When editing in PicMonkey, you have access to Canvas Edits, Basic Edits, and Advanced Edits. Let’s walk through the Advanced Edits group and learn what they do and how to use them.
Clone
Clone lets you fix image mistakes or remove background distractions by copying one part of your image and applying it to another. Here we removed the chicken on the left side of the frame.
How to use Clone:
Adjust your Brush size and click Set source. This is the part of your image that will be copied onto the area you want to cover up.
Start clicking over the area to cover. Continue to set your source frequently.
The Hardness slider will make the edges of your cloned area softer and the Fade slider will fade the cloned area.
Click the Eraser button to erase something you cloned.
To apply the effect, click Apply.
For a more detailed explanation, see: Remove Objects From Pictures With Clone
Color Changer
Color changer allows you to modify individual colors in an image by adjusting Hue, Saturation, and/or Luminance (you can also find this tool under Effects).
Choose the color dot that represents the hue you'd like to change. For example, selecting the blue color dot will allow you to use the Hue slider to change anything blue in your photo.
Use the Saturation slider to intensify or remove color.
The Luminance slider lets you brighten or dull the selected color.
Read more: How to Use the Color Changer Effect
Dodge and Burn
Dodge and Burn are two separate effects, but they each mirror photo developing techniques from the darkroom. Each effect has a Low, Mid, and High setting that you paint onto light, medium, or dark parts of your image.
Dodge makes the light parts of your image lighter and brighter. It also works to lighten midtones, but we wouldn’t recommend using it on dark tones since it’ll make them look washed out.
Burn makes all the dark tones in your image darker and richer. It also darkens midtones, but we wouldn’t recommend using it on light tones since it’ll make them look muddy.
Levels
With the Levels tool, you can adjust the color, contrast, and tonal range of your image. It’s helpful for editing slightly overexposed or underexposed photos. The Levels tool uses a histogram (a graphic representation of the pixels in your image) to let you make these adjustments.
The pixels on the left side of the histogram are dark, the pixels in the middle are midtones, and the ones on the right are light. The dark slider on the bottom controls the dark tones, the gray slider in the middle controls the midtones, and the white slider controls the light tones.
The Channel drop-down lets you select the pixel colors you’re evaluating in the histogram. The channel is automatically set to RGB, but you can specify Red, Green, or Blue separately.
The Presets drop-down menu lets you create pure black and white either with a combination of all the channels (Auto Monochrome) or one color at a time (Auto Per Color). If you select Preserve Mid Tones under either of those options, it will keep your gray slider exactly in the middle of the histogram.
Lastly, the Outputs slider controls black and white tones.
When you’re happy with how your image looks, click Apply.
Curves
The Curves tool shows you the shadows, midtones, and highlights in your photo in grid form. The left side of the grid represents the shadow tones in your image, the center of the grid represents your midtones, and the right side represents the highlights.
Move the line in the grid around to make the shadows look deeper, or make the highlights look brighter. You can add anchor points to the line to keep it from jumping too drastically.
The channel is preset to show "RGB" colors (all red, green, and blue) but you can also choose "Red," "Blue," or "Green" to see how each of these colors shows individually in your picture.
The Presets drop-down is a selection of effects that you can highly customize to your liking by changing the anchor points on the curve. We used Daguerreotype Brady on this photo.
The Color override slider mutes the colors in your image, and the Fade slider fades the Curves effect as you’ve applied it.