Snapseed +4

Snapseed has been my go to editing app for close to a decade now. It’s wide range of powerful features and it’s complete lack of hidden purchases still do a lot to recommend it (the Selective Edit feature in particular is what turned me onto it in the first place) but…Having now tried this on two different phones, two different software profiles, the app hangs anytime I go to load a RAW image for development. Now, I could just go to Lightroom for this kind of thing, but the core simplicity and intuitive controls of Snapseed make it much less complicated than Lr. But, I shoot almost everything in RAW so that I can have that editing latitude, and loading an image, waiting and wondering whether I’ll be able to edit it at all have left me looking to other options. For jpeg shooters, however, this app is a marvel: It costs nothing, and is packed with wonderful features. The aforementioned Selective Edit is a great way to punch up contrast and saturation to specific areas of your images and leaving areas of first shot perfection relatively untouched. Furthermore, the preset edits like Portrait and Fine Art (black and white) are a one tap ticket to Gorgeous Town. I just wish the developers would do something about the lottery like nature of RAW development. Fix the lag, and I’ll bring back the Fifth Star, how about that?

I really love using this app to edit all my photos. I’m rating 4 stars, to possibly grab your attention on a few new suggestions to add into the apps editing features. First, I think adding a free form focus area in the Lens Blur instead of shapes would be AMAZING. Along with that adding the ability to not just have one focal point, but multiple focal pints, while still being able to blur out the background or things the editor doesn’t want the photo to focus on. Another new feature you should add to this app should be to have a onscreen convenient undo/redo buttons while using any tool in the app; that way the editor won’t have to continuously click in and out of the tool in order to make an alter to an edit or to fix a mistake. I realize there’s an erasing tool, but when you have much to edit and a list of other photos you plan to edit as well, it is time consuming; not to mention that many people using there fingers to edit will likely cause a mistake to worsen by using the eraser tool, which is well - another negative.
- Anyways I really do hope someone who can add these two features read my review, and will actually consider adding these two features. I guarantee it will make many people happy.

-Overall though, this photo editing app is AMAZING and I highly recommend using it!!!

I’m changing my rating after discovering something and remembering something else since writing my former review. If my new findings prove solid I will change it again to four stars, because I do love this app and hope it is as strong as it once was, but I wanna make sure it’s running smoothly. Here’s my findings:
For a while my app was freezing and then I couldn’t upload photos to it at all. I just went to check if restrictions were on and they were, so I changed the setting and now I can upload photos and edit them again. I would have figured this much longer ago had there been a restricted access notification when I tried to hit the open button, but since there was not and since Id been having having other issues with the app, I assumed it had just failed. Another problem I was having involved saving images. For years my saved Snapseed images would show up in my main photo collection, and then one day- I now figure it was after an update- I wasn’t finding them in my main photos, so I would instead use the share option and text them to myself and then save them to my photos; I did this for years not realizing until just now that my Snapseed photos had switched storage locations, now ending up in a separate (hard to reach at the bottom of all my other photo folders) Snapseed folder.