Simply photo-rrific!

I love taking photos from iPhone. It captures some of the brilliant lights, colours and moments in my life. Adding up today’s features like multiple lens to leaping mega pixels, photography has advanced widely and professionally. And before posting to social media, I enjoy selecting Photo app’s preset and/or manually edit before sharing to the world. So why edits and presets usability ignored and not explored further to simply user experience?

Painful process

As a photo enthusiast i go a little further by applying presets and editing manually to selected snaps, just to perfect the shots, one by one. But its always been a pain to do so and requires lots of quiet time to get it done since I do wanna standardise the chosen photos to create similar mood and effect based on location or event, collectively.

Idea!

1. What if I could select multiple snaps and apply same settings / preset all together?
2. And what if you could copy and paste one photo’s setting / preset to many others with simple actions and perhaps refine alittle, if required?

Here’s some ideas that I worked around the current iOS with simple UI UX adjustments :

1. Editing multiple photos

Without changing much of current UX flow, I’ve tweaked the multiple photo editing with just simple things:  1 button and 2 icons.

A) “Edit All” button allows multiple photos to be edited at one go.
B) Grid and Carousel icons allow user to change the image-display of the selected photos while editing. 

Though the images have been set with same presets and settings, user is still allowed to individually adjust single image’s edit + preset which doesn’t affect the previous or the overall settings. Meaning even if edits + presets are applied to a bunch of photos together, their settings are individually editable and saveable. This will save user’s precious time in adjusting only simple things like over-exposure, HDR brilliance, etc and not repetitively adjusting from scratch.

2. Copy and pasting Style

Again with simple tweaks, user can easily copy and paste style on selected photos.

A) Select and copy existing photo’s preset + settings = Style
B) Select multiple photos that your planning to apply identical style.
C) Paste style to selected photos. Can be re-adjusted individually after applying.

The same UX can be applied to 3D touch settings as well in Photos app. By forcefully pressing the image, the “Copy Style” and “Paste Style” buttons appears without even accessing the image:

Pros & Cons

Pros
– Save time in editing photos altogether, instead of one at a time.
– Gives user the flexibility to apply edit and preset settings to any preferable photos, collectively.
– Each photos can be individually re-edited after applying, without affecting other photos.

Cons
– May overheat or overload the device or iOS if too many photos selected. 
– Limit to maybe 20-30 photos at a time for editing.
– Valid to apply only if photos share the same environment like how outdoor and indoor photos create various brightness, HDR brilliance, hue etc.

Conclusion

I believe this feature will be a great leap for photographers who can simplify their edit process while spending more time capturing moments. Similiar features are available in Lightroom and other photographic apps, but I enjoy Photo app’s most, especially iOS 13 has some amazing new features to play with.

This is just an ideation to simply user’s photo editing experience. Though I do understand there are still some grey areas of this feature, I just want to circulate the idea and see how it can serve better or even improvise.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideation about this UX study case.

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About Author
Vimal is a self-taught designer who is passionate about understanding technology, business goals and psychologically translating business concepts into intutive / humanised user experiences while backpacking & exploring the world.