Julien DIOT: Globeblogger in Outdoor Sports
Julien DIOT: Globeblogger in Outdoor Sports

Best photo editing apps for Android

The perfect photo editing app doesn’t exist…

There are plenty of photo editing apps for Android on the Play Store, yet there isn’t the one that can fulfill my need on my devices. Indeed, to share with you all my amazing pictures, I need to use four photo editing apps.

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Google+ Photos tool and Snapseed

These are my favorite photo editing apps. I use a lot Photos included with Google+ on my LG G2. This is the most ergonomic photo editing app on displays under 8 inches. On the other hand I prefer Snapseed on my LG Gpad8.3 thanks to its design more adapted to bigger screens. They are exactly the same photo editing apps and are both developed by Google Inc.

Now, here is why there are my favorite photo editing apps for Android:

First of all, every modifications can be undo or redo while you’re editing a picture. That, Photo Editor by Aviary doesn’t allow it. Secondly, the scale chosen when you’re modifying a setting on a picture is well balanced. It is really fast and accurate and easy to obtain the result you’re looking for.

Best-Photo-editing-app_Snapseed

Photos and Snapseed are also excellent to change the picture orientation, adapt the size of a customized frame and the HDR effect is really convincing. Nonetheless one setting stands out: You can select an area in your photo to adjust the brightness, contrast or saturation in order to redistribute the disposition of the light on your picture. I was really impressed when I discovered that.

Best-Photo-Editing-app_Snapseed_selective-area

Another smart point: you can compare with the previous version the effects that have been added to your picture before saving your changes.

Last but not least, I can synchronise directly my pictures with my Picasa account without using a third part app. This is why I use these photo editing apps once I’ve edited all my pictures with the other ones.

Concerning cropping a picture, I don’t know why Photos only allows three cropping format (free, square and original) when Snapseed offers all of them. This is a pity because the cropping tool is really accurate on both.

Best-Photo-editing-app_Google+_Photos_PlayStore
Best-Photo-editing-app_Snapseed_PlayStore

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Photo Editor by Aviary

Photos and Snapseed don’t have two amazing photo editing tools: manual blur and manual color splash (B&W with some zones of the picture in color). This is why I use Photo Editor by Aviary (Adobe’s Subsidiary). However this photo editing app doesn’t do the job so well.

Best-Photo-editing-app_Photo-editor-Aviary_blur_colour-splash

These two photo editing tools are a real pain to use on a tablet without a stylus pen. Therefore why can’t we undo/redo the latest change while editing? If you do a mistake when you’re applying the filter, you will have to start again…from the beginning. Otherwise you need to save each change step by step. This is not efficient at all.

Second bad point: why these photo editing tools do not highlight the area where the effect has been applied via a layer we can see/hide?

Like that we could see at anytime what does our photo looks like and make sure we cover all the zones we want with the effect. Often, I need to open the photo editing tool one or two more times after realising some areas were forgotten. This highlighting layer would allow us to be more accurate in our gesture and a lot more efficient.

Thirdly if you go back on a zone where the effect has already been applied, you will double its intensity which makes your work chaotic instead of smooth. Then, a selector should be added to set the intensity of the blur/color splash.

For the other settings suggested by Photo Editor, I largely prefer Photos or Snapseed.

Best-Photo-editing-app_Photo-Editor_Aviary_PlayStore

PhotoGrid

I use this third photo editing app when I want to add a simple color frame around my pictures. We can choose the color, change the shape of the frame  and modify its thickness.

Best-Photo-editing-app_PhotoGrid_frame-tool

Photos, Snapseed and Photo Editor offer numerous frames but we cannot select the color we want and, with Photo Editor, we cannot adjust the size of the frame. You can also do a collage with PhotoGrid such the ones I added to this post.

Best-Photo-editing-app_PhotoGrid_PlayStore

PhotoCompress

You might not be concerned by PhotoCompress but if you’re a blogger like me, this photo editing app will simplify your life. In fact, to load the pages of your blog quickly, they must be light. That will also save a lot of space on your server.

Best-Photo-Editing-app_PhotoCompress

With this photo editing app, you can change the resolution, compress or crop your pictures and adapt them to the specificities of your blog. You can do this task with your pictures one by one or group and share them to PhotoCompress (only available for the compression task).

Best-Photo-editing-app_PhotoCompress_PlayStore

All these photo editing apps don’t erase the previous images but save a new one in their respective folders. I hope this post will help your for your future photo editions!