Support

Which photos work best?

Portrait-mode photos. When your iPhone takes one, it also saves how far away every part of the picture is, and Rake Plus uses that depth for every tool: to light the scene the way a lamp in the room would have, to thicken fog with distance, to take haze out by distance and to blur by distance. In the Photos app, those are the photos that show the ƒ depth control when you tap Edit. Portrait selfies taken with the front camera carry depth too.

Any other photo works as well: choose Any photo, and Rake Plus estimates its depth on your device. An estimate is not a measurement, so shadows, fog and blur are less exact. The screen tells you when depth was estimated. Landscapes, which are rarely shot in Portrait mode, are what Clear and Air are often used on, and they do well with an estimate.

What are the four tools, and what order do they go in?

Clear takes haze out, Relight adds your lights, Air adds fog and shafts of light, and Lens moves the focus. They are applied in that order: haze out first, then light, then air, then the lens the whole scene is seen through. The Rake Plus Pro tools take their places in the same order: Window beside Relight, Weather beside Air, and Grade just before Lens. Each has its own switch at the top of its controls, and a dot on its tab while it is on, so you can see what is stacked on the photo from any tab. Reset puts a tool back where it started, and Undo and Redo, the curved arrows at the top, step back through any change in any tool.

What is Rake Plus Pro?

One optional purchase that adds four more tools, Live Photo merges, borders and Recipes. Window lays sun through blinds, panes or leaves across your subject, bending over their shape. Weather puts rain or snow into the scene, hidden behind your subject. Grade colours your subject and the distance apart. Motion makes a short clip from the photo: a push-in, a sway, or a Vertigo zoom. Live Photos merges the three seconds of a Live Photo into one picture. Borders frame a saved or shared photo in white or black, with the camera's settings underneath. Recipes save an edit, every tool as you set it, to put on other photos in one tap. Clear, Relight, Air and Lens are free and stay free.

It is a one-time purchase, not a subscription, and the price is shown in the app before you buy.

Can I try the Pro tools before buying?

Yes. Every Pro tool works on your own photos in the app, a Motion clip can be previewed, and a Live Photo can be merged and looked at. Buying is only needed to save or share a photo with a Pro tool or a border on, a Motion clip or a Live Photo merge, and for Recipes. A border is drawn only on the saved or shared picture, so it does not show in the editor. If you would rather share without them, the unlock screen offers Share Without Pro Tools, which leaves the border off too.

I bought Rake Plus Pro. How do I get it on my other iPhone or iPad?

Sign in with the same Apple Account, open any Pro tool, tap Unlock, and choose Restore Purchase. It usually arrives by itself without that. Rake Plus Pro works with Family Sharing, so people in your family group have it too.

Why does the Portrait picker show only some of my photos?

It is filtered to photos that carry depth, because those are the ones it can use as they are. If a photo you expected is missing, it was not taken in Portrait mode, or it lost its depth on the way to this device. Every photo appears under Any photo.

I sent a Portrait photo from another device, and it says it had no depth map.

The depth was stripped on the way. AirDrop set to Most Compatible converts a photo to a plain JPEG and leaves the depth behind. Before sending, tap Options at the top of the share sheet and set Format to Current; the photo then arrives with its depth.

What do the three lights do?

K, the key, is the main light: it sets the direction of the light and makes the shadows. F, the fill, is softer and usually on the other side, and lifts the shadows the key made without adding its own. R, the rim, sits behind your subject and draws a bright edge along hair and shoulders, which separates them from the background.

Tap a circle, or a name under Lights, to choose a light. Drag on the photo to move it, and pinch to pull it toward you or push it back behind your subject.

The shadows fall in odd places.

The light is only as right as the depth under it. A shadow where there should be none, or a face lit through the hair, usually means the depth is off in that spot, and that is most common with an estimate. Using a Portrait photo of the same scene fixes it more often than moving the light does. A smaller light makes the shadow edge crisper and easier to judge; a larger one hides small errors.

Why does the rim light brighten the wall behind my subject?

Because the wall is in front of it. A rim light sits just behind your subject, and anything further back — a wall, a door — faces it and catches its light, exactly as it would in a real room. Lower its Power, or pull it forward with Depth until it sits level with your subject, to keep the edge light and lose the wall.

What does Original do?

It sets how much of the photo's own light is kept. At 0% only the light you placed falls on the photo, and everything it does not reach goes dark. At 100% your lights add to the photo as it was shot. Around 30% is a good place to start.

Clear changed a photo that had no haze.

Clear measures haze from the darkest parts of the picture at each distance, and a bright wall or a pale sky can read as a little haze. Lower Strength, or turn Clear off for that photo. If the far distance or the sky turns grainy on a very hazy photo, raise Protect.

I turned on Shafts of light and I see a glow, not beams.

Beams need something for the light to fall through: trees, a window, a doorway. Drag the sun behind and above the gap — it can sit past the edge of the photo — and pinch to push it further back. Out in the open, or in a room with nothing between the sun and the camera, the fog glows toward the sun instead, which is what real fog does. Beam sets how much brighter the fog looks toward the sun.

