How to crop and edit photos on your iPhone 5s

The iOS App Store might contain a wealth of third-party apps to help you fix that faulty photo or crop a shot down to size, but before you go spending your hard-earned cash, it’s worth looking a little closer to home. Photo editing tools have been present on your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch since iOS 6, but iOS 7 sees the bar raised with a few extra options so you can make your snaps shine without spending a penny on a third-party solution.

You’ll find these tools within the Photos app, hidden by the unassuming Edit label in the top-right corner of a single-photo view. To get you started, we’ve ran through the basics below. All you need to do is fill your Camera Roll with material to work with. With the iPhone’s camera being so great, particularly if you’re lucky enough to own a 5s, we reckon this shouldn’t be too hard. Once you’ve snapped some shots, read on and we’ll turn your images into something worth shouting about.

1 Find your photo

Fire up the Photos app and scroll through your Camera Roll until you find the image you want to edit. Tap on it once to view it solo on the screen in a little more detail.

2 Start editing

To bring up Photos’ set of editing tools, you’ll want to hit the Edit label in the top-right corner. You should see the interface change colour and a new row of icons appear below.

3 Spinning around

Your iPhone usually detects which way you’re shooting, but in case it doesn’t, tap the leftmost tool in Photos’ Edit view to rotate your images by 90 degrees, counter-clockwise.

4 Fix in a flash

Tap the magic wand icon to enable the Auto- Enhance feature. This adjust your image’s exposure, brightness and white balance as it sees fit and the results are usually good.

5 Add an effect

The middle button (three overlapping circles) will bring up a row of effects with previews of how they look. Tap and scroll through until you find one you like and then hit Apply.

6 Crop it down

Tapping the rightmost tool in the Edit view will bring up the cropping box. It’s great for removing any blurry fingers that might be creeping into shot and ruining your snaps.

7 An important aspect

In the Crop tool, hit the Aspect label at the bottom to bring up a list of aspect ratios to crop to. 4 x 3 is a standard size for landscape photos shot with 35mm film.

8 Move and zoom

Drag the image within the crop area to select which part of it remains once you’ve cut it down. You can also use a two-finger spread to zoom in on a specific part.

9 Save your edits

When you’re happy with how your image looks, hit the Save label in the top-right to commit your changes to the Camera Roll. Don’t worry, you can always undo later on!