(Versione in italiano)

Since several friends have really appreciatedmy pictures, I thought “why not sharing with others my little knowledge?”. And here’s a new category dedicated to this.

Today I am going to try to explain how to enhance your photos with what I believe to be one of the 5 best basic Iphone and Ipad apps:

Snapseed

I am going to show you two different exemples, so that I can use mostly all the Snapseed menu options. This is the first photo:

Before and after:

Open Snapseed and select a picture from the photos in your device.

I am going to use a picture I took last June of a wonderful mountain of the Dolomites, in Corvara, Italy. And I open it with Snapseed.

(Remember that you can always tap on the question mark at the top-right hand ride of the screen which helps you using the tools – in the example below the instructions are in Italian, as, of course, I am using it in Italian, but on your device you’ll have it in your own language)

I usually use diffenrent tools for every picture, depending on the result I would like to achive. In this case, The fist thing I do with this is selecting the Snapseed Auto Correct feature, so I tap AUTOMATIC:

Select CONTRAST, which by default is level 50. Confirm tapping the Apply arrown at the bottom on the right.

And the photo becomes like this:

I am not satisfied with the result, so I select AUTOMATIC and then CONTRAST again and I you use my finger to swipe from left to right until  88.

Now I select:TUNE IMAGE

I tap the screen and hold my finger on the photo and swipe it down: It lets you adjust brightness, contrast, ambiance, saturation and white balance. I select brightness and corfirm my choise with the arrow.  And the photo becomes like this:

I would like now to have brighter colours, so I tap again on TUNE IMAGE and set SATURATION at 22.

Now if I want to underline the details of my pictures, I select the DRAMA filter, I tap on  DRAMA 2 at 80 and then I confirm my choice.

Now I am satisfied with my result, but I would like to post my picture on Instagram, so I need it to be square. So I select CROP and I choose the square cropping.

Not yet 100% happy with the result, I once again tap TUNE IMAGE, and select AMBIENCE at  60.

Now I save my picture.

step by step:

before  and after

Second picture, taken yesterday in my town center. i am going to use different filters to achieve a different result.

before and after

I open the image:

As the picture isn’t straight, I select STRAIGHTEN and tap on it choosing the right angle.

Then I use the BLACK AND WHITE
option:

And I confirm my choice with the arrow at the bottom right.

Then I select BLACK AND WHITE but I tap on the “yellow” button.

Now I would like to underline the depth of field, so I select  CENTER FOCUS
then the star on the left and I select the BLUR effect at 66.

I would like it to have a deeper effect, so I select  TILT-SHIFT,

I select the star and the oval focus, so that I can  adjust the height and width of the area of focus, which is my case is the facade of the old building.  I tap and drag to position the center of the area and among (transition, blur Strenght, brightness, saturation and contrast) I select Blur Strength At 85.

I am happy with the result and I save the picture to my photo gallery.

Final result:

Step by step:

before and after:

Snapseed is a very useful app, one of the easiest to use and most complete, but it has its limitations, like, for instance, these ones:

First of all if you made a mistake you cannot undo, the only choice you have is to  revert to the unedited version, which sometimes is a nightmare!

When you select the Drama filter there isn’t any noise reduction or sharpening adjustments. For this reason if I want a HDR effect I prefer to use Camera Plus.

PS: if you use your IPAD instead of your Iphone, and you rotate the iPad, you get a larger view of the picture you’re working on.

I hope you enjoyed your reading.