So, this happened. 🙂 In Snapseed 2.16 on iOS & Android, you can:

• Edit faster by using reusable “looks”: save the edits on any photo as a look, and apply saved looks to other images.
• Share looks with friends and other users by generating a QR code for each.
• Apply Structure to individual areas of your photo via the Selective tool.

And on Android you can:

• Automatically correct the perspective of your photos using the the enhanced Perspective tool.
• Find inspiring tutorial content via the Insights stream. [already available on iOS]

The QR-based sharing is a fun twist. The team writes,

You now can easily share these looks with your friends and followers. Snapseed will generate a QR code that embeds your look. Scan this QR code [below] in Snapseed to apply the look to the current photo. You can easily share it through social media, on your web site, or by email and instant messaging! 

Okay, my nerds, this one’s for you: You can now rock out with that original gangsta of color-correction, Curves.

You can also insert line breaks when adding text (you forgot that Snapseed does text now, right?). Oh, and in the new(-ish) Face filter, if face detection fails, you can tell it to try harder—by tapping a button that literally says “Try Harder.”

Enjoy!

If you don’t want your camera app “f***king stupid,” check out Manual, which—provided you’re running iOS 10 on an iPhone 6s or above—can capture raw images in DNG format that you can edit immediately in the new Snapseed. As you’d expect, the combo gives you greater control over exposure & white balance than if you’d simply shot & edited a JPEG.

[YouTube]

 Now that 144 camera models (see list) are supported in Snapseed on iOS, how can you get images from them into the app? Ah, glad you asked. Here’s some info from Snapseed Help:

Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader: will read all supported RAW files and allow the user to import them to the Camera Roll. Note: Some DNG files may appear blank in the interface and Camera Roll but will be shown correctly in Snapseed. Check it out in the Apple Store.
Lightning to USB Camera Adapter: can be used in combination with a camera’s USB port or even a USB SD card reader to read all supported RAW files and allow the user to import them to the Camera Roll. Check it out in the Apple Store.
EyeFi MobiPro: RAW files can be transferred to an iOS device via Wifi using “Eyefi Mobi” app and selecting share/save photo. Photos will be saved as RAW files to the Camera Roll. Note: This requires iOS 9.3.4.
Google Drive: Select a photo in Drive, tap on the dot dot dot icon, then select “send copy”. Drive will download the file. Select “Save Photo” to save it to the Camera Roll, or “Open in” to directly open it in Snapseed. Note: This requires Drive v4.12 and iOS 9.3.4.
Apple Mail: Email a RAW file, fully download it in Mail, then open the photo preview and tap the “share” icon. Select “Save Photo” to save it to the Camera Roll, or “Copy to Snapseed” to directly open it in Snapseed.

I’m delighted to say that Snapseed now supports raw image editing on both iOS & Android:

The new RAW tool opens automatically when Snapseed detects a RAW file and works seamlessly with other Snapseed tools, such as Healing, Brushes, Frames, Text, HDR, and Details. Editing changes can be saved non-destructively, or exported as JPG in high quality. Some of the available adjustments for RAW include Structure, Tint, Shadow control, Exposure (-4.0 to 4.0 f-stops), and Temperature (1.700°K to over 8.000°K). Anyone using Snapseed 2.9 and an Apple USB SD card photo adapter or WiFi SD card can now work with RAW images. 

Here’s a RAW-vs.-JPEG comparison:

 Meanwhile the new Face filter lets you brighten faces, smooth skin, and make eyes pop.

Want more? Okay, here’s more:

Also on Android: new Perspective and White Balance tools. Perspective straightens lines in your image by removing the perspective effect from the original image. White Balance offers fine color balance control with pinpoint precision via an eye dropper tool.

Lastly, you now have greater control over image saving:

In addition to UI improvements and bug fixes on both Android and iOS, you can now set the preferred JPG compression rate, or even save lossless (PNG) when exporting.

Enjoy, and as always, please let us know what you think!

