Using Snapseed

My go-to post-production app in the iPhone darkroom is Snapseed. Almost anything I might want to do from tweaking, retouching, modifying colors, adding effects, to converting to black and white, and adding borders can be easily and powerfully done in Snapseed. Wherever in the world you find me, if I’m on my iPhone, you’ll likely find me working in Snapseed.

Setting the Resolution

The first thing to do when you open the Snapseed app is to set the default resolution for saving your work. To do this, with an image open in Snapseed, tap the three dots icon at the upper right and choose Settings. In the Export & Share Options area, tap Image Sizing, then tap Do not resize.

By the way, if you have a small image that you want to make larger, you can use this option to “blow it up,” for example, by setting the long edge of the image to 4,000px.

Going back to the Export & Share Options area, tap Format And Quality to make sure that JPG 100% is selected.

Saving as a Copy

It may seem odd to explain the end before the beginning, but let’s go over how to save an image in Snapseed as a copy.

Jumping ahead, to save an image from Snapseed, with the image open, tap Export.

From the Export menu, choose Save a copy to make sure that you do not overwrite the previous version.

Looks

When you open an image in Snapseed, you can choose either Looks or Tools. Looks are—by another word—presets. If a Look works for you, by tapping the Look a number of editing steps will be performed at once. I am quite fond of the black and white options under the Look menu. In particular, the Fine Art black and white Look is one of my favorites.

Tools

For more granular control, and for many more options, choose Tools rather than Looks. You’ll discover a plethora of Tools! Some of my favorites can be used to crop and change the perspective of an image. I am also partial to the HDR Scape, Glamour Glow, Retrolux, and Grunge Tools.

To be entirely consistent with the iPhone workflow explained on page 305, apply one Tool, and then save a copy back to the Photos app. In practice, I seldom am quite so disciplined—but keep in mind that if you want to have control over the impact of an individual Tool, you do need to save a copy with it.

Paris Street—It’s always fun to photograph Paris with the idea of creating an antique look, and it is easy to do this using the iPhone and the iPhone darkroom.

iPhone 5, back camera, 4.1mm at 1/653 of a second at f/2.4 and ISO 50, hand held; processed in Plastic Bullet, Mextures, Snapseed, and ImageBlender.

River Rock—I spent several days photographing the Columbia River gorge. Crossing the river on the Bridge of the Gods from Cascade Locks, Oregon to North Bonneville, Washington, I wandered down to the banks of the mighty Columbia River. I made a number of images with my DSLR on a tripod, but ended up liking this impressionistic iPhone shot best of all.

iPhone 6s, back camera, 4.2mm at 1/212 of a second at f/2.2 and ISO 25, hand held; processed in Snapseed.

Each of the Tools can be configured with many individual settings using iPhone touch controls.

Black & White Tool

The Black & White Tool is the most powerful and flexible way to do monochromatic conversions within Snapseed. To access this, in the Tools area tap the Black & White icon. With Black & White open, usually the first step is to choose a preset from the possibilities at the bottom of the screen.

With a preset selected, there are two icons for tweaking the effect:

• The circle icon, which represents color filters such as the ones you might have put on a black and white film camera. These effects may remind you of the presets when using Photoshop Black & White adjustment layers, starting on page 144.
• The slider icon in the middle bottom opens the controls that you can use to adjust Brightness, Contrast, and Grain. To tweak the selected control, run your finger to the left or right at the top of the image window. Incidentally, this slider configuration is the primary way to modify the settings of most of the Tools in Snapseed.

When you are happy with the changes that you have made to your image tap the check mark.

Remember, your changes are not saved until you export the image. Exporting as a copy is highly recommended (see page 306).

There are more than 50 different Tools available in Snapseed and many of them are useful and powerful, and some are just plain fun. The best way to discover what each Tool does is trial and error.