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Snapseed for iPad Review
What Is Snapseed?
Snapseed is a photo editing app for the iPad, offering a variety of filters and adjustments for you to apply to images. You may be wondering whether there’s actually any room in the market for yet another image editing app especially when you’ve already got the likes of Adobe’s Photoshop Express which is available for free and the inherent boundaries put in place by the capabilities of iPad platform itself, but judging by app sales there’s obviously a good demand for image editing on the iPad and the portability of the iPad means you’re more likely to have it with you as opposed to a more restrictive laptop or desktop.
The main menu screen with the original image
Features
Similar to other photo editing apps, Snapseed offers a number of ‘filters’ which allow you to change brightness, contrast, etc. as well as apply a number of creative effects such as black and white conversions, adding borders, and vintage film effects. Where Snapseed stands out from the crowd is in its offering of localised adjustments (via the Selective Adjust filter). Apps offering adjustments which affect the entire image are common, but Snapseed offers a finer level of control with its U Point technology which allows you to restrict an adjustment to specific areas of an image based upon shape or colour criteria. If you’ve used Adobe Lightroom (v2 onwards) then you might be familiar with auto masking when applying selective local adjustments. U Point does a similar type of thing and makes it possible to apply specific adjustments (currently just brightness, saturation and contrast) to the sky of a landscape or the skin of a portrait without affecting anything else around it.
Selective Adjust with Nik's U Point technology in action.
Selective Adjust with multiple control points.
This localised editing takes Snapseed a big step towards a truly comprehensive, tablet based photo editing solution and opens up a lot of avenues which were previously closed.
Aside from selective adjustments, Snapseed offers 10 additional filters:
- Auto Correct – Colour and exposure are adjusted automatically with manual fine tuning available.
- Tune Image – Adjust White Balance, Saturation, Contrast, Brightness, and ‘Ambience’.
- Straighten & Rotate – A grid is overlaid to assist accurate levelling.
- Crop – Grab the corners (to maintain aspect ratio) or edges of a photo to quickly crop down an image.
- Black & White – A selection of conversion styles is offered along with manual adjustment of brightness, contrast and grain.
- Vintage – Attempts to replicate the lomo look with various expired film styles, paper textures and vignetting.
- Drama – A selection of effects which, as the name suggests, helps to make your images more dramatic looking!
- Grunge – A huge variety of effects which aim to add some ‘grittiness’ to your images.
- Center Focus – Adds variable blurring around a user defined point within the image.
- Organic Frames – Puts a styled border around your image.
In Use
Using Snapseed is a pleasure and the built-in help overlays are very effective for quickly getting to grips with how to make use of the various functions. Nik Software also provide tutorials and guidance via their website. The layout of controls is logical and consistent. The use of the iPad touch screen means resizing can be done with pinch gestures and swiping is used to choose between in-filter adjustments such as brightness and contrast and also to control the degree to which they’re applied. Both portrait and landscape orientation is supported. So, you can hold your iPad according to the orientation of your image to make full use of available screen real estate.
Swiping vertically selects between adjustments, horizontally varies the strength of those adjustments.
On the original iPad, performance is very good. Some effects do take a second or two to render, but most operations feel satisfyingly lag-free. Extrapolate this performance onto the iPad2 and I’d expect a very snappy performance.
There’s a very handy compare button which when held down shows you the image before the current filter or shows you the original image depending on whether you press the one from within a filter screen or from within the main menu screen.
It’s worth noting that original image files are left untouched. Any edits made using Snapseed must be exported as distinct image files.
Who Might Use Snapseed?
Despite the plethora of effects and levels of tweaking which can be applied, I find it difficult to suggest it’s the answer to a professional photographer’s search for an iPad based Lightroom, Photoshop or Aperture. It’s not possible to batch process and no way to define your own presets which means processing every image from scratch. Also, there’s very limited control of colours. So, sending off a processed image for printing is taking a gamble on whether or not the colours would be accurately reproduced. Whether or not an iPad’s display screen is suitable for precise colour work is outside of the scope of this review.