Rolling out today on iOS & Android, the release delivers some bigger stuff…

• A Blue filter in Black and white – this creates a high contrast black and white image by pushing blue tones white and yellow tones black (check out the image for a comparison of all color filters)
• White Balance in the RAW editor on Android – use the color picker to select a neutral color in the photo for automatic corrections, or choose from 8 different presets like Tungsten, Daylight and Sunny

• Added Talkback capability for Healing tool on Android – with Talkback enabled, the Healing tool will announce where the patch is being applied
• Fixed a crash on iOS when flipping images under specific conditions
• Minor bug fixes

A handful of nice tweaks arrive today. From the team post:

For iOS:

• Added Quick Actions on iPhone 6s/6s Plus
• Added optimization for iPad Pro
• Filters now default to the last-applied style

For Android:

• Improved editing quality for noisy RAW images
• Added ability to copy and paste RAW settings from one DNG to another
• Filter styles now default to the last-applied style

Enjoy!

It’s a small thing, but I can’t tell you how much more I enjoy using the image picker in Snapseed for iOS than its predecessor. Grab the latest update (2.1) and check out the enhancements. From the team post:

• A new image picker provides much quicker access to photos
• Editing session is preserved when switching to another app
• Style menus in filters are opened by default
• Filter names are displayed in the title bar 
• Tap to hide controls on main screen to see the image without distractions
• When zoomed in, the image can be moved so that the navigator doesn’t obscure any part of the image
• Filter selector displays 3 columns in landscape orientation on iPhones
• Bug fixes and stability improvements

I’m delighted to say that DNG files, shot directly on Android phones or converted from other formats, can now be edited in Google Snapseed for Android. When you open these images in the new Snapseed 2.1 (rolling out now, so please check back in the Play Store if it’s not yet available where you are), a new Develop filter module gives you great control over highlights, shadows, and white balance—just as you’d expect when working with raw.

Some phones can shoot DNG photos in the phone’s built-in camera app, including LG G4, HTC One M9, OnePlus One, Oppo N1, Oppo N3, and Oppo Find 7. Others require a third-party camera app to shoot DNGs, including the Samsung S6, Samsung S6 Edge, Nexus 5, and Nexus 6. Devices need at least 1.5GB of RAM & good OpenGL support.

Happy shooting, and please let us know what you think!

Do you live in a world where every blemish, random bird, stray pedestrian, and telephone wire is perfectly round? Me neither!

Therefore I think you’ll really like Snapseed’s new ability to heal arbitrary-shaped regions. Just tap the filter selector, tap Healing, and then paint away the bits you’d like to omit. And of course these operations are, like everything else in the new Snapseed, non-destructive, meaning that you can go back and re-edit them and/or copy/paste them among images.

The update (2.0.4) should now be live on the App Store & Play Store. It also squashes some bugs & adds support for Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong) and Canadian French.

Here’s an animation of healing in action: 

Dig the effect of a filter in one part of your image, but find it too strong in another part? Use brushing to adjust the mask that controls filter strength & location:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31EJNWM3vlY


[YouTube]

This is an incredibly useful—albeit rather buried—bit of functionality, letting you craft a look for one image, then transfer it to another:



[YouTube]

Sometimes even I forget just how much this little app can do:



[YouTube]

Small but welcome tweaks:

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.

iOS should be available soon; Android is available now. My teammate Sven Tiffe writes,

After releasing Snapseed 2, we’ve heard a lot of excited voices, but also listened to your constructive feedback. You told us and we heard you, Grunge is back!

We’ve started rolling out the Android update today, and the iOS update will follow shortly. This update includes:

• The return of the Grunge filter
• The ability to copy, paste and hide Control Points in Selective
• Improved styles in HDR
• An option to export flat copies on iOS 8 for compatibility with apps like Lightroom & Dropbox

And of course, stability and performance improvements. We’re continuously working on improving Snapseed and you can expect more in the future, so stay tuned!

Snapseed 2.0 is an enormous new release, and along with all the new goodness (non-destructive editing, brushing, healing, masks, new filters, etc.), a few changes have proven controversial. The team is listening (especially via the user forum) and planning improvements.

Among these, we plan to bring back the Grunge filter (not the most widely used tool—hence its removal from v2—but one with a very passionate following). We’ll also offer a way to play nicely with apps (e.g. Lightroom) that don’t yet support iOS 8’s model for non-destructive editing (see previous post). I can’t promise a specific timeframe, but stay tuned.

Thanks for all the feedback to date, and please keep it coming!

I love seeing photographers start putting this very rich update through its paces. PetaPixel writes,

Photographer Mark Ryan Sallee of Michromatic just posted this video in which he shares the top 5 new features found in Snapseed 2.0. The 14-minute video covers the bigger view, highlights slider, perspective correction, content aware fill, and edit history.

