Learn iPhoto Week: Quickly add a colour tint to your photos

We all love taking pictures and unless you are some sort of camera genius you may struggle to always get the right vibe from the photo you’ve taken. By vibe we mean the feeling you get from the colours as you see them in real life. If this isn’t translated into the photo that you’ve taken, it can be a little disappointing. But you needn’t despair; iPhoto has a superb tool that will help you get that feeling back or even generate a new one from a great picture. It only takes a few minutes to master this technique and you can use it on pretty much every kind of shot and get outstanding results. It involves using the excellent Edit view in iPhoto and then using the Eyedropper tool to change the colour cast of the picture. By clicking the dropper into different colours you can radically change the ‘lighting’ of the shot. Experimentation is the key to this technique but the results can be really startling. You can be as dramatic as you want with the use of the tool; it’s really up to you. Here’s how to get started with the Eyedropper tool.

Step 1: Get editing

Double-click on the photo you want to use in iPhoto, then click on the Edit button in the bottom-right of the interface. A new sidebar will spring into life on the right of the interface.

Step 2: Tab it up

On the top-right of the new sidebar there are three tabs. We want the Adjust section so click on that tab to reveal a host of sliders and colour- correction tools.

Step 3: Get tooled up

Next to the temperature settings is the Eyedropper tool. Click on it to begin using it. At the bottom of the screen a brief description will appear and your cursor will change to a crosshair.

Step 4: Get clicking

You can now click anywhere on the photo and the tint and temperature will change as iPhoto tries to balance the colours. The results can be subtle or extreme. It’s a great way to alter your pics.

Click on the image below to zoom in and view the annotations.

This tutorial is the sixth in our Learn iPhoto Week series; for more articles just like this, visit the Learn iPhoto Week tag. At the end of the week, we’ll be giving away a prize to one lucky person who gets in touch with a question or problem related to iPhoto on Mac or iOS. To get involved, simply tweet your question, plus the hashtag #LearniPhotoWeek, to @iCreateMagazine or post on our Facebook wall.