Lightroom Vs Snapseed Which One Is Best In 2024

In today’s fast-growing and developing world of social media apps where every photo goes through several filters and effects. This skill of editing can convert your ordinary photos into a jaw-dropping masterpiece. By seeing this race of effects I decided to master the art of photography and editing. For this purpose, I started my research to find out the best editing application. I found two titans of the editing industry, Lightroom and Snapseed. Let us have a comparison of Lightroom vs Snapseed which one is best in 2024.

Let’s explore the process of playing with colors, vibrance, hue, saturation, and tweaking curves by using booth applications and ultimately finding out which one wins the title of best one.

Lightroom Vs Snapseed Quick Comparison 

Lightroom Overview

Before 2007, Adobe Photoshop was used professionally for editing photos but on February 19, 2007 adobe launched an extension of Photoshop known as Lightroom for the first time, but due to its high appreciation and demand Adobe changed to a separate interface and named it “Adobe Lightroom”.

Adobe Lightroom has different versions in the online market such as Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC, and Lightroom mod apk. It is available on Android, IOS, and desktop.

Snapseed Overview

In June 2011, Nik Software launched Snapseed for IOS only but a year after in 2012, Google bought this application and enabled it for Androids also. Now Snapseed is working on both IOS and Android but unfortunately, it is not available for desktop/windows.

This is easy to use for newcomers so I recommend that people who are new to the field of editing try this app to understand easily.

Lightroom vs Snapseed Comparison

Lightroom

Lightroom has two versions one is free of cost and the other is a premium version which is a paid one. As a beginner who wants to learn professional editing, you should use Lightroom as it is a gem of the editing industry. It contains different features which include curve adjustments, optical correction, color contrasts, cropping, and reduction of noise; all these features are available in the free old versions. It has a feature of auto adjustment which adjusts everything and gives better results with a click. In a premium version, you will get extended features such as healing, masking, editing of raw files, perspective correction, and also a version for your desktop. Lightroom provides us with Adobe cloud storage where we can back up our editing photos, keep our data in an organized way, and make it easy for us to find out and post our results online, we can easily keep track of our data and editing journey. It has one little disadvantage that it can assume that the user has familiarity with editing tools, it has certain terms in it that are used only by experienced or professional editors so it will be difficult for us to understand these terms at the start but after a certain time we will be used to it and start start learning it completely.

Snapseed

Snapseed is also a competitive application. It has only one version and is free of cost. This is a major advantage of this application in that all of its features are available without any charges and accessible to everyone. It has all the basic editing tools and features. You can reapply effects which were lastly applied in a bunch of images. This has a bunch of creative tools that help users pile up images altogether and apply effects before making them a part of their social media profile. It has a U Point technology which includes adjustment of colors and brightness levels of a photo in a few clicks. This technology makes editing for beginners a lot easier as it is not a time-consuming procedure and can be done in a few clicks. Snapseed learning is far easier than all other apps, it is a user-friendly application but it has a disadvantage in that this is not good for adjusting exposures and cannot create presets.

Lightroom vs Snapseed Comparison Table

Lightroom vs Snapseed, both applications have a long list of features and tools have a look at the table given below:

Lightroom vs Snapseed user interface experience

According to my general observation, the best app is the easily understandable one. When we open the app I want every tool and option well placed and designed so the interface should be clear and easy not a complex one which is time-consuming and not easy to go through the app and explore. According to this generalization ideal app should have a simple interface let’s know about the interface of both Lightroom and Snapseed.

First of all, I will discuss about Snapseed interface:

1. Snapseed has the simplest interface and you can get easily familiar with it.
2. Click the + sign on the main menu and add a photo 
3. Only one photo can be loaded at one time
4. Then there will be three main tabs on the bottom of the screen style, tools, and export.
5. Style has all the pre-established templates that can be applied to the image one by one to check out which one sets the image best.
6. The tools section has every important tool to edit an image.
7. Then after completing editing, we can export it and it will be saved on our phone.
8. During editing your image will be visible to you throughout the whole process you can toggle left to right to see different effects and up and down to go through a menu.

Now we will discuss the Lightroom interface:

If you are familiar with Adobe Suite you can easily understand the interface but if you are new to the world of Adobe you need some time to learn about it.

1. Click the add new item to import an image
2. The main interface is tricky and a wide range of tools are placed at the bottom.
3. You can click on every option and with the help of a slider you can increase or decrease the intensity of an effect.
4. By double-tapping on a slider, you can reset applied effects.
5. The term “library” is used for organizing images 
6. The term “develop” is used to make desired changes.
7. This app also has an inbuilt camera you can take RAW images and directly edit in it
8. You can make a catalog to organize your edits.

Winner: Snapseed

Lightroom vs Snapseed editing capabilities

Portrait

The tool portrait in Lightroom is specified for balancing the level of light, color correction, and exposure level and perfectly adjusts the skin tone which enhances the expression and outlook of the image.

