Edit a photo

Every change saves by itself; the status in the bottom bar reads Saving… and then Saved. Edits are stored in immich-edit, so the original in Immich never changes, and you can always go back.

Find your way around

The tool rail on the right switches between five tools:

Tool	Key	Use it for
Develop	`Shift+D`	Color, tone, detail and lens
Masks	`Shift+M`	Adjustments that apply to part of the photo
Retouch	`Shift+Q`	Removing dust, spots and distractions
Geometry	`Shift+R`	Crop, straighten, rotate and perspective
Export	`Shift+E`	Downloading or uploading the result; see export

← and → move to the previous or next photo, and G goes back to the grid. Tab hides the side panels, Shift+Tab hides every panel, Shift+S hides the filmstrip, Shift+P swaps it for the presets strip, and F goes full screen. Keys with Shift open a tool or panel, plain letters act on the photo, and Ctrl (⌘ on a Mac) runs commands such as undo, copy and paste.

Develop a photo

Develop is a stack of panels. Working from the top down suits most photos:

Camera Profile decides how the camera’s colors are read. Auto match picks the profile for your camera and is the right start for most RAW files. Flat gives a low-contrast base for heavy grading.
Basic does most of the work. Auto, at the top of Develop or Ctrl+U, sets white balance, every Tone slider, Clarity, Dehaze, Vibrance and Saturation as a starting point. It meters the photo as rendered with your profile, crop and lens corrections, weights detected faces, keeps night scenes dark, and holds exposure back rather than blow out bright areas. Then:
- White Balance: Pick white balance (W) and click something that should be neutral gray, or drag a box over a larger gray area to use its average. While you hover or drag, a card next to the pointer shows the Temperature and Tint the pick would set. Or use Auto white balance, then fine-tune Temperature and Tint. Auto looks for surfaces that could be neutral gray and stays near the camera’s white when a scene has none, so warm interiors and colorful subjects keep their mood. On RAW files the sliders show the white in Kelvin, start at the camera’s as-shot white, and reset to it; positive Tint adds magenta. Other images use relative sliders centered on 0.
- Tone: set Exposure first, recover skies with Highlights, open up shadows with Shadows, and set the end points with Whites and Blacks.
- Presence: Texture and Clarity add bite, Dehaze cuts haze, and Vibrance boosts muted colors more gently than Saturation and spares skin tones. Both keep hue and brightness, and Vibrance treats a color the same at any exposure. Clarity follows strong edges, so high values do not leave bright or dark halos along outlines.
Curves, HSL and Color Grading shape color and contrast further. Curves work on the values you see, after the camera profile, so a point placed at the middle of the graph moves middle gray on screen. HSL works on one color range at a time: Hue turns it, Saturation mutes or boosts it without changing how bright it looks, and Luminance brightens or darkens it by up to 1.5 stops. Color Grading tints shadows, midtones and highlights, split by how bright each pixel looks. Its tints keep brightness and leave pure black untouched, and each Luminance slider moves its range by up to 1.5 stops. LUT applies a creative look from a .cube file, with an Amount.
Black & White turns the photo monochrome; see black and white.
Detail holds sharpening and noise reduction. Judge both at 100% zoom (Z). Capture Sharpening restores the fine detail a RAW sensor blurs away, working only on visible edges so smooth areas and noise stay untouched. Corner Boost sharpens harder towards the corners for lenses that are softer there. Noise reduction measures the noise in each photo, so the same settings suit a clean ISO 100 shot and a grainy ISO 12800 one.
- AI Denoise removes noise from a RAW photo with a neural network. The server runs it once per photo at full resolution, which takes from seconds to a minute or two, and shows progress under its sliders. The photo updates when it finishes, and the result is kept, so later edits and exports reuse it. Strength blends between the original and the denoised photo. Detail brings back fine luminance grain for a natural look while color noise stays removed. It needs a model that an administrator installs; see models.
- Luminance sets how much grain to remove. Its Detail keeps fine texture that stands above the noise, and Contrast keeps more of the coarse grain so smooth areas don’t look plastic.
- Color removes color speckles. Its Detail keeps small colored edges, and Smoothness also cleans up larger color blotches.
Lens Corrections fixes distortion and vignetting from the lens profile of a RAW file. An administrator can turn the automatic correction off under Editing defaults. Phone and drone DNGs carry their own corrections, which always apply, so the automatic profile stays off for them; you can still turn a profile on. Remove Chromatic Aberration is off until you turn it on.
Lens Blur blurs what lies in front of or behind your subject, like a wide aperture. Press Generate depth once per photo; the server estimates how far away each part of the photo is with the depth model, and the blur turns on. Focal Range picks the band of distance that stays sharp, from the nearest part of the photo on the left to the farthest on the right. Amount sets how strong the blur gets at the distance farthest from that band, Bokeh sets the shape of out-of-focus highlights, and Boost makes those highlights brighter. Set Amount above 0 to change the other three. The depth model is installed by an administrator under Models.
Effects adds a vignette and grain. Grain is strongest in the midtones and, like film, leaves deep shadows and bright highlights clean.

