Snapseed is a full-featured professional photo editor developed by Google.
This free photo editing application has a large number of built-in filters that you can also edit. It also has all the classic tools like cropping, straightening, frames, text, vignettes, etc.
Snapseed has a precision masking tool that allows you to edit the depth of field (photographers often use this feature to make the background blurry and further focus the foreground). There is also the Selective Correction tool. It allows you to select a specific area of the photo and adjust the saturation, contrast, and brightness of that individual point.
Snapseed keeps a history of your photo editing, you can go into the history at any time and correct any changes.
A photo editing app with dozens of filters, the ability to undo any action at any time, and an ultra-convenient interface. This is the Snapseed photo editor on iPhone and Android. For all that, Snapseed is a completely free app. In this review, we will talk about all the advantages and pros of the photo application, not forgetting to mention its disadvantages.
A brief history of the photo app
The history of the Snapseed app started on the iPad a few years ago. Back then it was a relatively small project of an indie developer. However, Snapseed’s capabilities so impressed the Apple review team that the photo editor was named “App of the Year” in 2011.
The Snapseed app had a fairly powerful photo and selfie processing toolkit, accessible through a familiar “push-button” interface. Filters could be applied using handy gestures, perfectly adapted to the iPad’s touch screen. To change the filter, you just need to swipe forward, and you can change the strength of the effect with a horizontal swipe on the photo. Logical, convenient and fast.
Then Google got its hands on the Snapseed photo editor for iOS, which many took as the beginning of the end of the application. The “corporation of goodness” has a rather sad history with purchased products, which often ended their way as separate services after Google bought them. However, the Snapseed app was an exception – it was moved to Android, and the iPhone and iPad versions continue to receive regular updates. The app’s latest update to the App Store came out at the end of March.
In 2015, the photo editor Snapseed received a radical redesign, after which Google systematically “improved” the application, recently implementing more effective support for large iPad Pro tablets.
Overview of the Snapseed photo editor functionality on iOS and Android
The modern app is significantly different from the original Snapseed. If previously the effects were located on the sidebar in the form of book-like icons, now the photo editor has entered the world of “material design” by Google, which is unlikely to leave in the near future.
The interface of the application for applying filters and working with tools also lacks textures, although it kept enough of the findings from the original design, so that users “with experience” will feel in a familiar environment, and newcomers can quickly figure out what and where to click to initiate the desired action.
The updated photo editor Snapseed got a lot of new filters, including tonal contrast, double exposure, an advanced blur mode like on expensive DSLRs, spotlight glitter, glamorous glow and so on. The app now has a grunge filter that will appeal to anyone who likes to add texture to their photos. To be precise, this filter is back in Snapseed after a long absence.
However, the most important and handy tool of this photo editor on Android and iOS is the story. Now absolutely all your manipulations with the photo, whether it’s applying a filter, changing the contrast, adjusting the white balance or adjusting the brightness curves, are remembered and always available. You can go back to any action at any time and change its parameters, or simply delete it completely.
Such anti-destructive photo editing when absolutely any action can be undone at any stage of work is a rarity not only in applications but also in desktop photo editors. Especially free ones. There is one complaint to the history in Snapseed – the sequence of actions for further use, unfortunately, can not be saved. You can copy only the current story and apply it to the next photo.