How Snapseed - ULTIMATE GUIDE | All Tools & Sliders Explained

Intro

this will be a comprehensive snapseet guide with every tool and slider explained to master the app other than
the tools we be covering how masking works and also detailed explanation of how C tool works I have provided the app
links for both IOS and Android in the video
description after opening the app the

How Snapseed - ULTIMATE GUIDE | All Tools & Sliders Explained | Mobile Editing

Importing photos

first thing you notice is this screen app anyway to open your phone's gallery
and select a photo to import into the app here I have imported an image to go

Settings

into the settings of snap seed tap on the three dots menu on the top right corner here there is a toggle to enable
Dark theme which I will enable for this tutorial the options in the image size I
suggest choosing do not resize for a maximum resolution if storage is an
issue you can choose other options in format and quality options for a
combination of best compatibility and quality jpeg 100% is recommended PNG
saves in a better quality but the file sizes would be

Tune image

large here's the first menu tune image and its sliders these are basic sliders
to make some quick edits for an image swipe vertically to select a particular
slider now we are in the first slider that is brightness need to swipe
horizontally to tune this particular slider swiping right increases the overall brightness of the image swiping
left darkens the image next the contrast increasing
contrast can make an image look more vibrant and dynamic this adds more
brightness to the lighter parts and makes the darker parts more dark decreasing contrast makes the image more
flatter saturation slider makes the images more or less vibrant decreasing it completely
turns the image gray scale or in simple terms black and white ambient slider to
the right enhances the overall atmosphere of the image to quickly pop the
image highlights lightens or darkens the brighter parts of the image reducing
highlights is useful in getting more details from the brighter parts for example this sky in this
image inversely Shadows lightens or darkens the darker parts of the
image with the warmth slider orangish Stones can be added swiping towards left
adds bluish

Details

tones now to the details menu the two sliders here are structure
and sharpening structure increases the amount of details in the image it brings
out the texture of objects throughout the photo without affecting the edges of the objects sharpening increases the
amount of sharpness in the details of the image next is curves I will leave an

Curves

earlier video of detailed explanation of how curves work from my channel
here I'll add a little pop to it and make it a lot more interesting so the first thing we need to do is add the
curves effect by tapping the curves tool now to understand how this graph
works on the right hand side and the top part of the graph it represents the highlights the left represents the
shadows in this image and everything in between all the mid tones so to lighten a photo all you
would do is grab the middle part of your grab so this line here you just gone a tap here which creates an anchor point
and drag up to the left this brightens the image and drag it right to darken the
image now we are going to add some contrast with the point added in the middle I will drag the upper part to the
left which brightens the highlights as this is a curve dragging any part of the curve also affects the curve on the
other part so here if you want to remain the Shadows unaffected straighten the
Curve but here as we need to darken the Shadows I will move it down towards
right with this we have applied contrast with the S
curve now moving to the color option in the curves there are three to choose here the Reds greens and the blues these
curves act a bit different compared to the RGB curves here with the red curve selected
if you move it to the left it adds red to the whole image move it to the right it removes the Reds but also boosts the
color aqua which is opposite to the
red similarly dragging the green curve towards left adds greens dragging it
right adds the opposite color magenta dragging blue towards left adds
Blues dragging it Opposite as yellows I'll come back to these color