Presets have their own strip under the photo; see reuse edits. Versions live in the toolbar; see try variations.

Sliders and panels

Double-click a slider’s label to reset it.
Click a slider’s value to type an exact number.
With a slider focused, Shift+← and Shift+→ move it ten steps.
Hold Alt while dragging a slider that drives a mask or a radius to see what it covers.
A panel with changes shows a dot next to its name. Click the dot to reset the whole panel.
Press and hold a changed section’s name, such as Tone, to see the photo without that section.
Show modified only, in the row at the top of Develop, hides every untouched panel.

Black and white

Convert to Black & White in the Black & White panel replaces the colors with their brightness. It runs after Basic and HSL, so their color changes still decide what each color turns into, and before Color Grading and LUT, which can tint the result.

Control	What it does
Red, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Magenta	Makes that color lighter or darker in the gray version, up to about 1.5 stops each way. Neutral grays never move, and faint colors move less than strong ones
Shadows and Highlights wheels	Tint the dark and the light tones with a hue, at the chosen strength, without changing their brightness
Balance	Moves the point where the shadow tint gives way to the highlight tint; positive values give the highlight tint more of the photo

Turning the conversion off keeps the mixer and tint settings, so you can compare color and black and white. The panel’s dot resets all of them.

Check your work

Control	What it does
Hold for original, or hold `\` or `<`	Shows the unedited photo while held
More editor actions > Before/After split, or `Y`	Splits the view; drag the divider to move it
More editor actions > Clipping overlay, or `J`	Marks pure black and pure white areas
More editor actions > Grey background	Swaps the black surround for middle grey with no shadow around the photo, so the edges of the frame do not skew how bright the photo looks. The loupe has the same option under More loupe actions, and the choice is remembered
Scopes, at the top of Develop	Histogram, Waveform, Parade and Vectorscope; Pin scopes fixes them above the panels
More editor actions > Soft proof	Previews the photo in a Proof space; Show gamut warning marks colors it cannot show
More editor actions > Info, or `I`	Shows the camera, lens and exposure details
More editor actions > Fullscreen, or `F`	Hides everything but the photo; `Esc` brings the chrome back

Undo and history

Ctrl+Z undoes and Ctrl+Shift+Z redoes. Edit history, next to Copy edits at the top of Develop, lists every saved state. Expand an entry to see what changed, and click it to go back to that state.

Going back in Edit history keeps the later entries, so you can pick one of them to go forward again. Your next edit deletes them. Make a virtual copy if you want to keep both versions.

Reset at the top of Develop, or Ctrl+Shift+R, returns every Develop panel to its default. It keeps the camera profile, the crop and rotation, masks and retouch strokes. A message confirms the reset and names the undo key. Reset the crop in Geometry, and delete masks and strokes in their own tabs.

Adjust part of the photo

Masks applies adjustments to one area. A mask is built from one or more shapes, and has its own set of adjustments.

Press New, or Create a mask on a photo without masks.
Pick a shape:
- Linear gradient and Radial gradient fade out from a line or an ellipse; L and R add one. Drag the handles on the photo. A linear gradient fades at right angles to its line on any crop shape. The small grip past the radial’s side handle turns the ellipse, for a tilted face or horizon. Hold Shift while dragging to keep a radial round, snap a linear gradient to 45° steps, or move a polygon corner straight across or straight up and down.
- Brush paints the area by hand. [ and ] change the size, { and } the hardness, and Erase takes paint away. On keyboards where these characters need Alt, Option or AltGr, type them the usual way. Over the photo, Alt and scroll resize the brush and Alt+Shift and scroll change its hardness.
- Polygon follows straight edges. Click to place corners and click the first one, or press Enter, to close it. Its feather is the same width along every edge.
- Luminance range and Color range pick areas by brightness or by a color you sample. They look past noise and grain, so the selection follows areas and edges instead of speckling pixel by pixel. A new range mask opens with the mask overlay on, and so does a color range after you sample; press the mask’s overlay button to see the photo again.
- Under AI, Subject, Background, People, Sky, Depth and Scene find the area for you. Click to select and Box select find an object you click or draw a box around. These need a model that an administrator installs; see models.
Set the adjustments below the mask list. Amount fades the whole mask in or out.

To refine a mask, open Refine on it and use Add, Subtract or Intersect with another shape. For example, a Sky mask with a Linear gradient intersected keeps only the top of the sky. Invert edits everything outside the shapes instead. An AI click mask also has Click refine: press Add or Remove and click the photo to grow or trim it, then Done. A Depth mask starts with the whole photo selected. On its Near → Far slider, drag the right handle left to drop the farthest areas, such as the sky, and the left handle right to drop the closest ones. The positions are shares of the photo, not distances: 40 on the right handle keeps the nearest 40% of the pixels. While you drag, the selection shows in red. Edge cleanup, Grow and Feather apply when you let go.

O, or the overlay button on a mask, shows or hides the selected mask as a red overlay. The overlay steps aside while you drag an adjustment so you can judge the edit, and a brush stroke shows its paint while you draw. Masks lower in the list are applied on top of the ones above them, and Duplicate layer starts a new mask from an existing one.

