Finish a photo: crop, detail and effects

Light and color make the photo. A finishing pass decides how it is framed and how it holds up close. This post goes through that pass in the order most people make it: the frame first, then detail, then effects.

Crop and straighten

Open Geometry in the editor, or press C to start cropping.

Crop

Drag the corners or the edges of the frame, or drag inside it to move it. A grid of thirds appears while you drag, to help you place the subject.

Aspect ratio sets the shape: Freeform, Original, 1:1, 4:5, 5:4, 3:2, 2:3, 4:3, 3:4, 16:9 or 9:16. Original keeps the photo's own shape. 4:5 is the tall shape most feeds show at full size, and 16:9 fits a screen.

Output shows the size the crop leaves you, in pixels. Litria never enlarges a photo, so a tight crop is a smaller photo.

Press Esc to leave crop.

Straighten

Choose Straighten and draw a line along something that should be level, such as a horizon or the edge of a building. Litria turns the photo to match. The Angle slider beside it does the same by hand, from -45° to 45°, in steps of a tenth of a degree.

Rotate and flip

Left and Right turn the photo a quarter turn. Horizontal and Vertical flip it. Reset geometry undoes all of it at once: the crop, the rotation, the straightening and the flips.

A crop belongs to the photo it was made on. Copying adjustments to another photo, and saving a preset, both leave the crop, rotation, straightening and flips behind.

Detail

Detail has two sliders, Sharpening and Noise reduction, each from 0 to 100.

Judge them at actual pixels. Click the zoom level, which reads Fit, to show actual pixels at 100%, and zoom in further if you need to, up to 400%. At Fit, the photo is scaled down, and both sharpening and noise are hard to see.

• Sharpening crisps the edges. Raise it until fine detail, such as hair, bark or text, looks clean, and stop before bright outlines appear around edges.
• Noise reduction smooths the grain a high ISO leaves in a photo. Raise it until the noise in flat areas, such as sky or a wall, settles, and stop before skin and fabric start to look waxy.

The two pull against each other, so set Noise reduction first and Sharpening after it.

Effects

Effects holds Vignette, Grain and Creative.

Vignette

A vignette darkens or lightens the edges of the frame, which draws the eye toward the middle.

• Amount below 0 darkens the edges, and above 0 lightens them.
• Midpoint sets how far in from the edges it starts.
• Roundness goes from a squared-off falloff to a circle.
• Feather sets how soft its edge is.

The vignette follows the crop, so it frames the photo as you cropped it.

Grain

Grain adds a film-like speckle. Amount sets how much, Size how large each grain is, and Roughness how even it is.

Creative

Creative has three effects, each from 0:

• Glow spreads the bright areas into their surroundings, for a soft, dreamy look.
• Halation adds the red-orange edge that film gives bright highlights.
• Light flares draws streaks from the brightest points.

They are strong. Start low, and compare with Space or \ to see whether the photo needs them.

Check and carry it on

Press Space or \ to compare with the original, and use History to step back through what you did. Copy adjustments takes the detail and effects to the next photo from the same shoot, and leaves its crop alone.

Your edits stay on your device, in your browser's storage or the desktop app's own storage, and the photo file is never changed.

Open Litria

Open Litria in Chrome or Edge, or download the desktop app. Open a photo, press C, and try a 4:5 crop.