tones

later now for the luminance curve it acts a little different from the RGB curve to know the difference first I
will apply some hot contrast using the RGB curve now you can notice some added
saturation in addition to the contrast
now with the luminance curve if I apply the same s contrast only the luminance values gets affected saturation Remains
the Same as I said at the start snapit has
one advantage over other mobile apps and that is masking so here we're going to apply
this luminance contrast only on some parts of the
foreground so first I will apply this effect then go to masking tap on the top
right for the stacks icon then view edits select the latest effect applied
and then brush with the effect hidden also there
is a i icon which you can toggle on where the effect will be applied so with
the brush value at 100 I will brush over the area where this luminance contrast need to be applied toggle the eye icon
off to see the effect so we have selectively applied the effect only on a part of this
image now we are going to add some color tones to add blue tones to the Shadows
that is the darker parts first add a point around here and then drag the bottom point up
now you start seeing the blue tones in the shadows
if you want to add yellows to the highlights drag the upper part of the blue curve towards right which adds
yellows to The Brighter
areas in addition to the lows we are going to add some Reds to the highlights so I will drag the upper part of the red
curve towards left
now with both the red and yellow tones to the highlights it has added a bit of orange
tone now for some matte look or a faded effect as the bottom Point affects the
blacks when I drag it upwards the black starts moving towards gray which gives the image a faded
look also we'll drag the top Point down now the whites are turned to
gray so I will keep the midtones as it is so with this we have achieved a mat
finish to the
image now for some tricks with the AR cures as you know by now moving the
bottom point up makes the blacks gray the more you move move the point the more it becomes lighter and eventually
the complete image turns
white same way with the top Point dragging it to the bottom makes the image completely
black now with both points in the opposite Parts the image turns
negative
one more example here of making a major retouch here with curves I'll brighten
the image with the RGB curves add a lot of red and
yellow then with masking applying it selectively really gives you this major
effect so you can see how powerful the cage tool can
White balance
be in the white balance tool now for a quick balance of colors you can tap on
this auto adjust tool regarding the two sliders temp adds yellow or blue tones to the
image tint adds magenta or greens to the image you can combine both sliders to
get interesting tones there is a manual Color Picker tool from which you can pick neutral gray which balances the
colors there are numerous predefined

Crop

presets for you to choose for crop in including the free
option to change the orientation of the cropped image tab this rotate

Rotate

icon here in the rotate tool tap on this icon to rotate the image 90° clockwise
swipe horizontally to rotate
manually tap the icon on the left to flip the

Perspective

image prospective tool is mainly used to correct Distortion Like These slanted
buildings the four options here the fill options and auto
correction you can tilt by swiping vertically or
horizontally to correct the
Distortion rotate option as the name States rotates when you drag on the
image scale option stretches the image vertically or horizontally you can get
interesting effects with this free tool has four corners where you can
stretch to correct the
distortions if there are any blank spaces created due to perspective change there are options to fill it with white
black or smart option which uses smart intelligence to fill the

Expand

image you can use the expand tool to to expand the image on all four sides or
even one there are filling options white black or Smart
Fill select to filters can be used to precisely select certain areas of the

Selective filters

image with similar colors point where selection should be and zoom in or out
for selection swipe vertically to get the options brightness contrast
saturation and structure swipe horizontally to tune with these
tools add more control points by tapping on the plus icon for more
edits you can tap on any control point for more options you can copy and paste
the control points too there there is an eye icon which hides the control points for a moment while

Brush

editing brush tool has four options and you can chain the opacity values of the
brush at the bottom using the arrows at increments of five with the Dodge and
burn option you can darken by lowering the brush value below zero and brushing on the image remember the more you brush
the more effect it shows you can set the brush value to eraser more to remove the effect for brightening use the positive
brush
value enable the eye icon to preview the brush Strokes there are three more options
exposure to increase
exposure temperature to make Parts cooler or warmer
tones saturation to increase or decrease
vibrancy this can be quite powerful if used with
control

Healing

healing tool as it states removes any distraction by just tapping on those areas just need to brush or tap to
remove people and other unwanted distractions be careful while using this
tool as sometimes you may get odd
results vignette can be used to emphasize the subject just need to drag the circle at

Vignette

the intended position and resize it accordingly then you can darken the
outer brightness which will create a vignette there is an inner brightness option

Text

too in the text tool here are the font Styles and designs to choose
from also color options double tapping on the text opens the edit box to edit
the
text different styles
here
you can stange the opacity or invert to get this
effect you can also use masking to get this nice hidden text effect we'll go
into more details regarding masking in my next topic here's a more detailed explanation

