The photo editor: edits that stay in the vault

Why edit inside the vault

To straighten a private photo in the Photos app, you first have to put it back into Photos. Then the edited copy sits in your camera roll, and maybe in iCloud Photos, and you have to remember to remove it again. With iCloud Photos on, your photos and videos are stored in iCloud so that you can reach them on all your devices. Editing inside the vault skips that round trip.

The photo editor is free, video trimming is part of Sealed Pro, and both work without anything leaving the vault.

What it can do

The photo editor rotates and flips a photo and crops it to its original shape, a square, 4:3, 3:4, 16:9 or 9:16.

The photo editor’s Adjust tool has three sliders: Brightness, Contrast and Saturation.

Each slider snaps back to its middle when you get close, so returning to “no change” is easy.

How to use it

1. Open a photo in the vault.
2. Tap Edit. In the photo viewer, the Edit button opens the photo editor.
3. Use Crop to turn, flip and frame it, or Adjust for the sliders.
4. Tap Save Copy. The editor’s button is Save Copy, and after saving it says your original photo is unchanged.

Your original stays as it was

Saving an edit in the photo editor seals the result as a new item, so the original photo stays as it was.

That means you can try a tight crop for a profile picture and still keep the full frame. If you don’t need the original any more, delete it: it waits in the vault’s bin for a while. 30 days

Quality of the saved copy

The photo editor saves its copy as a JPEG at the photo’s full resolution. So a crop from a large photo stays sharp.

The copy is a new photo in your vault, sealed the same way as everything else. Each file gets its own random 256-bit key, and that key is sealed with your vault key.

On the free plan, the copy counts as one more photo toward the limit. The free plan holds up to 100 photos.

What it doesn’t include

The editor covers the everyday fixes. It has no filters, no blur or paint tools, and no removal of objects. If you need to cover part of a photo before you share it, the site’s blur tool runs in your browser and keeps nothing.

Before you share any photo, think about what its file carries besides the picture. The metadata guide explains what a photo can reveal.

Videos

The photo editor is free, video trimming is part of Sealed Pro, and both work without anything leaving the vault. Trimming makes a new copy too, so the full clip stays.

Where Sealed helps, and where it doesn’t

It helps you fix a private photo without it ever leaving the vault, and without touching the original. Saving an edit in the photo editor seals the result as a new item, so the original photo stays as it was.

It doesn’t do these things:

• Blur, paint or retouch. It offers crop, rotate, flip and three sliders. The photo editor’s Adjust tool has three sliders: Brightness, Contrast and Saturation.
• Edit in place. Every save is a new copy. The editor’s button is Save Copy, and after saving it says your original photo is unchanged.
• Trim videos on the free plan. The photo editor is free, video trimming is part of Sealed Pro, and both work without anything leaving the vault.