Many of us today are using mobile devices like Android phones, iPhones, and iPads to do things like login to Slooh.com and book missions. While this is very helpful, especially when you are away from your computer, image processing was limited to the PC – until now. Now you can edit your images right on your mobile device with great results.

In this article, I explain the basics of how to edit an image of the Orion Nebula, or Messier 42, using the mobile app called Snapseed for Android and iOS (iPhones and iPads). You’ll learn the following:

  • Install Snapseed
  • Downloading your images on Android and iOS
  • Preparing your images for use with Snapseed
  • Selective editing
  • Automatic adjustments
  • Exporting your final image

Although this is an introductory article, I walk you through using advanced features like selective editing – a feature that’s unique to Snapseed and provides all the power of masks without having to use a mask.

Introducing Snapseed

Snapseed is a mobile app that’s available for Android or iOS (iPhone and iPad). It was created by a company called Nik Software in 2011 which is now owned and operated by Google. The app has won awards and is in active development. The app features powerful and easy-to-use image editing capabilities. The features are the same between the Android and iOS versions, however, some of the menus look a little different between the platforms.

Install Snapseed

The first thing to do is to install Snapseed either from Google Play or the Apple App Store – tap the links or use search in the Play Store or App Store and search for Snapseed.

Download Images from Slooh.com

You need to download your PNG images from Slooh.com before you can edit them.

On Android, use Chrome to visit Slooh.com and download your PNG images, as shown:

On iOS, use your Safari browser to access Slooh.com and download your PNG image using the Slooh.com download button pictured above. If iOS asks you to confirm the download location, accept the default (likely ‘Downloads’) and select it.

Once you have downloaded all the images you want, you need to move them from Safari’s Downloads folder to your photo library. To access your downloaded files, tap the downloads icon shown below, followed by the picture you want to move:

When the image is on the screen, tap the Save Image icon at the top, shown in the screenshot below, followed by ‘Save Image’. Verify that your downloaded images are available by opening the Photos app, select Recents, and your images should be available to you there.

If you don’t happen to have any images of Messier 42 handy, use the images here; just tap and hold on the image to download it, and then follow the preceding directions if you’re on iOS. The only editing I have done to these images is to resize them so that they fit on this web page.

This is the LRGB (color) image:

This is the Luminance (black and white) image:

Editing Images Using Snapseed

We’ll use Snapseed to incorporate the luminance image into the color image to get some more details. We’ll also increase saturation and sharpness, and perform some automatic tuning.

Exporting the Luminance Image

We’re going to use a feature of Snapseed to overlay the luminance image over the color image so that we get more details in the image’s darker regions. To be able to use the luminance image, we first have to convert it from a PNG to JPG so that Snapseed can use it.

Start Snapseed and you’ll see a screen similar to the following;

Open the black and white luminance image using Snapseed:

Select Export to save the image.

Layer the Luminance Image Over the Color Image

Now open the color image of Messier 42 and select the Tools icon at the bottom (on iOS, the Tools option is the center icon across the bottom or side of the Snapseed display). Once open, select Double Exposure as shown:

Another screen opens which looks similar to the following:

Tap the icon shown in the red box in the preceding screenshot. Select the black and white luminance file you just exported. On Android, browse to the Snapseed folder to find the image. On iOS, simply select the black and white luminance image.

Now tap the checkmark to accept the change (we are using the default blending mode and 50% opacity).

Increase Saturation Using Selective Editing

Next, we’re going to use a powerful editing feature that doesn’t require the use of masks but gives us all the power of masks to selectively edit only part of the image. The image has lost some color, so we’re going to increase the saturation of only the nebula.

From the bottom of the screen, select Tools (or tap the center icon on iOS), and then tap Selective where shown:

Tap on the image shown by the top arrow in the following screenshot:

A letter B shows up. On iOS, I noticed that I got better results by moving the B to the area shown by the second arrow.

Next, tap slightly to the right of the letter B and a menu shows up as shown:

Drag your finger in the direction shown by the arrow so that the menu displays Saturation as shown in the preceding screenshot.

Next, below the letter S, drag your finger to the right until you get some color back in the nebula. You can see the strength of the effect at the top of the screen. On Android, I went all the way to 100%, whereas on iOS, I went to about 50%.  Tap the checkmark at the bottom of the screen to accept the change once you are satisfied with the result.

Increase Sharpness Using Selective Editing

Select Tools, followed by Selective. This time, we’re going to increase the nebula’s sharpness using the Structure selective tool.

As before, tap the area near the center of the nebula (or slightly below on iOS) to place the letter B. Tap to the right of the letter B and drag down to have the menu appear, and select Structure as shown:

Next, drag below the letter S and to the right until you get to a strength (shown at the top) of 100.

Tap the checkmark at the bottom to accept the change.

Automatic Adjustments

Next, apply some automatic adjustments to the image. From the bottom menu, select Tools (or tap the center icon on iOS) and select Tune Image as shown:

Tap the magic wand icon and then the checkmark to accept the changes. This is what my screen looks like:

Export Final Image

Export your complete image – tap Tools or the center icon and select Export to save your complete image.

On iOS, you can reopen the image in Snapseed in the future and it retains all of the history states, so you can re-adjust your settings as you like at any point in your workflow – this feature is not available on Android.

On Android, your exported image will be in the Snapseed folder, on iOS, it’ll be in your recent items.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned the basics of editing an image on your mobile Android or iOS device using Snapseed. You learned about double exposure, selective editing, automatic adjustments, and how to export and save your images. I will demonstrate more advanced techniques in the next article.