If someone is posing against a wall but you need the image to be taller, Snapseed tries to expand the image and it works quite well. This is useful and works well when you have a somewhat even background, such as the sky, or a wall. Each spot is denoted by a circle and you can use a finger to swipe up and down to change the look of that patch.Īnother feature worth talking about is the Expand feature which works if you want to extend a small photo in a specific direction. Adding spots is as simple as tapping the + button at the bottom of the screen, then using two fingers to draw a region. This is useful if you see any discoloration or oversaturation patches.Īnother similar tool is called Selective that lets you choose multiple spots on the photo, that you can adjust the saturation, brightness, contrast and structure for. For more stubborn issues, the Brush tool along with the Healing tool can be used to make a few colour corrections to small areas of the photo. The Healing feature lets you swipe over the area to make a quick fix. It could be smudge, or a blemish you would like to get rid of. Snapseed lets you make some edits to fix issues in your photo. If you’re designing a wallpaper for your smartphone, then you can choose one that fits it better. Most Instagram photos tend to be a square (1:1 aspect ratio), so Snapseed lets you choose it. The Crop tool comes handy in fitting an existing image into a popular format. Move the image slowly till you get it right, then tap the tick mark to accept changes. This could be the horizon or the edge of a table, or the floor. Look for a pattern in your photo to align the guides with. Snapseed adds guides to the screen that make it easy to align your photos accurately. They’re usually slanting to one side, and that’s a problem easily fixed by the Rotate tool. Practically all our photos are slightly off-balance. We’re merely trying to add some detail where it’s lacking. We have all seen over-saturated, over-enhanced images on social media. Don’t overdo though, or it can look crass. The Sharpening tool adds some detail and definition to the edges of objects, making them appear just that little better. The ‘Detail’ tab is the next feature in our list. A mild yellowish tinge can make all the difference. The Warmth tool can be used to make images look more natural, especially those clicked on cloudy days with overemphasized blues and greys.
Making major adjustments to the saturation can also affect the contrast of the photo too, so it’s a balancing game. Photos clicked outdoors might need a tad more saturation with increased contrast, while indoor photos with low lighting may need some lightening. You will need to gauge what looks right for the photo you’ve clicked. Don’t go overboard a change of anywhere between 1 to 15% is more than sufficient usually. The Saturation is the next thing to adjust. Most smartphones cameras don’t give you the desired contrast, so some brightness and contrast tweaks in combination should help fix most imbalances. The Curves tool can also be used to adjust the brightness and contrast using a visual guide. Swiping sideways adjusts the intensity of the effect. These can be accessed by holding down the screen and swiping vertically.
It’s exhaustive and you should take some time later to mess around with them.įor most basic changes, it’s recommended using the ‘Tune Image’ feature first, to access controls ranging from Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Warmth and more. Tapping it brings up a variety of tools, ranging from detail, to cropping, to brushes, and blur and more. That is done through the second tab, Tools. When you do however, you’ll be surprised by the quality of the results.
#Snapseed editing tips manual#
Snapseed’s uniqueness is not its collection of effects, but the manual controls and that requires some practice to get right.
You simply tap one and you get the results you want. The Looks button has some pre-sets like the ones you might see on Instagram and other apps. The interface is pretty self-explanatory. Simply tap on the screen or the Open button. The first thing we need to do is open the photo. Let’s see look how easy and quickly you can get some great results using Snapseed. You could also use this tool to even edit photos you wirelessly transfer from a DSLR to your phone. It’s free, void of ads and it’s quite easy to use. It’s available for Android, even iPhones and iPads.
Snapseed does a lot of things better than the usual photo editing apps we are used to. It’s called Snapseed and it’s owned a brand you may have already heard of, Google. This requires some photo editing, and we can’t be running to our laptops and PCs to edit every single photo. We may use the best cameras and smartphones but if you are going to be posting photos to social media, you may want them bold, and colourful.