Remove spots and distractions

Open Retouch and pick Heal, which blends the source’s texture into the spot, or Clone, which copies the source exactly.
Hold Alt and click a clean area to set the source.
Paint over the spot. The source follows the brush at the same offset.

Drag a stroke’s green circle to move its source. Click a stroke to select it, then drag it to move the stroke and its source together, so a stroke that landed a little off does not need repainting. The move stops where the stroke or its source would leave the photo. Set Size, Hardness and Opacity for the next stroke; Alt and scroll over the photo resize the brush too. H and C switch between heal and clone.

Crop and straighten

Geometry shows the whole photo while you work. Each change saves as soon as you let go, as its own step in the history, so Cmd+Z or Ctrl+Z takes back the last crop or rotation without leaving the tool. The tool stays open until you pick another one.

Crop: drag the frame, or choose an Aspect Ratio such as Original, Free, 1:1, 3:2, 5:4 or 7:5; Custom… takes any whole-number width and height. The button beside it swaps landscape and portrait, so 5:4 becomes 4:5. The size the crop keeps, in pixels of the original, shows beside Crop. Hold Alt while dragging a handle to resize about the centre, and Shift to keep the shape of a free crop. Ctrl or Cmd with the mouse wheel scales the crop, and with a drag inside it moves the photo under the crop. Crop guide, or O, cycles the overlay between rule of thirds, golden ratio, diagonals, a grid and none, and remembers your choice.
Angle straightens the horizon. To level it by eye, turn on Straighten, or press A, and drag along a line that should be level or upright; hold Shift and drag inside the crop to do the same without the button. Rotate left 90° and Rotate right 90° in the bar at the top turn the photo, and Flip horizontal and Flip vertical mirror it.
Vertical and Horizontal correct converging lines, and Aspect restores proportions afterwards. Corner handles lets you drag the four corners onto a shape that should be rectangular instead.
Guided upright sets Angle, Vertical and Horizontal from lines you draw, and replaces any Corner handles adjustment. Turn it on and draw along at least two edges that should be upright or level, such as the sides of a building or a horizon. A line within 35° of upright counts as upright and one within 35° of level counts as level; anything between is ignored. Up to two of each kind count, and a third replaces the oldest. One line of the other kind also fixes any remaining slant. Drag a line’s ends to adjust it, or click its × to remove it. The lines stay until you leave the tool, rotate or flip the photo, or reset.
The reset arrow beside Crop or Transform undoes just that section. Reset in the bar at the top, or Ctrl+Shift+R on this tab, undoes everything in the tool and leaves your develop settings alone.

Reuse edits

Copy edits (Ctrl+C) opens Copy settings, where you pick what to copy: Basic, Tone, Color, Detail, Lens Corrections, Effects, Geometry & crop, Masks and Retouch. The last three start unchecked, because a crop or a mask rarely fits another photo. Lens Blur is never copied, because its depth map belongs to one photo. Then open another photo and press Paste edits (Ctrl+V). A short message confirms each copy and paste, or says when there is nothing to copy or paste. To paste onto many photos at once, use Edit and export selected.

A preset keeps a look for later. Presets live in a strip that takes the filmstrip’s place: press Shift+P or Presets in the bottom bar to show it, and again to close it along with the filmstrip. Shift+S or Filmstrip beside it switches straight to the filmstrip. The strip shares the filmstrip’s height, so drag the top edge of either to resize both. Each tile shows the current photo with that preset applied. Point at a tile to preview the look on the photo, and click it to apply. When your presets have more than one group, the group list left of the tiles filters them. The Geometry & crop and Masks checkboxes beside the tiles decide whether those come along.

The first tile, New preset, saves the current look: it asks for a name and an optional group. Pick an existing group from the list, or type a new name. It reads No edits yet and stays disabled until you change something. Import below it adds presets from a file.

Point at a preset tile and click the ⋯ in its corner, or right-click the tile, for its menu. Edit… renames or regroups the preset, Export downloads it as a .json file and Export all presets downloads every preset as one file. Delete asks you to confirm before it removes the preset. On a touch screen the ⋯ stays visible.

Amount sets how strongly the preset applies, from 0% to 200%. At 100% you get the preset as saved. Lower values move each slider part of the way from its default toward the preset, and higher values push it further in the same direction, up to the slider’s limit. Curves scale the same way, starting from a straight line, and a LUT’s own amount scales too. Black & white mix, toning and balance scale while the conversion itself stays on. Choices rather than amounts, such as the camera profile, the LUT file, sharpening and lens corrections, come from the preset as saved. At 0% the look returns to defaults. Geometry and masks are never scaled. Double-click the slider to go back to 100%. The preview while pointing at a tile uses the same amount and checkboxes.

Import reads an exported file and adds its presets to your library. A preset whose name is already in your library is skipped, so importing the same file twice adds nothing.

Try variations

The More editor actions menu (the three dots in the toolbar) lists the original and its virtual copies under Versions. Create virtual copy, or Ctrl+', starts a new version with its own edits and history. Rename a version with the pencil on its row; delete it with the bin, then confirm. Culling and copies are covered in browse and cull.