Fave Instagram App | Snapseed

The most frequent question that I get asked would be which apps I use to edit my photo’s. Even though I don’t use many, I pledged that I would be completely transparent with you guys so I thought it would be a cool idea for me to share with you the very few I do use!

You are warned: this blog contains extreme before and after images ;).

The app that works wonders for me is: Snapseed. What would I do without this app?! It just saves the day and helps me produce those blog-worthy images which I proudly share with the world. This application was developed by Google so you can imagine the quality and effectiveness it provides! It’s been with me since the beginning of my journey, we’ve been doing this together!

I personally do not prefer pictures that are too edited where they end up looking artificial, and I am in no way a supporter of portraying something incorrectly. I only feel satisfied when my pictures look bright, clean, classy and sharp! Most off the time I get this result by shooting in natural sunlight and with the correct settings on my camera (high exposure).

Of course, it is far less complicated to capture the beauty of something when the sun is shining through my windows. However now the days are getting shorter (and colder, ugh) it’s becoming more difficult to take satisfying pictures. We end up with dark and gloomy shots which sure don’t leave me happy and it in a way discourages me. When times are hard like this there is one thing left to do, get the help of a photography app!

Here is a mini tutorial with self-made screenshots (bare with me, haha):

Download Snapseed, enter the app and ‘choose

your picture.’ Once you have selected the image you want to work on move right over to “Tools” (you can see my favourite settings in the screenshot below, I made sure to mark all of them).

The setting I use the most is “Selective” (excuse the Dutch words in my screenshots, couldn’t seem to change it to English).

Going back to the seasonal problems, when I take pictures in the dark I have no choice but to turn on the lights in the house and that results in the pictures developing a yellow tone. Yes, it may look warm and cosy, but I’m not such a huge fan of that!

With the selective tool, I make sure to select the darkest and most “yellow” areas. Once I have made my selection, I can either swipe up or down and it will show me a couple of options; Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Structure. I always bring down my saturation, so the Yellow areas become a white/grey tone. Make sure you don’t overdo this function. It will look like a greyscale filter! If needed I add a bit of Brightness. When you zoom in and out you can be more precise and select the area that you want to change, isn’t that cool?

I also love making my pictures sharper! This is the finishing touch that completes my “sharp and clean” theme.