A Stylin’ Snapshot

As the temperature starts to drop into chilly mornings and the leaves display their most vibrant colors before taking a fall, the season of autumn has so many beautiful sights to remember. Photo-shoots at the pumpkin patch or in your backyard surrounded by fallen leaves become more plentiful and desired. However, not everyone has the advanced camera or photo-shop applications that bring out the best shot -- or so they think. Using your iPhone or Samsung phone to take pictures can yield even more impressive results with the help of the editing program Snapseed, available for IOS or Android. And consequently, here are some helpful tips on how you can use this app to touch up and enhance your fall photos.

photo credits: https://iphonephotographyschool.com/snapseed/

Right after you open the photo you intend to edit onto the app, the first improvements that are useful to begin the process are image enhancements that can be found in the ‘Tune Image’ tab. In this section, the actions include changing the Brightness high and low, adjusting the Contrast of the photo, and fixing the Warmth and Coolness. For your fall photos with lots of reds, yellows, and oranges, raising the warmth of the photo just a small bit can bring out those colors even more than they first appear. The next tab that can bring out a high quality image is the HDR Scape. In the HDR Scape, the lightest and darkest parts of the photo can be adjusted. For example, if the focus of the piece is a person but you want to only change the lighting of the background, by choosing the Person tab, the background surrounding them can be adjusted to where the dark specters of the background become lighter by adjusting the Filter Strength or Brightness. Whatever aspect you want to keep, this is the tab you click on to edit. Another tool that can be used to adjust appearance are the Vibrance tool and the Curves tool; the Curves tool appears as a large grid that adjusts the dark and light contrasts of certain elements in a photo.

photo credits: https://iphonephotographyschool.com/snapseed/

Besides changing the color of your photo, Snapseed also includes other features that add a more professional touch to your fall shoot. The Text tool at the bottom allows you to add text to describe your photos or create a cute autumn card. Manhattan Style M1 and Hand H6 are good examples of text styles that fit well aesthetically in the editing process. In addition, the size and color of the text can be changed as well. After you’ve added your text phrase (something like “Fallin’ in love with Fall), the last touch you can add is a frame for your photo. By clicking the frame tool, there is a choice of 23 different frames that can be changed to whatever width suits the picture. I myself have a preference to white frame number four, which adds a nice contrast to the brighter colors.

There are many more editing tools that can be found in the Snapseed app, so many that I haven’t tried them all out yet. Even without the expensive cameras and fancy photo-shop applications, with the different tools Snapseed offers, your snapshots can go from simple to sophisticated all while staying beautiful.