The Nokia N8 isn’t just fantastic at taking photos, its able to edit them with aplomb too. While some smartphones lack even the most basic built-in editing tools, the Nokia N8 is ready to whip your images into shape with smart editing tools and one-touch fixes.
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Crop, rotate and resize
The fastest, and simplest way to improve your photos is by cropping them. The Nokia N8 has a brilliantly straight forward cropping tool, letting you remove unwanted areas of a photo, adding punchiness and purpose to a picture. To enter the Nokia N8 photo editor, just take a photo and tap the pen icon in the top right of the screen, or head to the main menu, tap Photos and choose the picture you want to edit, followed by “Options” and “Edit”.
Once in the Nokia N8 photo editor, you’ll see a bunch of options pop up. Choose “Crop” and use the four “grab handles” at each corner of the cropping control to choose which bit of the image to keep. Use it to exclude anything that detracts from your photo’s purpose or subject. When you’re happy with your crop, hit OK and the Nokia N8 will trim the excess.
Need to rotate or flip a photo too? That’s easily done by tapping the “Rotate” tool from the photo editor. Four options along the bottom of the N8’s screen give you photo editing tools for spinning a picture through 90 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise, as well as horizontal or vertical flipping.
Rotate and flip your photo until you’re happy with it. The Nokia N8 will save your handiwork when you hit “Options” followed by “Save.”
Lastly, you might want to resize a photo to use less space. This is ideal if you’re e-mailing a copy, beaming it using Bluetooth or saving it to a memory card that’s nearly full. To resize a photo, tap into the Tools menu while inside the Nokia N8 photo editing screen, then choose “Resize”. Use the on-screen slider to change the image size. You’ll see its resolution in pixels change as it gets smaller or larger. Save a fresh copy of your photo in its smaller size by hitting “Options” and “Save.” Don’t worry about your original, as the Nokia N8 keeps it safe in full resolution.
Auto-tune your photos
Photo looking a little washed out? Or maybe it’s too bright for your liking? There’s no need to fiddle with awkward colour adjustment, as the Nokia N8 photo editor can auto-tune your photos. Just tap into the photo editor as described above, and choose “Tuning” from the Tools menu.
You’ll see options to manually adjust Brightness and Contrast, Highlights and Shadows and colour balance, as well as more advanced controls for saturation, sharpness and de-noise features further to the right. Each of those can be used to adjust the appearance of your photo. Dive in and you’ll see they can radically adjust your pictures. If you take them for a spin, use the “Horizontal Comparison” tool beforehand, letting you preview each change.
If you’re feeling lazy, opt for the easiest photo tweaking by tapping “Auto” at the far left of the Tuning toolbox. The Nokia N8 will then automatically balance all the settings above to make a best guess at improving your photo. You can use the Horizontal Comparison tool with it, to see exactly what difference it’s making to your original picture.
Red-eye removal
Snapped a buddy with the Nokia N8 camera, only to have them marred with bright red peepers? Don’t fret, the Nokia N8 photo editor can fix their scarlet stare in an instant.
Tap into the image and edit it, choose “Red Eye” from the Tools menu and hit the icon with an A next to it. This will automatically correct red eye in the majority of photos, but if it doesn’t work its magic immediately choose the manual option next to it, move the selection handles to make the box surround the offending red eyeball, and hit OK. In a jiffy, the problem should be fixed.
One-touch effects
Want to add a bit more sheen to your photos? How about a one-touch effect? Dive into the Tools menu of the Nokia N8 photo editor and tap “Effect”. You’ll see a gallery of options, starting with a colour overlay. Scroll downwards to see more colours, or tap the arrows at the top of the screen to see different effects, such as pencil drawing, .
Once you’ve spotted an effect you like, just tap it and the Nokia N8 will apply it to your photo. Tap “Options” and “Save” to keep a copy with the effect applied, or use the left and right arrows to cycle through other effects until you find one that looks the business.
Don’t like the way the effect turned out? Maybe it needs a little tweaking. Use the “Select Area” tool at the bottom of the screen to apply the effect to just a part of the screen, or scroll through the effects and look for options to control some of their intensity or colour balance, letting you customise the end result.
Morphing
Got a picture of a friend’s face? The Nokia N8 can morph them with hilarious effect. This type of editing is beyond the capabilities of most phones’ built in photo editors, but the Nokia N8 handles it with ease. Just load up a photo of their face in the photo editor, choose the Tools menu and tap “Fun”.
You’ll see there are four distorted face icons at the bottom of the screen. Tap one of them, and you’ll see your friend’s face warp before your eyes. There’s even a selection box, so you can control the range of the distortion, and an intensity slider to let you inflict massive manipulation, or just a slight slimming or plumping effect.
Hit “OK” followed by “Options” and “Save” to commit your photographic fun to the Nokia N8’s memory.
Frames and fun stuff
As if all those Nokia N8 photo editing tricks weren’t enough, there’s also the option of adding fun frames to photos, as well as stamping clip art and other images on top. Explore the Tools menu in the Nokia N8 photo editing screen, and you’ll find Frames are easy to apply. There’s also an option called Stamp, which lets you tap the screen to add cut-out style shapes.
More advanced additions are found under Clipart in the Tools menu, with dozens of smilies, icons and logos to choose from. They can even be scaled up, to make them larger and more obvious.
Just tap the one you like, and have fun dotting the Nokia N8’s screen with them. When you’re finished, just hit “Options” and “Save” to preserve your creation!
Read more N8 Photography Guides
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Nokia N8: Launch yourself as the next David Bailey with photo sharing
