Hellobee

My second most used photo editing app on my iPhone is Snapseed. It has a ton of features like a huge selection of filters, the ability to center focus and add tilt shift (blur the background), options to add textures, frames, and even crop your photo. However, I personally only use Snapseed for small but significant tweaks to my image – like brightening up a specific area of my photo, adjusting the white balance, and adding a bit of ambiance. Below are two examples of how I edit my pictures in Snapseed. Both edits were finished in under two minutes. As you might notice, the changes are not huge but greatly improve my images

Edit #1:

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1. Open Snapseed and press the camera button on the top left corner to upload an image from your camera roll. (You can take a photo directly from the app but I prefer to use the iPhone camera and then pull each image into the app.)

2. The first thing I usually determine is whether I want to crop my images. I like my photos clean and simple so I’m going to crop out the light switch on the left and the top part of my sofa that’s showing on the bottom. Tap the “CROP” module and then use your fingers to crop or re-size your picture.

3. In Snapseed, you can always preview what your image looks like before and after a specific edit by tapping the button on the top right of the screen. If you want to cancel an edit, you tap the bottom left arrow to go back. Or, if you’re satisfied with your changes, tap the bottom right arrow to apply and move on.

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4. Before doing any of my own tweaks, I always try the “Automatic” editing option. Usually Snapseed does a pretty good job of figuring out what needs to be done.

5. Unfortunately, in this case, the automatic fix made my image too bright so I go back to the menu to start my own editing.

6. The bulk of my editing in Snapseed is usually done in “TUNE IMAGE” where you can increase/decrease brightness, ambiance, contrast, saturation, and white balance.

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7. It may take a few moments to figure out how to use the app but once you get the hang of it, it’s actually very simple to navigate. When you’re in a module, simply use your finger to scroll right (to increase) or left (to decrease) directly on the phone screen. In the “TUNE IMAGE” module, I scrolled right until I reached the brightness I wanted at +15.

8. Scroll up and down to navigate between different editing options like contrast, saturation, ambiance, etc.

9. This image looks a bit too yellow to me so I scroll down to “WHITE BALANCE” and then scroll left to cool down the tone. I’m happy at -3 because it took away some of that yellow without making my picture too blue.

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10. I’m pretty satisfied at this point but I think my picture can use a bit of sharpening. So, I go to “DETAILS” to fine tune the clarity. You can press the magnifying glass to zoom in and see the difference as you’re increasing/decreasing the sharpness. The subject looks a bit blurry at +0 and too grainy at +100, so I scroll right until I’m happy with the results (at +20). And voila, we’re done! Once you’re back at the main menu, tap the top right arrow to save to the photo library.

Before

After

Edit #2:

For this example, I’m going to assume you know how to navigate the app and just give you a quick rundown on my editing process.

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1. Upload photo to Snapseed. I try the AUTOMATIC edit and I’m happy with the results so I SAVE and move on.

2. My image is too dark and dull so I go to TUNE IMAGE and Brighten +30, add Ambiance +60 (this adds a bit of drama) and decrease my White Balance -3 (to make my image cooler.)

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3. I’m a little bothered that the horizon is a bit crooked to the right. So I go to the STRAIGHTEN module and scroll down on my screen until my horizon is straight at – 1.39 degrees.

4. Lastly, I want my subject to stand out but don’t want to brighten up the whole image because I want the clouds to remain dark. So, I go to the SELECTIVE ADJUST module, press the plus sign (+), and then tap the area on my image that I want to selectively edit. I scroll right and stop at +50 when my subject pops out without being too bright.

Tip: You can make the area you want to selectively adjust bigger or smaller by using your fingers to pinch in (smaller) or out (bigger.)

5. Save image to photo library and we are done!

Before

After

Happy editing!