App based image editing

The photo in this post was captured and edited yesterday all on my phone, even this post was created and posted using only my smartphone. The point of this post is to show some of the power of mobile processing.

The image of the ice crystals was taken near the bank of a creek by my home. Southern Oregon is cold and clear right now. I really like the structure of the large crystals that stretch out through the ice.

The image came out pretty well when I captured it using my phone, but I wanted to edit the image to add to the structure and contrast of the shape in the ice crystals. I felt that this would add to the impact of the image.

I am a huge fan of camera +, but I have now started using another app called Snapseed. This app is put out by google, but it was developed by NIK software, they are known for some of the best photo plugins.

Snapseed seems a bit difficult to use at first, but there is a huge amount of granularity to the adjustments you can make to a photo.

For this image I felt that the original capture lacked contrast so I was able to adjust the amount of contrast in the image, I also wanted to change the white balance without adding a filter over the top of the image. I selected the white balance tool and pulled the image toward the blue, I wanted the blue color to add to the feeling cold, icy impact of the image. Then I added a a simple black boarder and exported the changes to a new image in my camera roll.

Snapseed is available for both iOS and Android.