Snapseed also has this feature. You can quickly edit as it has already adjusted brightness, contrast, and skin smoothening. You can do it in one click without any additional editing.

Winner: Snapseed

Text tool

Both have text tools you can simply click on the text tool and it will add a text box and you can write attractive quotes or captions in your edits.

Winner: Snapseed

Increasing image size

If you desire to increase the size of your images you can use both for this purpose. You click on increase image size and select the desired size it will add borders to it and provide your enlarged image.

Winner: Both

Sharpness

Snapseed and Lightroom both have sharpness tools but Lightroom has it at an advanced level as it increases the definition between the edges of images while Snapseed does the same process but at a lower level. 

Winner: Lightroom

Masking

Local adjustments can be carried out by masking in the lightroom; it selects a specific area and adjusts effects. Snapseed used masking along with sharpness tools to clarify the image.

Winner: Lightroom

Layers

Snapseed has a feature of layers. You can create a separate layer and apply any effect on a specific area. Lightroom does not have a layer formation function.

Winner: Lightroom

RAW image handling

If your phone does not allow taking RAW images you can just simply open both these apps click the RAW image and edit it accordingly But Lightroom is far better than Snapseed because while taking RAW photos snapseed does not provide many details about exposure and highlights but Lightroom gives a very detailed photo.

Winner: Lightroom

Photo Sharing analysis

It is easy to export photos in Snapseed, when you complete your editing you can click on export and click your desired platform. It will be quickly exported. In Lightroom photo sharing is a bit complex and time-consuming, after completing editing click on export select your desired size and destination, and then export it.

Winner: Snapseed

Dehaze tool

If you are fond of capturing sky and landscapes this tool will be handy. It filters out the haze from distant objects and gives a crystal-clear photo. Lightroom has this amazing tool but needs to be added in Snapseed.

Winner: Lightroom

HSL tool

Lightroom has this amazing tool. It adjusts Hue, Saturation, and Luminance by using a slider. For example, if you want to adjust some specific color in an image you can use this tool to beautify it.

Winner: Lightroom

Lightroom vs Snapseed is easy to use

While selecting an app our major concern is always that the app should be user-friendly and easy to use and provide you with your desired results in a short period. Lightroom provides you with a bulk of tools and features that are organized in a very decent and elegant manner. It provides helpful guides and tutorials to understand the app thoroughly without any difficulty.

On the other hand, Snapseed provides a simpler interface where you can go through it within a minute and understand it. It has a swipe-based option that quickly organizes and edits images. Having an auto adjustment feature is a plus point that you can edit in one click and saves time.

Snapseed is popular among newcomers due to its simple and easy use.

Lightroom vs Snapseed presets in 2024

Presets are pre-designed templates that already have every feature adjusted. You can click on any preset and convert your picture from a normal photo to a masterpiece. These presets help to save time and effort, quickly edit, and give desired results.

Lightroom vs Snapseed both have presets but Lightroom has a wide range of presets which includes portraits, landscapes, and black and white. plus point is that you can edit these presets too according to your choice.

Lightroom also permits third-party presets to import and apply presets. This is a great opportunity for photographers.

Snapseed has limited presets which just add glamour, frames, and black and white filters.

Lightroom vs snapseed file type

Both apps export files in a variety of formats depending on the device’s compatibility.

Lightroom provides files in JPEG, TIFF, PSD, and RAW images.

Snapseed converts every file into JPG format.

Lightroom vs snapseed pricing

Lightroom vs Snapseed pricing is a major concern among newcomers as one is free and the other charges for an additional feature.

Lightroom has two versions. If you want to avail detailed features like healing, selective masking, and Geometry, you have to buy the premium version. 

There are two types of premium versions, one which provides only Lightroom and the other one provides Lightroom and Photoshop. The latter one is best for professional photographers and you can avail of it at a discounted price of $19.9/mo. If you need only Lightroom you can avail of it for $ 9.99/mo.

Snapseed is free of cost. All the features are available without any additional charges. If you are a beginner and want to explore the world of photography you can get Snapseed.

Winner: Snapseed

Lightroom vs Snapseed pros and cons

Pros and Cons of Snapseed in 2024

Pros and Cons of Lightroom  in 2024

Recommendations: According to my opinion about Lightroom vs Snapseed, I will use Lightroom as it will greatly help me in my photography career.

Conclusion

To sum up this discussion of Lightroom vs Snapseed, both apps are efficient in a certain way.

Professional photographers significantly use Lightroom because it requires extensive features and is familiar with the art of conversion.

Professionals are well aware of every complex to a simple term of lightroom. It has both mobile and Pc variants. If you want to proceed as a professional you should use Lightroom in 2024.

Snapseed is an easy app for a newcomer and free of cost. The minimal UI and quick editing options will help you grasp key concepts of editing. If you want to learn about simple editing you can use this app in 2024.

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