AI is taking over almost every image editing app, to the point that some AI has evolved into a photo editor on its own. We live in the era of one-tap fixes, where generative AI and algorithms decide what your photo should look like before you even touch the editing button. It is indeed impressive, but it is also dangerously sterile.
Amidst each app running to be first or the best amongst all AI-infused pro photo editors, there’s one app that has still maintained a distance from such shenanigans. It’s Snapseed; the one app from Google that hasn’t been given any significant overhaul in years.
- OS
-
Android, iOS
- Price model
-
Free
Snapseed is a free, powerful photo editing app by Google for iOS and Android. It offers a wide range of professional-grade tools and filters, including selective adjustments, healing, and RAW image support, all through an intuitive, ad-free interface.
It lacks the generative fill of Photoshop and the trendy presets of VSCO. By modern photo editor’s standards, it is practically abandonware. But it is still my go-to editing app. Because most modern apps sell you the convenience of intrusive AI, while Snapseed gives you control.
Control point
A feature that remains unmatched
In modern editing apps such as Lightroom mobile, masking has become powerful, but it’s tiring. You often have to paint the mask with your finger or rely on the app to “auto-detect” a subject or even the sky. Snapseed’s Selective tool operates on a completely different and superior level.
When you drop a Control Point on a photo in Snapseed, the app doesn’t just consider the Pixel you touched; it analyzes the hue, saturation, and luminosity of that specific point and creates a localized selection based on the values, which is often more accurate than masking yourself or letting AI decide on its own.
This lets you make detailed edits in seconds that might take hours in other apps. Instead of painting a mask, you’re adjusting light values directly. This kind of technology once cost hundreds of dollars in desktop software. In Snapseed, it’s free, instant, and still faster than the AI masking in paid apps.
The stacks
Truly non-destructive editing
Most mobile editors operate on a destructive, one-lane logic. Once you apply multiple edits, if you feel the initial edits were too strong, you will need to undo them back to that step, meaning clearing out all edits made after that. This is not the case with Snapseed.
It operates more like Adobe Photoshop, utilizing a feature called Stacks. With this, every edit you make has its own layer created in the background. By expanding the View Edits menu, you can see your complete editing history as a vertical stack of layers.
You can tap on the edit you made ten steps ago, modify or even delete that particular edit, and jump back to the very last one without messing with any other edits you made in between.
Professional color grading
You don’t need to pay to make your pictures better
Mobile app devs had normalized the idea that even basic editing should be locked behind a paywall. Open almost any popular photo editor — VSCO, Lightroom, and even some free apps — and you will hit a paywall sooner than you realize. Even to edit something as basic as Tonal Curves, you will have to subscribe to the app or pay a one-time fee.
Curves are a fundamental tool of color grading. They allow you to adjust the shadows, tones, and highlights of the red, green, and blue channels individually. Curves adjustments are how you make a difference in the look and feel of images.
Adding up the Double Exposure tool in Snapseed offers a level of blending mode control like Lighten, Darken, Overlay, and Subtract that rivals some of the desktop editing apps. Some AI-infused apps do this automatically, but here you have to do it manually. While it does take a few extra efforts and minutes, since you are doing this manually, the results are often more organic.
Snapseed is good, but old
It has some catching up to do
Snapseed is good, but it’s not perfect; in many ways, you will feel it’s old. The lack of active development is painful considering how relevant it still is. After one point, many had assumed that Snapseed would end up in Google’s graveyard of discarded projects. But since it was the only specialized photo editing app from Google, unlike its take on messaging apps, it’s still alive and relevant.
If you try to remove an unwanted person or a blemish in Snapseed using the Healing tool, it simply clones pixels from the immediate surrounding area. It is rudimentary and often leaves a blurry, smudged mess if the background is complex.
You Have Even More Reason to Use Google Snapseed Thanks to This Update
Snapseed returns strong with a stylish design and appealing new features.
Compare this to Google Photos’ own Magic Eraser or Photoshop’s Generative Fill, and Snapseed looks outdated. Those tools use AI to generate new pixels that match the context; Snapseed just smears what is already there.
But for the likes of me, who are already fatigued by AI overlapping everything I do, the lack of AI is not a bug; it’s a feature. Snapseed enhances reality rather than replacing it. When you use Snapseed to edit a photo, you enhance the actual moment that you have already captured rather than altering it. It gives you results that feel grounded and authentic.
Snapseed is still relevant if you want to keep it real
If you like to spend time on each detail of your pictures while editing, Snapseed is definitely the app you want to use. It’s for those who see editing as a craft. Not to mention, while using Snapseed, you even learn the basics of photo editing, like how a histogram works, how color channels work, and how selective lighting can change the mood of a frame. It respects your intelligence enough to give you the tools and step out of the way.
But, if you are someone who sees editing as a chore — something to be finished asap so you can post — Snapseed is not the tool for you. You are better off with Google Photos’ one-tap magic.
