Snapseed review

Snapseed is one of our favourite iPad apps, and it’s now available for Windows and Mac OS X too. This image editor is not quite the bargain of the £3 iPad/iPhone version, but at €16 inc VAT (£13 approx) it’s much cheaper than the likes of Photoshop Elements.

The Vintage effects give photos a dreamy nostalgic aura

The interface will be familiar to anyone who’s used the iOS version, with a large preview and icons for the various processes on the left. They’re better organised here, though, with a clear subdivision between Basic Adjustments and Creative Adjustments. Crop and Straighten have been rolled into a single process, and so too have the three colour-correction processes: Automatic, Tune Image and Selective Adjust (which applies brightness, contrast and saturation adjustments to a limited area of a photo). Clicking Automatic adjusts the various sliders for you, but you can refine them further without having to re-process the photo.

Grunge takes things further, and makes photos look like discarded relics

The biggest improvement is that photos can be zoomed in for a better view – particularly useful when using the Selective Adjust and Sharpen features. The iPad version’s gesture-based controls are replaced by conventional sliders and buttons, but it’s the right decision for a mouse-driven interface.