Hey everyone! Hope you all are doing well. In this article, I’m going to compare Snapseed and Adobe Lightroom and which one you choose between these two best editing apps. Stay tuned till the end to know in detail.
App Preview: Snapseed
Download: Google Play Store
Size: 54.76 MB [Varies with the device]
App Preview: Adobe Lightroom
Download: Google Play Store
Size: 227 MB [Varies with the device]
Snapseed vs Adobe Lightroom: Introduction
Snapseed: Snapseed is a free photo editing app that is quite easy to use once you get comfortable with the interface. The best part is that the app is supported by Google, which is a plus when it comes to quality and reputation. The app allows you to edit and fine-tune things like brightness, saturation, contrast, curves, shadows, and much more—giving you a surprising amount of control over the final look of your photos. Snapseed is a complete and professional photo editor developed by Google.
Adobe Lightroom: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is a free, powerful photo editor and camera app. It empowers you in your photography, helping you to capture and edit stunning images. The app lets you control the details with selective edits. The impressive feature of this app is that you can apply a brush or enhancements, turn the figures in your photos into silhouettes. You can adjust the grain level and haze which can especially improve photos taken in low-light conditions. Adobe Lightroom is for people who are not just in casual photo editing. You can also up your Instagram game with the tools Lightroom provides you with.
Snapseed vs Adobe Lightroom: User Interface
◼️ User Interface is no doubt a major part of any smartphone application. Snapseed has a minimal interface and you would instantly get along with it. You can open only 1 photograph at a time. As soon as the picture loads, you get 3 tabs at the bottom: Styles, Tools, and Export. Styles is where you will get pre-defined templates that you can apply to the picture. Tools tab has all the necessary editing tools offered by Snapseed. Once finished, you can use the Export tab to save your edited photo onto your phone.
◼️ Lightroom, on the other hand, has a non-intuitive UI. If you are not familiar with the Adobe ecosystem you will need some time to figure out how to start editing. Adobe Lightroom, on the contrary, comes with a dark theme with all the tools at the bottom. At the top, you get the image info, ratings, help, share, delete, and other options. Holding on to the photo shows the original photo in both.
For the user interface and user experience, I would give it to Snapseed. Lightroom has come a long way in terms of UI but it would never be as user-friendly as Snapseed.
Snapseed vs Adobe Lightroom: By the Numbers
◼️ Snapseed has over 100 million downloads with a 4.5 rating. It is also one of the apps on the list that feature in the editor’s choice on Google Play Store.
◼️ Adobe Lightroom is a free, powerful photo editor and camera app that empowers your photography, helping you capture and edit stunning images. Adobe Lightroom also features in the editor’s choice on Google Play Store. It has over 100 million downloads with a 4.3 rating.
In this comparison, both the apps are having more than 100 million downloads but Snapseed is having 4.5 ratings and on the other hand, Adobe Lightroom is having 4.3 ratings on the Google Play Store.
Snapseed vs Adobe Lightroom: Tools
◼️ Snapseed comes with 11 styles and over 25 tools and Snapseed offers 11 styles, 6 drama effects, 5 glamour glow effects, 12 vintage effects, 13 retrolux effects, and 14 noir effects. Altogether it comes with 56 options.
◼️ Adobe Lightroom comes with about 15 tools, and each tool contains some sub-tools. Lightroom contrarily comes with profiles and presets. In total it offers 45 filters and between 40 and 45 presets depending on the device. All are free, and each one is categorized into favorites, modern, black and white, vintage, and more.
In this comparison, Snapseed is having 25 tolls with 56 filter options and Adobe Lightroom is having 15 tools and 45 filter options.
Snapseed vs Adobe Lightroom: Main Features
◼️ On Snapseed, I feel the editing options are cluttered and vaguely distributed. It would really help if they were categorized or neatly stacked up. both of them have essential features for tonal adjustment like Brightness, Contrast, Highlights, etc. I rather prefer using the RGB curves and they are present on both the application. Snapseed has some awesome features like Double exposure, expanding a picture, HDR which I seldom use since they are not present on Lightroom.
◼️ One of the favorite features of most of the users in Lightroom is the HSL tab. Here you can edit each color in the picture individually. Snapseed doesn’t have this option and it is quite a bummer. Talking about HSL tabs, HSL stands for Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. The tab comprises 8 colors with an individual Hue, Saturation, and Luminance slider for each color.
In this comparison, I say that Snapseed would be a good app to start with if you are new to editing. At times, I often end up using both the applications for a single edit and that is actually the conclusion for this section. If you know what you are doing, use both! Still in this comparison Lightroom won because of the HSL tab.
Snapseed vs Adobe Lightroom: Learning
◼️ Both come with tutorials to help you learn. Snapseed comes with over 25 tutorials. Each tutorial first explains the tools and then offers to apply the edits to your picture.
◼️ With Adobe Lightroom, new tutorials are published regularly on the main interface. It shows the edits on the tutorial photo and asks to practice the same technique to master the app.
In this comparison, I say that Lightroom is best for learning editing first as in lightroom new tutorials are published regularly.
Snapseed vs Adobe Lightroom: Verdict
According to my comparison, you can see that somewhere Snapseed is better while in some cases, Adobe Lightroom is better to use. But overall Snapseed is having more ratings than Adobe Lightroom on the Google Play Store. After using both the apps for quite some time for now if you guys ask me which one I prefer then my answer will be lightroom because it is amazing for quick editing. Both offer many unique tools, while both are used for different goals. Snapseed is more powerful than Lightroom in text editing, brushing, editing RAW images, and adding frames, while Lightroom is more for quick editing and sharing. Snapseed is good if you are getting into mobile photography and editing. The minimal UI and quick editing options will help you grasp key concepts of editing. Hence, on the basis of the above comparison, I have found that Snapseed and Adobe Lightroom are better against each other under the separate features but in most cases, Snapseed wins! So, it’s a win for Snapseed.
What are your thoughts on the comparison? Do let us know in the comments below.
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