I’ve often heard that the best camera is the one you have with you. I don’t know about you, but I pretty much always have my phone with me. Whether I’m out on a walk with the kids, at a beach, or just hanging out in the Airstream its usually in my pocket or close nearby. That means I also always have a camera. We recently purchased the Nexus 5 (straight from Google, we’re Android snobs like that) and it has an 8 MP camera, a HDR feature, and does great in low light. For a point and shoot style camera, its a good one.

But, my photos can always be better and I don’t want to have to upload them and edit on the computer. Takes too long. Enter: Snapsneed. Snapseed is a fantastic photo editing app that’s easy to use, has all the features you need, and you can share straight to Instagram or Facebook.
Okay, so here’s what I usually do. The first photo is the screen you get when you import a photo. I usually start with “Automatic”. It does some auto contrast, which you can adjust by sliding your finger horizontally across the screen (right is more contrast, left is less) before accepting the changes by clicking the check mark in the lower right hand corner.After that it depends on the photo. I select “Tune Image” from the bottom menu, and then when you slide your finger up and down you’ll get the sub-menu. I typically brighten the photo a bit using “Brightness” and then I’ll pop the colors a bit with “Saturation”, sometimes I’ll add some of the nice yellow tones with “Warmth”. I find that most cameras typically underexpose their photos, so even just brightening it up a bit will help the overall image. All the adjustments work the same. Slide your finger right for more, left for less, and then click the little check mark to be done.

The last thing I use is the Selective Adjust. If you have just one spot on your photo that needs to be brighter/darker, or is just too saturated you can use this to edit just that piece of the photo. Click on Selective Adjust from the main menu, and then the little “plus” button. Click on the screen where you want to adjust, and it’ll put a large circle around that area. You can pinch it (two fingers) larger or smaller, you can move it around if you didn’t get it quite right the first time, and you can choose Brightness, Contrast, or Saturation by sliding your finger up and down. Once you like it, just click the check button!

And that’s it! Sometimes I’ll sharpen it a bit (under details) or Straighten if its really wonky. I don’t use their filters – I find I usually like the Instagram ones better anyway, and then I just have a nice clean image I can save in my gallery.

You’ll find that Snapsneed won’t fix your photos. I will always be an advocate of getting it right in camera, but it can add some nice enhancements that will make your photo just a little better. Here are two more Befores and Afters of some of the photos I’ve taken with my phone:

This one I did a selective adjust to brighten Cara up just a bit so she’s more the focus of the photo.

The changes don’t need to be extreme to improve the photo. Often just a little adjustment will make a good picture great. I often post a picture to Instagram without additional filters, because it looks so great out of Snapseed.

And, there you go! Happy editing!