Best Photo Editing Apps for Android and iOS
We’ve compiled a list of the Android Apps we like most for photo editing. These impressions obviously are subjective, if you like any apps better that aren’t on our list, please let us know on the GegenWind facebook!
Snapseed
Snapseed is one of our favourite apps when editing on Android. It has a ton of pro features like Curves (also for the RGB channels), selective editing (also healing brush) and fantastic performance.
Snapseed went into Googles hands after its acquisition by Niksoft and it’s one of the top two apps we use when editing photos we took on our phone or when we Wi-Fi tether something from our cameras to our phones.
The user interface makes heavy use of vertical and horizontal scroll, when you’re in the Tune Image section, scrolling vertically changes the type of editing where as left and right changes the strength of the applied effect. Once you have gotten used to that it stops being weird and starts being awesome, also because there are no additional sliders blocking off the view to your shot.
One of the most intuitive uses of the swipe up or down or swipe left or right is the Perspective function, which lets you adjust how the lines of your shot will run and which way it will tip (if any). Super useful for the usually very wide angle cell phone shots and to make architecture shots look fantastic.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for Android
[Lightroom for Android][] is a worthy mobile equivalent of the desktop edition and allows for a great variety of retouch methods. As a professional photographer you’ll feel right at home, however if you’re looking for colourful vintage and cross processing effects by the click of a button, you might be disappointed.
When we were in the Netherlands last summer we made extensive use of the Wi-Fi tethering and could post from our coffee and lunch breaks after giving the pictures a quick touch in Lightroom for Android.
VSCO
While VSCO is not only for image editing, it’s also its own community, not unlike instagram. The available VSCO filters mainly focus on mimicking different films. You can see a collection on the VSCO store that also sells these presets for Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. The price tag is not low, but the beautiful shots of the VSCO community speak for them.
Basic editing features such as cropping, rotating, contrast and exposure are part of the free package in the App. Some film filters are free, while others can be purchased.
Instagram has been catching up a lot when it comes to editing features and apart from their completely free collection of filters that occasionally get updates, they have many of the basic editing tools covered. It’s not as elaborate as Lightroom and it’s not as flashy and creative as Snapseed, but it gets you pretty much covered on the basics.