How do I open a photo and access the tools menu?

Open Snapseed and tap anywhere on the screen to import a photo from your camera roll. Once the photo is open, tap "Tools" at the bottom of the screen. The full list of editing tools appears. You will see the standard tools like Tune Image and Crop, as well as the advanced tools covered in this guide: Selective, Healing, and the option to open RAW files via the main photo import. Take a moment to browse the full list so you know what is available.

How do I use selective to adjust a specific area?

Tap "Selective" in the Tools menu. Tap on the part of the photo you want to adjust — say, the sky to make it darker, or a person's face to brighten it. A blue circle (called a control point) appears where you tapped. Now use two fingers to pinch and spread, which changes the size of the selection area shown by the dotted circle. Then swipe up or down with one finger to choose which property to adjust (Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, or Structure), and swipe left or right to change the value. The adjustment applies only to the area covered by your selection.

How do I remove unwanted objects with the healing tool?

Tap "Healing" in the Tools menu. Pinch outward to zoom into the area containing the object you want to remove. Use your finger or a stylus to paint over the object. As you lift your finger, Snapseed analyzes the surrounding pixels and fills in the painted area with matching background. For small objects like blemishes or power lines, a single brush stroke is often enough. For larger objects, work in small sections — paint a portion, let Snapseed process it, then paint the next section.

How do I edit a raw photo for maximum quality?

To open a RAW file, tap the plus (+) or the folder icon when starting a new edit and navigate to your Files or Camera app where RAW files (typically with extensions like .DNG, .ARW, or .CR2) are stored. Snapseed opens a special RAW development screen with sliders for White Balance (the color warmth of the light), Exposure, Shadows, Highlights, and Sharpening. These sliders pull from the full range of data captured by your camera's sensor, which gives you significantly more latitude to recover detail than editing a JPEG. Adjust White Balance first, then Exposure, before applying any creative adjustments.

How do I view and revise your edit history?

Snapseed saves every edit step as a stack you can revisit. After applying several edits, tap the undo icon in the top-left corner and then tap "View Edits." Each tool you applied appears as a card. Tap any card to see its settings and revise them — this lets you go back and fine-tune the strength of the Healing tool or adjust the Selective control point you placed earlier without starting over. When you are satisfied, tap Export at the bottom to save the final version.

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Snapseed is a free photo editing app from Google that is available on iPhone and Android. Most people who use Snapseed know its basic filters and brightness sliders, but the app includes a set of more advanced tools that can produce professional-quality results if you know how to use them.

The three most powerful features for intermediate users are Selective adjustments, the Healing tool, and RAW file support. Selective adjustments let you change the brightness, contrast, or saturation of a specific area of your photo without affecting the rest of the image. The Healing tool removes unwanted objects — a power line crossing the sky, a piece of litter on the ground, a mark on a wall — by replacing the selected area with matching background. RAW file support lets you open and edit the highest-quality format that many smartphone cameras and all digital cameras can save, giving you more detail and range to work with than a standard JPEG.

Understanding these tools expands what you can do with Snapseed from applying a quick filter to making thoughtful, targeted improvements that make your photos look genuinely better. The changes Snapseed makes are stored as edits — you can go back and revise or delete any step from your edit history at any time.

Snapseed works best on photos that are already reasonably well composed. Advanced editing tools can improve a photo, but they cannot fix a fundamentally poor composition or severe underexposure. That said, the RAW support in particular can rescue shots that look hopeless as JPEGs, pulling back highlight detail and recovering shadow information that a JPEG would have permanently lost.

Snapseed is free with no in-app purchases and is available in the App Store and Google Play. Google's support page at support.google.com covers the full tool list.

Snapseed Advanced Techniques: Selective Edits, Healing Brush, and RAW File Support

Open a photo and access the Tools menu

Use Selective to adjust a specific area

Remove unwanted objects with the Healing tool

Edit a RAW photo for maximum quality

View and revise your edit history

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