Snapseed now allows you to edit RAW photos on Android
I know most photographers don’t instinctively reach for something like an Android powered phone or tablet when they want to fine tune one of their photos shot in RAW format. I get it. But I have to say it is a pretty nice option to have if you only need to make minor adjustments on an image while you are on the move. I don’t take many pictures on my mobile devices and edit even fewer, but when I do I use Snapseed. Just recently it got an update that makes not only viewing but editing photos shot in RAW as simple as it gets. Well, with one small drawback. It can only read DNG files and not the NEF files my camera produces when shooting in RAW. But I found a very simple workaround, an app in the Google Playstore called raw2dng. It takes your RAW photo and creates a DNG that you can then open and edit in Snapseed after just a few seconds converting. If you have already been using this app but haven’t tried the new update, pictured below is the “develop” screen and the new options you will be presented initially after opening a RAW image before returning to the screen hosting all of the other tools you are used to.
Even just playing with random images I had taken but would never use proved to have some pretty decent results without investing much time or effort. Here is one example of a picture I spent about three minutes editing (converting time included) and was able to pull all the light back which would have been impossible with a standard JPEG. I even had time to remove the peanut shells in the water. Obviously I could have spent more time for a better result, but I would be pleased enough with it for something like social media sharing.
Click for full size image.
This is not the first mobile app to work with these formats, but I would say it is absolutely the best free option. If you don’t mind first quickly converting your images before opening them to edit that is. It has always done a bang up job of making mobile phone pictures look better, now it just upped the ante by adding this feature which has long been requested.
Ben Johnson
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