Masking

on how Mas Works in Snapseed basically in general terms masking is hiding or
revealing portions of an edit or filter applied I'm going to using this image to
show some examples regarding masking but first I need to apply a filter to this image we'll try the HDR scape filter
with the nature preset going to increase the
saturation also the HDR filter strength as you can see the image doesn't look
good on certain parts especially the sky so we'll try to selectively apply the HDR effect only on the buildings here
now we are going to the major part of masking to do that tap on the stacks icon on the top right in the options
below tap view edits tap the filter we applied now and select the stacks
brush here's the masking screen the invert icon in the bottom left turns the
filter on on or off the I in the right is a toggle which gives a visual red
mask this helps in seeing where the effect is brushed out or not it comes in
handy when you're not sure where the masking is being applied at the center you can set the
brush transparency values at 25 count increments as I was planning to give the
HDR effect only on the buildings with the effect hidden that is with the filter off and with the brush value at
100 I'm going to brush manually on the the buildings again toggling the eye econ
lets you see where exactly the effect is being applied now you can see the full HDR
effect on the buildings next I'm going to try to also give some HDR effect to the sky but full HDR filter doesn't look
too good so with the brush transparency set at 50 brushing on the sky to give it
literally 50% of the HDR effect I will leave the water as it was before thing
to note that in this case I added the effect after it was hidden initially
make sure not to toggle the invert button when applying as it would invert the
effect you can also apply the same effect with the filter applied so with
the invert button on that is the filter visible and with the brush transparency set at zero I'm going to brush out the
effect on water won't touch the buildings here and then with the brush valet 50 applying it in the sky so you
can basically apply the same effect with the filter hidden or applied this is a personal
choice now I'm going to apply some contrast in the tune image
menu then with masking the filter hidden and the brush transparency set at 100
applying it on only the
buildings next I'm going to try selectively darkening part of the sky so using curves dragging the top Point
lower also the middle part towards right to darken the overall
image going to the masking screen with the effect hidden and brush transparency
at 100 applying on the left part of the sky zooming out gives you a soft
feathered mask wearing the brush transparency and Brushing in the sky to
make it more [Music]
interesting [Music]
next I'm going to try cloning the boat with masking before that I'm going to save
the image next with the Double Exposure tool
selecting the now saved image as it is the same image added it doesn't look different here increasing
the transparency of the image to 100 dragging it so that the boat is moved to the left left
corner making sure to set it at right place by comparing it to the original
background next moving to the masking screen of the Lost edited Double Exposure
filter here with the effect hidden with the value of the brush set at 100
brushing roughly on the part where the boat is

located

then zooming in as much as possible which gives a hard feather selection and carefully brushing on the board to get a
precise

selection

if you overdo it you can set the brush Val at zero and brush out the
selection toggle the eye icon to check if you have made the exact selection correct the mask if
not
as you can see we have literally cloned the boat on this
image masking can also be used to hide text from the image here I'm going to
try hiding number on the boat using the lens blur
filter applying it with default values and making sure the number is
blurred now with masking applying it on the
number you can also make it more whiter using curves dragging the lower point to
the top to make the whole image White
with masking brushing on top of the number to make it
white lowering the mask transparency to 50 to make it look better
there are a lot of ways in which you can use tax brush to give the image a different look for example using curves
with masking to change the whole Ambience of the image change the colors of part of the image or use double
exposure to manipulate the image I will leave the links of these edits in the description below check
them out for more more ideas now coming to the most popular way on how the masking feature is being used the hidden
text I'm also going to give a nice trick on how to give it a dual color tone
first applying the text here changing the font to make it bigger naming it on the country this
place is located placing it on the sky with the
lower parts little on the buildings now going to masking with the text effect unhidden
and the brush transparency at Zero Brush out the text on the buildings to give it a hidden text effect zooming in as much
as possible to give a nice feather selection this will take a long time so fast forwarding

