Snapseed (for Android)

A year after being designated the iPad App of the year by Apple in 2011, Nik Software's impressive tablet photo editor comes to Android. Maybe that's not such a huge surprise, considering that Android creator Google purchased Nik Software, the maker of Snapseed, this past September. Though it doesn't have quite the stunning interface of Apple's iPhoto for iOS and some of the mind-blowing content-aware tricks of Adobe Photoshop Touch, Snapseed remains one of the most powerful image editors available for tablets. Best of all? It's now free (as is its iOS counterpart).

Interface
Snapseed for Android's interface is nearly identical to that of the iPad app. It's simple and clear, yet it packs in a lot of power and in-depth detail. After you open or shoot a photo, you'll see rectangles along the bottom of the screen (or along the side if you're in landscape orientation), which you can swipe through to choose edits, adjustments, and effects. Simple swiping gestures let you adjust contrast, brightness, and color; or you can have the program choose those automatically or choose control points in the image.

An always-present icon lets you compare your edited work with the original, and the original image is always saved?the editor is non-destructive of your original image. A question mark is always available in the upper-right hand corner, and touching it overlays helpful hand-drawn instructions showing where to tap or swipe to perform a function.

The app adroitly handles photo-fixing basics such as brightness, contrast, cropping, and straightening. For Snapseed's sharpening capability, accessible from the Details option, Nik borrows from its pro-level Photoshop plugin, Sharpener Pro 3.0. This even lets you adjust with sliders for strength and "structure," providing a powerful way to bring out hidden textures.

I was also impressed that many of the adjustments and effects can be applied to specific areas of the image using control points in the app's Selective Adjust and Selective Focus sections. These let you apply brightness, contrast, and saturation to an adjustable circular region of the photo. You drag one finger in and out while holding the other on the control point to enlarge or shrink the affected area, which is shown by a red overlay. Adobe's Photoshop Touch app, however, exceeds Snapseed in this department, with desktop-Photoshop-like local brushes. That app also surpasses Snapseed in things like removing background objects, and working with image layers.

Snapseed's Drama tool could indeed add drama to a bleak landscape I tried it on, while Vintage offers nine old-fashioned photo looks and several texture options. Grunge is one of Snapseed's most impressive tools, with a whopping 1,500 style settings, each a different degrees of color emphasis or fading. Once you're done with tweaking the actual image, you can place it in a choice of frames that give the photo a mounted appearance.

Snapseed offers one of the hottest effects in digital photography today?"tilt shift." I use quotation marks, because, although this is the popular term for the miniaturization and saturation technique, tilt-shift is actually a geometry effect only possible with expensive lenses. Snapseed lets you choose an elliptical or linear focus area for the effect, and you can change the angle and thickness of the focus area.?This is actually more control over the tilt shift effect than you'll find in some desktop apps, and the results can be impressive.

Sharing
Unfortunately, Google is using this app as another way to pump up its under-populated social network. To that end, there's a big Google+ button below your photo on the main screen. Fortunately, you can share to places you're more likely to have contacts at from the Share menu available from the options menu at top right. This will make any service you've installed an app for a sharing target; on my test tablet, I could share to Pinterest, Facebook, Box, and several more.

More than Speedy Snapping
Instagram certainly offers fun ways to doll up your photos and a compelling social photo community, but Snapseed is more capable and powerful at enhancing your images. True, it lacks the splashy design of Apple's iPhoto for iOS, but it exceeds that excellent app in some effects. And the price is right?free?making Snapseed our Editors' Choice for Android photo editing apps.

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