As Lightroom is to Photoshop, Google Photos is to Snapseed:
- The former manages thousands of photos & offers a comparatively lightweight editor, while the latter provides maximum power.
- Edits in the former are written in place* non-destructively, while images handed off to the latter result in newly generated copies.
On iOS & Android you can use Snapseed to edit any image in Photos by simply opening the image in Photos, tapping the overflow menu (upper right corner), and choosing “Edit in Snapseed.” This means that applying deep editing functionality requires just one additional tap relative to using the lightweight (but deceptively powerful) editor in Photos.
We think this integration works well, but of course there are always ideas on how it could be improved. Now that Photos & Snapseed have been available for a bit, how are you finding the integration? Any particular likes/dislikes/requests?
Thanks,
J.
*This currently works on iOS & Web; Photos on Android writes edited pixels as new files.
Photos-integration? No. I don’t use photos on iPhone or iPad. But I want Snapseed for desktop back!
We love that Snapseed and Photos are integrated.
– One thing we’ve noticed is that after opening from Photos to Snapseed and editing in Snapseed, it’s not clear whether to Save or Export in order to view the photos with edits back in Photos. (We realize after testing that both work, but would like a clearer UI.)
– Also, when you click the Save button in Snapseed and choose Save, you get this message: “Allow Snapseed to modify this photo?” It’s not clear whether this message is related to Photos or not. Perhaps the message should be something like: “Allow Snapseed to modify this photo in Google Photos.”
– And, it would be nice if there were a button in Snapseed to jump back to Photos.
Best,
Jan
Thanks, Jan. We don’t control the “Allow Snapseed…” dialog, which comes from iOS. As for exporting vs. saving, I didn’t want to add an option, but Lightroom & some other key apps don’t properly handle non-destructive edits made in iOS 8, so we added a way to generate a flat JPEG (no edits attached).
Would also like Snapseed to work with Apple photos. Also does google photos allow me to change the date
By “work with Apple Photos,” do you mean that you’d like to jump from Apple’s app to Snapseed via the iOS 8 extension mechanism (choose “Edit,” then tap the three-dot icon, then “Snapseed”)?
Google Photos does not yet offer a way to edit dates. Great request.
Yes!! I would like Snapseed on IOS & OS X. If possible. I am an Aperture user and their are no good alternatives for editing if you are generally happy with the database.
How do you add Snapseed to the Editing template in Photos Ap on the iPad. When I go to those three dots, it gives me three editing apps, but not Snapseed.
You can’t jump to it from within Apple Photos. (Is that the scenario you’re asking about?) Unfortunately apps are memory-constrained via that path, and that would cause Snapseed to have to reduce the resolution at which it works/saves in that flow.
Yes!! I really want that. Because sometimes you have a batch of photos that are somewhat similar and you’ve absolutely found (in Photos) the one you want to edit. So I’d like to then “open in Snapseed”. Otherwise I have to open Snapseed and say to myself ‘ok now which one is it again?’
John
A few months back I had commented that you should go back to Adobe to do something of that made a difference. I was wrong. Photos is one of the biggest things to come out of Google in a long time for ordinary people (who are not into self driving cars, HUD glasses, going to Mars and the like). Great job! In the next couple of years, if they would make it unlimited for all photos regardless of size and video larger than HD it would be a dramatic game changer.
I think it’s great that the integration even exists.
That said, the fact that the “non-destructive” edits are saved on the client rather than server means that practically they are destructive. Unless you save copies, which leads to duplicates which I expect will be a big headache if I do a lot of Snapseed editing.
Also, the export vs save is confusing. “Save” is effectively an export because it updates the local copy, which then gets uploaded as a new copy, creating the duplicate problem.
Overall, the edit history and multiple copies stuff needs to be seamless, like it is with the built-in simpler editor.
I appreciate the power and simplicity of the simple editor, but it would be great to have the choice to use the more extensive editing tools Snapseed provides natively in the application.
I agree that the non-destructive tag is a misnomer. If I edit a photo on my iPhone with Snapseed and save it in Google Photos, those edits are not available to me on my iPad. The edited photo on the iPad is just a flat jpg.
Also, I use a Chromebook, it would be nice to have the same editing tools available on it.
Am I right thinking that the edit extension for Snapseed is only available from the Google Photos app and not from the standard iOS Photos app? Many thanks.
That’s correct. Unfortunately when you launch an app via iOS Photos, the app gets much less memory to use, and that limits the resolution at which Snapseed can edit in that mode.
My frustration is similar to Josh’s. I really liked the old Google+ photo editor which had advanced features integrated right into the app so there was no additional importing or exporting.
My workflow used to be: upload good photos to Google+ (via desktop computer), edit, publish.
Now it’s: upload to Google+ (via desktop), open in Google Photos (on iPad), open in Snapseed, edit, then get confused about where the photo is actually saved now and how to get it updated in Google Photos.
Been looking into other software options but nothing is as convenient as having a capable editor built right into the cloud storage (like Google+).
My issues with the Google Photos editor:
– No selective editing (was very useful for brightening shadowed faces)
– No way to set aspect ratio when cropping.
– Adjustments are overly simplified (it was nice to be able to adjust shadows, contrast, and sharpness independently).
I realize I am probably not the target audience for Google Photos though.
Sorry for the comment on an old post, but I’ve been trying to get a mobile photography workflow going with Google Photos on iOS and Snapseed. It seems like if I edit before opening up Photos, then all of the edited files upload correctly.
If I upload the files first and *then* open up in Snapseed, then the iOS native photos app shows that the photo was edited but Google Photos thinks it’s a new photo and uploads a duplicate. I think this is probably a bug, but is there anything I should be doing differently to avoid this annoying behavior?
Thanks jnack!
Hey Ryan,
This behavior is, to the best of my knowledge, unavoidable at the moment. Editing within Google Photos itself is non-destructive (we preserve the original pixels + the list of edits you apply), but once you edit a photo in an external app (even one made by Google), the resulting image is treated as a separate entity.
Interesting. Thanks for the quick reply!
I truly LOVE Snapseed, but importing images into PHOTOS for backup is not working.
When I attempt to copy my images from my iPad into the PHOTO app on my iMac, many are copied just fine, but . . . I am alerted in a long dialogue, that it cannot copy 122 images that all appear to be named Snapseed.jpg. It tells me that those are NOT being copied, but It is impossible to determine which images are NOT getting backed up– I just know that many are not copied.
Why are so many images being named with the same title?
As a result, some of my work is backed up, and some are not, and I cannot know which are not.
This is crazy!!
I don’t have the “edit in Snapseed” option in iOS stock app. Both in iOS9 and 10. In other third party cam/photo apps I have an option to “export to Snapseed”. Am I missing anything?
Latest app version. No restrictions/etc. Everything’s working fine otherwise (I can open photos from within Snapseed, etc.). Just not the stock photos app.
Any ideas? 🙂
I just downloaded Bluestacks and Snapseed onto my Windows 7 PC. I can get to the homepage of Snapseed, find a folder of photos I want to edit from my desktop, it opens up the photos so I can see the thumbnails. I select one photo and the message comes up: could not load photo. What else do I need to do?
Snapseed for Win/Mac was retired 5+ years ago, so I’m afraid that if it’s broken now, no one will fix it.