changing the text color to a bright

yellow to give the text a dual color effect first I need to duplicate this text filter typing on the stacks icon
view edits here in the three dot menu tapping copy this basically copies all
the filters applied there's no option to copy only the text filter now tapping
insert which duplicates all the filters applied here I'm going to delete all the duplicated filters other than the L text
filter this is the original filter below and the duplicated one on
top for this text changing the color to something close to reddish
color going to to the masking screen you can see inverting the filter gives you an interesting effect but toggling it
back and with the brush transparency at zero zooming out and erasing the red text around the left to reveal the
yellow text below which gives you a nice dual tone [Music]
text these are just some of the ways on how to use masking to selectively apply
filters on certain parts and the possibilities are
endless now to the filters starting with HDR

HDR-scape

scap these are the options to replicate High dynamic range photography there are
options to change the filter strength brightness and saturation to get a controlled HDR effect works best on
landscape photos in my

Glamour glow

opinion glamour glow adds a dreamy quality to the image with a soft glamorous glow there are few presets
here to choose and three sliders to tune further glow adds softness saturation
adds or removes vibrancy and warmth for warmer or cooler
tones with tonal contrast you can have a fine control on contrast across highlights

Tonal contrast

and shadows here are the sliders to control the contrast across highlights midtones and shadows that is low
tones there are two options protect shadows and protect highlights which
prevents details being lost of the contrast is increased bed on shadows and highlights

Drama

respectively using drama add dramatic Style with artistic effects with these
presets these effects can be controlled with filter strength and saturation

Vintage

sliders vintage is one of my favorite filters it has some cool presets to
create film photos of the 50s 60s and' 70s there are four sliders to control
brightness saturation style strength and also wiard strength

Grainy film

grainy film filter replicates shooting on a color film with this realistic grain look tons of presets here also can
add more natural looking grain with the grain slider style strength decreases or
increases the style of the particular
preset retrox adds retro Style with light leaks

Retrolux

scratches and textures of film Styles tap on any filter to select the
particular style a shuffle looking icon appears on top when tapped randomizes
the options further the slider is to control brightness contrast saturation style strength add or remove scratches
and also light leaks you can also tap the icon on the
left to get rando

Grunge

Styles select grung tool to get grungy looking color and textures there is a
texture icon on the right also a random icon on the left to select a random texture and there are about 1,500 styles
to choose from with brightness contrast and saturation
sliders
texture strength adds or decreases the strength of
texture
Black & white
black and white filter has quite a few options for different styles of black and
white also colors to choose from The Chosen color will turn the brightest and
opposite the
darkest
you can control the brightness contrast and also add grain for artistic
Noir
purposes no is a filter to create a dark room inspired tone for cinematic black
and white
images has a wash slider to simulate an overprocessed
print grain slider to create natural looking grain to the image
Portrait
portrait filter is obviously for portraits this tool automatically detects portraits and has handy filters
to smooth skin bring Clarity to the eyes and other combo filters to enhance the
portraits
also options to change the complexion of the portraits
Head pose
head pose is another tool for portraits which has a 3D option to change the angle of the face can be swiped
vertically or horizontally to get the desired
look the slider is to change the pupil size and smile and change the focal
length lens blow filter has a toggle to

Lens blur

change between radial and linear blur the blur affects the outside of the
transitional
line here's an example on how to create a tilt shift effect with a linear blur
option
increasing blood strength to the maximum and reducing the transition gives you this miniature
effect vet can be added
too other shape options here with masking you can create some interesting
effects like background blur

