You might have noticed that I typically edit my photos with an app called Snapseed, which is developed by Google and which I learned about from some other photographers I know. Today, I figured I'd show you how to use Snapseed and demonstrate the three tools I use most for editing my photos: Curves, Crop, and Healing!
Note that I'm demonstrating the Snapseed iOS app, which may work slightly differently than the Android app.
When you open Snapseed, just tap anywhere on the screen to open the photo browser. Then tap on the photo you want to edit (you will have to give the app access to some or all of your photos first).
Once you've selected a photo, it will appear along with three tabs at the bottom: Looks, Tools, and Export. The Looks tab will be highlighted and will show you different filters you can apply to your photos (although I don't typically use these).
If you tap on Tools, a pop-up menu appears with all kinds of tools you can use to edit your photos! Today, I'm going to show you how to use the three tools that I like to use: Curves, Crop, and Healing.
First, let's look at Curves. If you tap on Curves, you'll be brought to a contrast curve that allows you to basically set the intensity of the dark, medium, and light colors in your photos. Generally speaking, you want this curve to be slightly S-shaped—that means that the colors on the left (the dark colors) will be lowered a bit (so they will be darker), and the colors on the right (the light colors) will be raised a bit (so they will be lighter).
To edit the curve, tap anywhere to create a point on the curve. Make sure the point is selected (highlighted in blue), then drag it to where you want it. If you want to get rid of a point, flick it up off the screen. In this case, I created two points, one on the second vertical line and one on the fourth, and dragged the first point down slightly and the second point up slightly. This increases the contrast and helps your colors pop a little more! Make sure to tap the checkmark in the bottom-right to save the curve.
One tip: anywhere in the Snapseed interface, holding down on the photo itself will show the original unedited photo until you release your finger. This makes it easy to compare your edits with the original picture!
Once you've saved the curve, you can crop your image by tapping Tools, then tapping Crop. This is pretty self-explanatory—the Free mode will be selected, so you can drag the corners of the image to wherever you want them or zoom the image in and out to fit in the ratio you've already set. You can also choose different ratios that cannot be edited. Make sure to tap the checkmark to save your cropping (although in this case, I opted not to crop my photo).
Lastly, tap Tools, then tap Healing to use the Healing tool. This tool is super-neat—it uses AI to erase blemishes in your photo, and it usually does a pretty good job too! Zoom the photo in and out to change the size of your cursor (which appears in the center as you zoom in and out). Then, just tap or drag to highlight the area you want healed!
In this photo, you can see that I removed a blemish on the swing set. Make sure to tap the checkmark to save your changes.
If you're not looking at any of the tools and are just in the main menu, you can tap the icon at the top with the arrow and the stack of squares to see some commonly used options, like Undo, Redo, and Revert. But I'd like to show you what happens when you tap View Edits.
Here, you can see all the edits you've made to your photo, newest to oldest. If you tap on one that is not highlighted in blue, that edit will become selected, which means that only that edit and the ones before it (NOT the ones after it) will be shown in the photo. When you leave this screen, make sure that the newest edit is the one highlighted in blue so that all of your edits are kept on the photo!
If you tap on the highlighted edit, you can tap the trashcan on the left to delete it or the sliders on the right to change it. You can tap the arrow at the top-left to exit.
When you're done editing, tap the Export button at the bottom near the Looks and Tools buttons. Generally, I choose the Save a Copy option, which saves the edited photo as a new photo in my camera roll (unlike Save, it doesn't overwrite the old photo), but the new photo can still be reverted if it needs to be (unlike Export, where the new photo's edits are permanent).
And that's all! I hope this tutorial was helpful in learning how to use Snapseed and its useful tools. There's so many other powerful features in this app, but these are the ones that I find most useful for my personal editing style. Happy photographing!
