For today's house-bound creativity fun I went back to some basics: some simple photo editing. What I wanted to do, however, was to edit a photo straight on the phone. One of the goals of the week, after all, is to have some creative fun using tools available that about anyone could get ahold of.
To show that a good picture can be taken and edited on a phone, I've decided to do just that!
Here is the picture I started with. I took it last Saturday on my Samsung Galaxy Note II. It was my oldest son's 18th birthday. And his cake.
For this exercise I used my old-ass Note II for all editing, and for editing I used Snapseed. Snapseed is a great tool; it grew out of Google's purchase of Nik and the Nik Collection of photo tools. I still use Nik on my Mac, but Snapseed is great and it's free. Observe.
For a lot of uses, Snapseed has "quick edits," which is calls "Looks," which I usually overlook. I prefer to be able to make changes more precisely.
The "Tools" menu of option has a wide variety of items available to edit photos, typically more than I would need for any given photo.
For my purpose I just want to perform some colour correction using the curves tool. The curves tool is used to modify the histogram to allow greater parts of some light to become prevalent and lower others, if needed.
What I really want to do with this photo is to darken the darks and bring out the glow of the candles without drowning out any of the picture. A simple modification to the curves does that.
Another nice feature that Snapseed has is the "Selective" tool, which allows edits to be performed on just parts of the photo and not others. Very useful for, in this case, darkening parts that I want darkened, and brightening parts I want brightened!
Ultimately, with just a few modifications, I get the effect I'm looking for.
Snapseed is a great tool. It's free, available for both Android and iPhone, and does a fantastic job for a lot of photography needs. Fun when stuck in the house on quarantine!
(c) All images and photographs, unless otherwise specified, are created and owned by me.
(c) Victor Wiebe
