Image Editor overview

  • Article

With the Image Editor, Microsoft Expression Media offers powerful image-editing and calibration tools that can enhance the color, sharpness, and brightness of your images.

The features of the Image Editor apply only to image file formats (such as .jpg or .tif) and will not work with movies or vector graphics. You can start the Image Editor by clicking the toolbar icon, or, on the Window menu, by clicking Image Editor.

To correctly preview the filter effects of the Image Editor, Expression Media automatically switches to Media view when a filter is selected.

Note   You must install QuickTime in order to use the Image Editor.

To edit images

  1. Choose a filter from the Image Editor panel by clicking the filter name in this list.

  2. Make your edits in the Filter dialog box, and then click OK.

  3. Apply as many filters to the image as you want. To discard all changes and reload the original image, click the Revert button. To remove the effect of the last filter applied, click the Undo button.

  4. Image modifications performed by any of the tools described in this section are not saved until you click the Save button in the Image Editor panel. Some effects display real-time results of the filter in Media view so that you can see how the effect appears on a larger view of the image before you accept the changes. This feature is named Preview, and you can use it by selecting the Preview option when it is available. You can also move the area being shown in the Preview window by dragging the image.

  5. To overwrite the existing file, click Save. When you click the Save button, a dialog box appears that lets you define compression and file-type settings. This dialog box also gives you the option of storing a backup copy of the original file in a folder of your choice, or in the Version Control folder.

Saving image files removes embedded digital photo annotations (EXIF) that might have existed in the original file, unless you selected the option Preserve EXIFmetadata in the Save dialog box. IPTC and XMP metadata cannot be preserved. After you save image files, you must synchronize their annotations by clicking the Action menu, and then clicking the Sync Annotations command. If you do not synchronize them, then the saved file will not contain the annotations in the original file.