Have you tried Snapseed for photo editing on your iPhone? This powerful editing tool has an array of advanced features combined with one-touch editing that is perfect for beginners. Created by Google, Snapseed is one of the most popular free photo editing apps available, and this handy guide will help you navigate Snapseed’s awesome features for professional-looking photos straight from your iPhone.
Snapseed is incredibly simple to use once you learn the basics. The first step, of course, is to download the Snapseed app and open it on your iPhone. From there, you simply upload your photos and start experimenting. Here’s how to upload your first photo to Snapseed:
Yes! Once you import your RAW photo file into your iPhone photo library, Snapseed can use all of its editing tools and filters on your photo. When you export your edited RAW file, it will be saved on your phone as a JPEG image.
The default setting in Snapseed saves your photo at 95% of the original quality. To save your photo at 100% quality, follow these instructions:
Now that we’ve got the basics down, let’s take a look at some of Snapseed’s most powerful editing tools.
The Tune Image feature on Snapseed is where you’ll find all the basic photo editing tools. Find these tools by tapping Tools at the bottom of the screen and then selecting Tune Image. Each tool is adjusted by sliding your finger across the corresponding slider. Here are the adjustments you can make within the Tune Image workspace:
Because most light sources have certain color temperatures, the camera doesn’t always accurately capture what your eye sees when taking a photo. This is why a photo of a snowy scene will often have a blue hue, and indoor photos will sometimes appear yellowish. Fortunately, this problem can be easily addressed by using the White Balance tool. Here’s how to use it to correct the colors in your photo:
Tonal Contrast is one of those really powerful editing tools that let you pinpoint areas to increase or decrease fine contrasts for a more polished look that will bring out the details in your photo. Three separate sliders allow you to add contrast to the highlights, shadows, or middle tones in your photo. Two additional sliders allow you to protect the details in either the highlights or shadows while making adjustments. The best way to use the Tonal Contrast tool is to experiment with it until you have the results you’re looking for. Here’s how to access it:
The Brush is a Snapseed photo editing tool that allows you to selectively adjust a photo’s saturation, exposure, light/dark areas, and temperature by using your finger as a brush. To selectively edit small sections of your photo, use your fingers to zoom in to the area you want to work on:
The Curves tool is a more powerful version of the Tune Image sliders, allowing you to make detailed adjustments to emphasize colors, tones, highlights, and shadows in an image. Unlike the Tune Image sliders, the Curves tool lets you make tonal adjustments to the light or dark areas of a photo without impacting the areas you want to remain unchanged. Here’s how to use it to make your photo pop:
The composition tools in Snapseed can be used to make adjustments to the fundamental layout of your shot. Cropping is the most common composition adjustment, but with Snapseed, you can also rotate your image, make subtle changes to the perspective, and even expand the view. Let’s take a look at some of these editing tools and how to use them.
You’ve likely used crop tools with other apps, and the Snapseed version works the same way. You can set a predetermined perimeter size for your photo or drag the perimeter edges to form a custom size. Here’s how to use Snapseed’s Crop feature:
The Rotate tool is useful for fixing skewed horizon lines or straightening your composition. Here’s how to use Rotate to fix your photos:
Snapseed’s Perspective tool allows you to adjust perspective issues and further straighten elements that couldn’t be corrected with the Rotate tool. Here’s how to do it:
The Expand feature allows you to expand the edges of your photo outward while filling in the frame with pixels from the surrounding scene. As you can imagine, this doesn’t work with every photo. The best candidates are photos with a strong pattern that won’t look odd after being expanded. Here’s how to use the Expand tool:
In addition to the comprehensive editing tools we’ve already mentioned, Snapseed also provides powerful retouching tools that can remove imperfections, smooth skin, and even change the head pose of portraits.
The Healing tool allows you to easily remove unwanted elements from photos — whether it’s a fly on the wall, a facial blemish, or a rogue electrical cord. Because the Healing tool replaces your unwanted object with pixels from the surrounding scene, it works best when objects are located in uncluttered spaces. Here’s how to use the Healing tool in Snapseed:
The Portrait tool is actually a whole suite of features you can use to retouch your selfies or portraits. When you open the Portrait tool, you will see several icons along the bottom of the screen. From right to left, they are Face Spotlight, Fine Tuning, and Portrait filters.
The Face Spotlight tool allows you to highlight your facial features using different tonal gradients. The Fine-Tuning tools consist of sliders that enable you to adjust the amount of Facial Spotlighting, Skin Smoothing, and Eye Clarity. Finally, use the filters to change the look of your portrait with the touch of a button.
Think of the Head Pose tool as the Perspective tool for portraits and selfies. It’s a great fix for making subtle adjustments to face shots. It works just like the Perspective tool, too. Simply tap Tools > Head Pose and then drag your finger across the face to change the direction your subject is facing.
The Fine-Tuning sliders can also be used within the Head Pose tool to adjust Pupil Size, Smile, and Focal Length.
Finally, let’s take a look at some of the more dramatic tools that will give your photos a bit of artistic flair.
Double Exposure allows you to combine two shots into one. The controls within the Snapseed Double Exposure toolbox allow you to select a filter and adjust the opacity of that filter. To get the results you’re after, you may need to play around with combinations of different photos. Here’s how to use the Double Exposure tool:
One of the ways that portrait photographers draw attention to their subject is by using a shallow depth of field to blur the background. iPhone photographers can accomplish this with Portrait mode when taking a photo, but if you already have a photo that you’d like to blur, you can easily do it with Snapseed’s Lens Blur tool. Here’s how to use it:
Once you have finished all of the creative adjustments you want using Snapseed, the finishing touch is to add a frame to your photo.
After all of your experimenting, adjusting, and creating, it’s time to save your photos so you can share them with your friends and family. Here’s how to save all of your edited masterpieces to your phone:
As you’ve probably learned through experimenting with the available editing tools in Snapseed, it is one of the most powerful, easiest to use editing apps available today. And the best part? Snapseed is 100% free to use. So take advantage of the Snapseed photo editing tools, and you’ll see how much they can do for your photos.