GLOBAL – Once you’ve taken your Nokia N9 out of your pocket, semi-swiped the homescreen – from the bottom, up – and activated the camera function you’re ready to take that photo, faster than anyone else. But what then? You can edit that photo right from your phone, making it perfect for sharing. Here’s how.

While the Nokia N9 isn’t the first phone to have edit functions for your photos, this is the first phone – ever – to feature something called non-destructive photo editing. What this means is, you can take a photo, crop it, resize it, change the contrast or any other function – all with the option of being to reverse these edits at any time.

Let’s show you how this works.

First you take a photo and find it in your gallery, followed by the options button on the bottom right. This brings up the edit function, as well as some other options, but it’s the edit we’re looking at today. Once edit is pressed a new menu will appear, showing you such options as Auto-fix all, Rotate left, Rotate right, Brightness and contrast, Crop, Red-eye reduction and Straighten to name just a few.

I’ve taken a photo of a band playing at a local event at the weekend and I’m now going to perform some edits to that photo. I’m starting with the red-eye reduction tool. However you’ll notice that I’ve got no red eyes in my photo, so instead I’m applying it to the red curtains in the background. I press the red-eye reduction option, then press the screen where the red is. It removes the red. As you’d expect.

Next I’ll change the brightness and contrast. I select that from the options and I’m shown two slider bars which are just calling to be adjusted. After some sliding to the left on one, and sliding to the right on the other, my image now reflects these changes.

The straighten tool is a great option. If you’ve taken that shot but find you’ve actually taken it slightly wonky, a grid is overlaid on the screen and you’re free to adjust the image, lining up any straight edges on the image to the ones on the grid. I’ve not applied this to my photo though, as it didn’t need it.

If you’re happy with your photo, which I am for the time being, exit the the edit function by pressing the X icon on the top of the tools menu. This will show you your image in it’s edited glory, along with some icons at the bottom. Pressing the undo button will reverse your last image edit and you can do this right the way back to the beginning if you wish. You can also press the redo button to apply the changes again.

If you press the back arrow, you’re confirming that you’re happy with the changes and you’re shown the new image as you’d find any image in the gallery and it’ll stay this way. Or until you wish to perform this next trick. This is where the non-destructive photo editing comes into action. Open the image – which you’ve edited previously – and find the edit button again in the menu. Now if you scroll down the bottom of that menu, you’ll see a preview image of the original image with a button underneath that reads: Reset to original. Unsurprisingly, if you press that button, you’re image is restored to its original state. Very clever stuff.

What do you think of non-destructive photo editing? Does this sound like something you’d use? Let us know what you think on the matter, in the comments below.

Featured Image: tsuihin – TimoStudios