Snapseed makes it very easy to apply a large variety of creative effects as well as carry out a number of standard adjustments. For the social photographer wanting to process a handful of images at a time for sharing via email, Flickr or Facebook it’s excellent as there’s support built right into the app. Printing via Apple AirPrint™ is also supported.
How Snapseed Could Be Improved
At the time of writing, Snapseed could well be argued as the best image editing app for iOS mainly due to its ability to apply localised adjustments, good feature set and ease of use, but there’s definitely room for improvement. Not to mention, there’s a gaping hole where I feel some essential functionality has been left out such as:
- Sharpening – localised and image-wide
- Resizing/Rescaling
- Red-eye correction
- Magnified view for finer edits
- Pre-defined crop ratios
As a workaround, other image editing apps can be used to take up the slack, but it would be more convenient to have everything available in a single app without the need to export/import images.
Additional functionality which would be nice to see:
- Cloning & healing
- Histogram
- Colour correction
- Curves adjustment – localised and image-wide
- Export in non-lossy file formats
- Watermarking
- Batch processing
- User defined presets
- Layers
Whilst additional features might increase development costs and push Snapseed into a different target market, there’s nothing to prevent Nik Software releasing a ‘pro’ version to better cater for the professional or more demanding photographer. At £2.99, the app is good value for money and I would be happy to pay the same amount again for the above additional functionality.
Conclusion
Overall, Snapseed is an excellent image editing app for the iPad and sets a new standard by which future apps can be compared against.
It’s a promising sign that development of image editing apps on the iPad (and perhaps other mobile platforms) hasn’t plateaued, but is progressing towards satisfying the demands of those who want to have more control over their image editing. Nik Software have demonstrated this quite clearly with Snapseed which I feel is an evolutionary step forward in iPad based image editing.
The original, unedited photograph
The finished photograph.
24/06/2011 Update
Version 1.1.0 has been released to the iTunes app store. The main benefits include supports for RAW images transferred with the Camera Connector kit and the preservation of EXIF data upon saving.
Footnotes
The photo I edited in the screenshots was shot on a Panasonic Lumix GF1 and imported onto my iPad using the camera connection kit.
Snapseed can be downloaded from the iTunes app store.
Posted in iPad, Review, Software
Also tagged app, editor, image, iPad, Nik Software, photo, Snapseed, U Point technology
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Review: The Big Day, The Lovegrove Way by Lovegrove Consulting
The Big Day, The Lovegrove Way is a two-disc DVD set with one disc providing a documentary of a real-life wedding shoot and the other demonstrating the post-processing of the day’s photographs. The DVD set is aimed at photographers who are new to wedding photography and wanting some advice as well as those who are established, but wanting to gain some insight into one of the most successful wedding photography teams in the UK today.
Disc One – The Shoot
The first DVD provides fly-on-the-wall coverage as the video crew shadow husband and wife team, Damien and Julie Lovegrove, whilst they spend their day and night as wedding photographers. The footage not only shows the photographs they take during the day, but also the thought processes behind them and how they’re set-up.
What becomes apparent quite quickly is that Damien and Julie are used to working as a team as they manage to shoot the day without needlessly duplicating shots. Starting off separately, Julie with the bride and Damien with the groom, they later converge as the ceremony gets under way. This efficient team-working helps to ensure all of the important parts of the day are covered without wasting time nor missing opportunities. Working together in this manner allows them to get the shots which are likely to be missed when just one photographer is covering the day. For example, being able to shoot the bride and groom getting ready at the same time, but obviously in separate locations.
The viewing sequence for the DVD:
- The bride and groom getting ready separately including their interaction with bridesmaids and groomsmen.
- The church ceremony.
- The reception through to the evening.
- 2 weeks later – the preview and shot selection with the couple.
- 4 weeks later – when the finished photo album arrives.
As this DVD set is aimed at photographers rather than their clients or the general public, lots of useful commentary is provided throughout giving you a real behind-the-scenes view into what Damien and Julie are thinking and exactly why they’re thinking it. Understanding their thought processes means the viewer can apply similar methodologies to a variety of different wedding scenarios which is infinitely more useful than simply offering a list of shots to take.