Double exposure

2 another powerful tool is the Double Exposure filter I have an earlier detailed video from my channel which I'm
going to share here snapits developers Define double exposure as being inspired
from film and digital image processing according to their official
description but there is more to it we try for a detailed explanation here in this
video other than the default there are five more modes in the Double Exposure tool lighten darken add subtract and
overlay in snap seed opening an image with a simple example of a white and
black image going to the Double Exposure menu
I'm going to add an inverted image of the same with black on the left and white on the
right increasing the opacity to 100 blocks the base image completely
defaulting back to 50% where blend modes gives the best results tapping on the options button to
get the five blend modes choosing the light and mode option here the Double Exposure tool takes only the brighter
pixels from both the base and the top images in this case the white areas so
the result turns completely to White in this example darken mode works in a similar
way taking only the darker areas in this case the black color the result is a
black image for the remaining modes it is better understandable with images having
more colors opening an image here with different
colors adding another image using double exposure with more
colors the result of this combination in lighten mode is these bright faded
colors we we'll go a bit technical now on how we got this later I will try
explaining in non-technical terms with some examples here I will take the first and third colors from the base and top
image and see how we got the resulted bright faded colors every color has RGB
values for example here are the values for the first color there are Color Picker apps on mobiles too if you want
to try now we'll put the values of each color below now we'll take the higher
value from the these two numbers and paste it here so this is how we get the final zilant colors for light and mode
because of the higher values the colors also get brighter the results for the darken mode are a bit similar instead of
higher values the results are derived from the lower RGB values final output
being darker colors now to the add mode basically as the name suggests just need
to add both the values resultant being a very bright color note that the final value should not
exceed the maximum RGB value of 255 next to the subtract mode here we
need to subtract the top image pixels with the corresponding base image pixels
values are zero if numbers go to negative overlay mode is the final
option basically the result is a more contrasty version with vibrant colors of the two corresponding pixels from top
and the base image it sort of combines the multiply and screen modes of
Photoshop now we'll try some examples as an example I've taken this
color portrait image with a white background could get some unpredictable colors with a double exposure
modes adding a nice vibrant landscape
here as we know by now choosing the lighten option should remove the portion of the landscape on the white background
as white is the brightest portion here darken is basically inverted when
compared to the lighten mode ad mode adds a lot of brightness from both the
images subract should make all the darker parts more dark overlay certainly
gives the best looking one here with nice contrast and
colors now we're going to remove all the colors by turning this portrait image to Black and
White should get more predictable colors
here again using the same landscape image for double
exposure here there are no more confusing colors from the base
image using the overlay blend mode and placing the water body of the landscape at a desired place
is I'm going to add one more darker
landscape image but with a bright
Sky choosing light and mode going back to the previous filter
and removing the mask on the hair
coming back masking out the bottom
part getting some interesting results here next for a landscape edit opening
the same vibrant image from the previous
edit also adding this already edited Sunset image with the Double Exposure
tool we'll try getting the warm evening colors on the
mountains

masking out the remaining

using curves to darken the image and masking on the foreground to get it
darker
another example of a random abstract looking edit here it's up to you on how creative you can

Frames

be frames has tons of options to add frames to the image
you can t the selected filter to get more random
frames frame width can be altered
too snapsit supports raw editing of the dng files after importing a raw dng file

Develop

you get this extra develop tool these are the sliders available in
the develop menu exposure slider adjust the amount of light in the image other
than the slides already available from the tune image there is structure which increases the details in the
image temperature to adjust between cool blue tones and warm yellow tones tint
adjust the balance between green and magenta
tones in the white balance option you can
choose between Auto sunny cloudy shade tungsten florescent and Flash also there
is a Color Picker to choose neutral

Styles

gray coming to Styles there are different presets which can be timesaving
for example if I select bright there are already some filters applied as you can see
here you can also add extra edits on top of these and save this look with a

desired name

if you want to apply this on another image just need to import a photo and select the sav style to apply the
filter there is also an option to share a particular style to other users

Sharing styles

tapping on the stacks icon select QR look and tap create QR look to create a
QR code which can be shared with other users

Conclusion

I hope this comprehensive step-by-step guide to snap seat has been a valuable resource for you on your journey to
mastering this powerful photo editing app comment down if you have anything extra to be added to this tutorial thank
you all

How Snapseed - ULTIMATE GUIDE | All Tools & Sliders Explained | Mobile Editing

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