Snapseed vs. Lightroom Mobile

With fast phones, we have intelligent apps. You might have heard of Snapseed. It’s a photo editing app from Google.

Lightroom from Adobe is also a photo editing app. How do both differ? The article takes a look at both and covers Snapseed vs. Lightroom Mobile.

What are both

Snapseed was initially developed by Nik Software. The app has lots of options and makes it easy to edit photos.

Lightroom mobile has been here for years now. It has many options for detailing and fixing photos. It’s free to use, but some options are premium.

Snapseed vs. Lightroom

Interface

Both have a different interface. The tools in Snapseed are in the tools section, and the styles tab contains some on-the-go styles.

The top option is for undoing and redoing, while you can see tutorials and change settings in the far-right ellipsis.

Adobe Lightroom has 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 picture in both.

Opening photos

Snapseed is a basic photo editor that opens photos from the gallery. Lightroom is cloud-based, so it imports photos first.

The good thing is that you can access those photos on any device with the same login information.

Tools

The main difference between the two is that Lightroom has more tools for fixing issues in the photo. This can be the photo lighting, details, optics, and color temperature. This is what Lightroom does best.

It comes with profiles and presets. It offers over 45 filters and between 40 presets that can give your photo a new look.

Snapseed is an all-rounder app with more photo editing tools, but it lacks some photo-fixing features.

It offers 11 styles, six drama effects, five glamour glow effects, 12 vintage effects, 13 retrolux effects, and 14 noir effects.

The styles tab also comes with an add new button to add more. Some filters include smooth, morning, bright, fine art, etc.

Read next: VSCO or Snapseed

Auto fix

Both offer to auto-tune the image. Snapseed separates into image tuning and white balance, and Lightroom has one button.

The above image compares how both auto-tuned the same photo. Overall, Lightroom’s image was more lit, but depending on the colors, one might perform better.

Crop and rotate

Snapseed comes with crop, rotate, expand, and perspective options. The crop tool has seven built-in aspect ratios to help you choose the ideal size.

Moreover, the expand tool is unique and uses AI to predict the surroundings and expand the picture. The tool is not entirely accurate and performs better on solid colors such as sky, clouds, greenery, etc.

Lightroom offers a single tool to crop, straighten, rotate, and flip (horizontal and vertical). Same as Snapseed, the crop tool offers some built-in aspect ratios.

Straighten is a unique tool that uses AI to straighten the photo. Flip is another helpful option to flip the image horizontally or vertically.

Learning

Both come with tutorials to help you learn. Snapseed comes with over 25 tutorials. Each tutorial explains the tools and then applies 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.

Related: Photoshop Express comparison with Lightroom

Export

The last part of Snapseed vs. Lightroom is the export features. Both apps support exporting the same resolution image.

Snapseed saves the date, photo location, and camera information and exports it in jpeg format.

Lightroom adds date, camera info, and tags depending on the photo. It does not save the image taken location and exports in jpg format.

Paid nature

Lightroom is not entirely free. The tools discussed here are free. Its paid plan is called “Lightroom Premium,” which supports mobile and web versions.

It costs $8 monthly here in Australia but will be lower in the US. The premium features include:

• Selective adjustments
• Healing brush
• Fix and adjust perspective
• Online web galleries
• Auto sort photos
• Apply the same adjustment to multiple photos

Which one to use

While both are used for different goals, Snapseed is more powerful than Lightroom in text editing, brushing, RAW images, and adding frames.

Lightroom is more for photo details and colors. It’s great for those who take photos and want quick edits before uploading them to social media.

Snapseed vs. Lightroom: Install

Madhsudhan Khemchandani

Madhsudhan Khemchandani has a bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering (Honours). He has been writing articles on apps and software for over five years. He has also made over 200 videos on his YouTube channel. Read more about him on the about page.