removing.
6. Use your fingers to make an outward pinching motion on your screen to zoom in as close as you can to the person you’re removing.
7. Use your finger to ‘brush’ over the person.
8. If you are working in Advanced mode, you will be able to choose the background to replace the person with. If you are working in Basic, Photoshop will choose for you.
9. You can paint over the object as many times as you need to help the area blend in with the surroundings.
10. Once you’ve removed the person, you can continue to edit other aspects of your image before tapping the download icon.

How to layer photos on iPhone

When you layer photos using Photoshop Express, you’re essentially combining two photos into one image. This is useful when you have one photo of a person and another of a lovely background. With Photoshop Express, you can layer the two to put the person and the background together. 

You can also use this method to Photoshop someone into a photo with other people. 

Here’s how to Photoshop someone into a picture on iPhone free of charge using Photoshop Express and layers:

1. Open Photoshop Express on your iPhone.
2. Choose ‘Combine Photos’.
3. Pick the portrait image from your photo library.
4. Use the Cutout feature to cut out the subject from the background.
5. Now tap the ‘+’ icon and choose the background photo.
6. Hold your finger on the thumbnail of the background and drag it over the portrait image.
7. You should see the portrait over top of the background. Click each thumbnail image to edit them individually.
8. When you are happy with the results, tap the three dots next to the thumbnails to merge the photos and tap the download icon to save your photo.

How to change eye color in Photoshop on iPhone

Photoshop Express includes a wide range of tools for editing faces, from subtle to dramatic. Here’s how to use Photoshop Express to touch up faces and change eye color on your iPhone:

1. Open Photoshop Express on your iPhone.
2. Tap Photo Editor & Retouch’ and choose the image you want to work on.
3. Choose from the array of tools at the bottom of the screen. Start by tapping ‘Face’.
4. Choose one of the tools, or choose a different body part to adjust. You can make the face slimmer or change the direction it is looking.
5. Choose ‘Makeup’ to add eye or lip makeup to the person’s face.
6. Choose ‘Smooth’ or ‘Smoother’ to erase fine lines.
7. While you can’t change the eye color, you can replace the eyes in your portrait with different eyes.

What other apps are available for photo editing?

Photoshop Express is one of my favorite photo editing apps on iPhone. It’s free, easy to use, and provides very professional results. There are hundreds of other photo editing apps that specialize in various aspects of the editing process. Some work to add filters and others are designed to add more artistic effects.
If you need more ideas for additional photo editing apps, check out this article to help you choose the best one for your needs. Using your iPhone to edit photos makes the job incredibly easy, and Photoshop Express is a fantastic app for all but the most complex edits.