[YouTube]

[Update: This issue is addressed by the “Export flat” option added in Snapseed 2.0.2.]

TL;DR: If your file-transfer app of choice doesn’t recognize edits made by Snapseed & other iOS8-compliant apps, please ask its developer to update it.

With iOS8 Apple introduced a great system for non-destructive editing: Apps still write out new images, but instead of having those show up separately in one’s Camera Roll, they now show up sitting atop the original images. Under the hood, your iOS device still retains the original pixels & the new pixels, but it stacks them together with the list of edits that turn the original into the output. That way you can always revert to your original pixels, and the editing app can keep its edits flexible (by re-reading the original pixels + list of edits, letting you get back to where you left off).

Supporting this new system requires updating one’s app to use new APIs introduced with iOS 8. Snapseed has of course done this, as have Google Drive, the new Apple Photos, and many other apps. Some apps haven’t yet been updated, however, so they read only the original pixels on the device. Notably, when you connect your iOS device to a Mac & transfer images via Lightroom or Apple’s Image Capture utility, or when you browse your Camera Roll using Dropbox, you’ll transfer only original pixels. This isn’t unique to Snapseed: try making edits in Camera Plus, Camera+, or other iOS 8-savvy apps & you’ll get the same results.

We know that the problem is very frustrating, and people understandably blame Google, but our options for dealing with it are limited. As other apps get updated, the problem will go away. In the meantime, we could add an “Export flat JPEG” command, or something similar, but that’s hardly ideal. Photographers shouldn’t have to think about this stuff, especially if doing so means choosing between non-destructive editing & being able to transfer your work.

So, we’re considering next steps. What would you find most useful?

RC Concepcion from Kelby One has created a series of 28 bite-sized lessons that show you the ins & outs of achieving amazing results with the newly released Snapseed 2.0. The number of vids may sound a little overwhelming, but they’re all small, and breaking them up means that you can easily jump just to the bits that interest you. Enjoy!

If you’re serious about mobile photography, I think you’ll enjoy Nik founder Nils Kokemohr’s in-depth demo and conversation with Scott & RC Concepcion. Nils deep-dives on powerful new features like Tonal Contrast from Color Efex Pro (“the best tonal contrast ever,” says Scott), Stacks, and much more.

[YouTube]

I’m thrilled to announce that Snapseed 2, the next generation of the award-winning mobile photography powerhouse—has arrived and is ready for download on iOS & Android. Key new features:

• Non-destructive editing via Stacks allows you to re-edit or undo any change. You can also copy edits from one image to another.
• New tools including Lens Blur, Tonal Contrast, intelligent perspective Transform, and Spot Healing.
• Selectively apply filters and effects to parts of the image using the Brush tool.

We’ve also added long-requested features like zooming, undo, highlight adjustment, and more. I think you’ll find that you can work both faster (moving edits among images) and with more precision (using brushing to fine-tune the whole image or even individual filters). We’d love to see what you create & to hear your thoughts, here and in the user-to-user forum.

Here’s an ultra quick tour:

[YouTube]

Check out some beautiful imagery from photographers around the world, all captured with the iPhone 6 & much edited in Google Snapseed.

I’m happy to say that my all-time favorite mobile editing app, Google Snapseed, has gotten a small revision to improve iOS 8 compatibility (specifically to address a snag when scrolling through the filter list).

The app has been my workhorse for more than three years, but there’s so much more it can be & do. What would you like to see?

I’m delighted to say that we’ve rewritten the Snapseed editing pipeline from the ground up, making it non-destructive & setting the stage for a really exciting future. Just yesterday it arrived on iOS inside the new Google+ app (which, by the way, offers to back up all your photos & videos for free). Engineer Todd Bogdan writes,

Easily perfect your photos with a powerful new editing suite in the Google+ app for iPhone and iPad. With these Snapseed-inspired tools you can crop, rotate, add filters and 1-tap enhancements like Drama, Retrolux, and HDR Scape, and more. Add a personal touch to your photos, then easily share them with friends and family. As an added bonus: you can start editing on one device, continue on another, and revert to your originals at any time!

The overall workflow is a work in progress (e.g. right now you don’t get an interface for re-editing your adjustments), but stay tuned: we’re starting to cook with gas.