Anything past the edge of the photo is treated as open air, because the photo cannot show what is there. A sun above a room with a ceiling will light it as if the ceiling were not there; move the sun into the picture's own gaps instead.

Lens left my subject's edge soft, or cut into their hair.

The blur follows the depth, and the depth is coarser than a strand of hair. On Portrait photos of people, Rake Plus uses the outline your iPhone saved with the photo, which follows the hair closely. On other photos — pets, objects, Any photo — the edge is only as fine as the depth. Raise In focus to widen the sharp zone, or tap to focus a little in front of the subject.

Window light only falls on my subject, not the background.

That is what a real window does: it is a metre or two away and lights your subject and what is just behind them, not the far distance. Tap your subject first, so the window is placed for them; then From and Height set where the sun comes from, and Opening makes the window bigger.

I added rain, and there is hardly any in front of my subject.

Rain fills the air between you and what you photographed, so a face a metre from a wall has little rain in front of it, and a street or a landscape has a lot. Raise Amount, or pick a photo with more distance behind your subject.

Motion shows a soft patch beside my subject.

When the camera moves, a little of the background your subject was hiding comes into view. The camera never saw it, so Rake Plus fills it by stretching the background around it, rather than inventing something. Gentle amounts keep that patch small. Tap your subject first, so they are the part that stays put.

How do I save the result?

Tap the share button and choose Save to Photos. The photo is added at full resolution as an edit of the original, so Edit › Revert in Photos brings the original back, depth and all. The first time, iOS asks whether Rake Plus may add photos to your library; that permission is add-only, so it still cannot see the rest of your library. Share… sends the photo to Messages, Mail or any other app, or saves a plain copy with Save Image.

To frame it, choose Border in the share button's menu: white or black, with the camera, lens, focal length, aperture, shutter and ISO written underneath. The border is part of Rake Plus Pro.

For a Motion clip, tap Share Video; the clip is made at full size and the same sheet offers Save Video.

Hold Compare at any time to see the photo as it was shot.

How do I change an edit I saved?

Open that photo in the Photos app, tap Edit, then the ⋯ menu and Rake Plus. It opens with every tool where you left it; tap Done to save the change. Edit › Revert brings back the original.

Can I use Rake Plus inside Photos?

Yes, on any photo: Edit, then the ⋯ menu and Rake Plus. Clear, Relight, Air, Lens and, with the unlock, Window, Weather and Grade are there, and on a Live Photo, Merge Its Frames. Motion and Recipes stay in the app, and Rake Plus Pro is bought in the app.

How do I merge a Live Photo?

Choose Merge a Live Photo on the start screen and pick one. Then choose Noise, which averages every frame for smooth water and less grain; Crowd, which keeps what the frames agree on, so someone who walked through is gone; or Trails, which keeps every place a light went, brightest or darkest. The frames are lined up first, so a hand that moved doesn't blur the result. The merge is cut to what every frame covers and made at the size of the movie, which is smaller than the still.

Saving it adds a new photo with the Live Photo's date, camera and place, and leaves the Live Photo as it was. To merge without leaving Photos, open the Live Photo, tap Edit, then the ⋯ menu, Extensions, Rake Plus, and choose Merge Its Frames; there Revert brings the Live Photo back. Saving a merge is part of Rake Plus Pro.

What are Recipes?

Tap the book at the top and Save This Edit as a Recipe to keep it, every tool as you set it, under a name. Put a recipe on another photo in one tap; Flash is metered again for that photo. Recipes are part of Rake Plus Pro.

Where did the guide go?

How Rake Plus works opens by itself the first time you open a photo. After that it is behind the ? button beside the photo, and the How Rake Plus works link on the start screen.

I had Rake. What happened to it?

Rake is now Rake Plus: the same app, updated, with three new free tools beside Relight. Relight still has its looks, now five with Flash, and its three lights, and it is still free. Rake Plus Pro is optional; nothing you had before is behind it.

Do I need to be online, or sign up for anything?

No. Everything, including estimating depth for a photo that has none, happens on your device, with no connection. There are no accounts, no credits and no subscription. Buying or restoring Rake Plus Pro needs a connection to the App Store, as any purchase does.

What does Rake Plus know about me?

Nothing. The only network it uses is Apple's App Store, for the optional purchase, and Apple tells it only whether Rake Plus Pro was bought. It sees only the photo you pick, keeps it in memory while you work on it, and never uploads it. The details are in the privacy policy.

Is there an iPad, Mac or Apple Vision Pro version?

Rake Plus runs on iPhone and iPad. It is not offered on Mac or Apple Vision Pro.

I found a bug, or have an idea — what now?

Email the address below with as much detail as you can: what you were doing, what you expected, and what happened instead. Say whether it was a Portrait photo or Any photo, and which tools and settings you were using. Screenshots help a lot, and so does the photo itself if you are comfortable sharing it.