As well as showing the practical side of the photography, i.e. the shots, the set-up, the poses, the documentary also reveals the important human element and the interaction with subjects in order to put them at ease which in turn enables the photographer to get the best out of them. They also dispel the old myth about working with animals and children as they show how they work to get some fantastic photographs of both.
What I really like most about this DVD is seeing how Damien and Julie find the best locations for shots and how they cope with the unpredictable. Working with so many individuals and changing variables on what is usually an emotional day means that anything can happen. The off-camera flash dusk set-up is something which I’ve not seen before at a wedding and done correctly can add real value to any wedding photographer’s offer.
There are so many useful gems given throughout the DVD that you really need to watch it a few times to pick up on them all and that’s what makes it such great value. Any time you feel you need a refresher, say during the days leading up to a wedding shoot, you can just relax with the DVD and let it inspire you.
In common with Damien’s other DVDs, the production quality is excellent. The video shows the photographers and subjects from a variety of angles and the sound quality is excellent making it easy to see what the situations are and hear the real-time commentary.
Running time of disc one is 79 minutes and this includes a slideshow of over 200 shots from the day at the end of the DVD. For those who like technical details, the EXIF is provided for each of them.
Disc Two – Post Processing
The second DVD from the set runs for 70 minutes and sees Damien processing a selection of photographs from the wedding day. It’s split into two parts, covering Damien’s preferred editing applications; Lightroom and Photoshop.
Topics covered include:
- Enhancing and balancing exposure.
- Cropping and rotating.
- Correcting white balance.
- Using keyboard shortcuts to speed up workflow.
- Feathering selections to blend adjustments.
- Applying localised curve adjustments.
- Understanding the value of shooting in raw.
Damien’s post-processing workflow is very ‘organic’ in its approach. It’s processing by gut feel which can mean he spends less than 60 seconds on the basic editing on each photograph in Lightroom before going into Photoshop for more detailed editing. This brevity shouldn’t be mistaken for a lack of due attention, but is actually efficient and established workflow. It does what is required and prevents the processing of a typically large number of images from becoming a mammoth task.
If you’ve already grasped the basics of Lightroom functionality, but not sure how to incorporate it into your workflow then this DVD will show you one way. Likewise, the same applies to Photoshop, but don’t expect the full functionality of either application to be covered by this disc. To do that, you’d need much more than this one DVD. Instead, Damien demonstrates how he works with only a subset of tools and shows just how powerful they can be.
In summary, this is another high quality, informative product from Lovegrove Consulting which is very easy for its target audience to consume. If you’re a budding wedding photographer and you want to know what’s involved in professional wedding photography then this DVD set is a valuable addition for your reference library.
Read my review of Lovegrove Consulting’s DVD, Using Natural Light on Location.
Posted in Blog, Technique
Also tagged Damien Lovegrove, documentary, DVD, Julie Lovegrove, Lovegrove Consulting, The Big Day, The Lovegrove Way, tutorial, wedding photography
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Damien Lovegrove’s Two New Wedding DVDs
Damien Lovegrove has released a couple of new wedding DVDs; Lighting Winter Weddings and The Big Day – the Lovegrove Way. I’ve received a copy of each from Damien to review and after watching them both several times, I have to say they are excellent. Full reviews to follow!
Here’s a link to my review of one of Damien’s earlier DVDs – Using Natural Light on Location DVD by Damien Lovegrove
Posted in Blog, Technique
Also tagged Damien Lovegrove, DVDs, Lighting Winter Weddings, The Big Day - the Lovegrove Way, tutorial, weddings
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Lowepro SlingShot 300 AW Review
The rucksack style of camera bag is often favoured for reasons of comfort, security and its ability to disguise itself as an everyday rucksack that isn’t brimming with expensive equipment. In terms of giving its wearer quick access to the bag contents however, it tends to lag far behind its shoulder bag counterparts as most traditional backpacks require the wearer to take it off before being able to get into the bag.
With a Lowepro Slingshot 300 AW or one of its siblings, this isn’t the case (or rather the bag).
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