How To Create and Save Filters in Snapseed

Jamie Read more January 25, 2022

Filters are custom edits you can use on any image. More sophisticated than those on Snapchat and more approachable than those on Photoshop. They allow you to quickly add a set of effects an image without having to go through the process on each individual image. It’s very easy to create and save filters in Snapseed and this tutorial is going to show you how.

How To Create and Save Filters in Snapseed

Even though I use my phone a lot for photography, I always download the images to my PC and edit them in GIMP or Paint.net depending on what needs doing. That may be a thing of the past now I have discovered Snapseed. Created by Google and steadily updated with new features, it’s a photo editing app to end them all.

Snapseed calls these filters ‘Looks’ and they are just one of the many tools available on the app to make your images look ten times better. I’ll mix and match the terms as we know these as filters from other photo apps.

Snapseed is available for Android and iOS.

Create and save filters in in Snapseed

The process is very straightforward. You use a single image to compile your filter. That filter, or Look can be made up of several effects. Once you’re happy, you can save the filter, give it a name and then apply it to any image with a single selection. It’s a very cool feature.

To create a Look in Snapseed, do this:

Open an image you want to edit within Snapseed.
Select the Tools menu at the bottom to access the settings to edit the photo.
Add your effects and edits until you’re happy then save.
Tap Looks from the menu. Scroll all the way to the right, you will notice a “+” sign. Tap the + sign.
Give it a name and select Save.

The creation of a Look takes less than a minute. The hard work is creating images you like and deciding what effects to apply and when to stop. I spent less than a minute making mine for this tutorial but spent almost two hours with the various editing functions getting the Look right.

Using your saved Look in Snapseed

Once you have saved your Look, you will want to know how to use it again for your other images right? That’s very straightforward too. You can create as many Looks as you like and as long as they have unique names all will be available from the Edit menu.

Open an image you want to apply your Look to in Snapseed.
Select Looks from the menu in the bottom of the screen.
Select the Look that you save. The effects will be applied on the current photo.
Select Export to save the image or apply more effects as you need.

When you select the Look from the My Looks page, it is applied to the image automatically. You can leave it as it is or tweak further as you need to. As long as you save the image once you’re done it will apply to the image the same as the original. You can then rinse and repeat this as many times as you like.

Sharing your Looks with others

This being a mobile app, there is the inevitable sharing option you can use to share your creations. You can also share your filters in Snapseed. It’s as easy as creating them in the first place.

Open an image you want to apply your Look to in Snapseed.
Apply the look you made then select the edit icon in the top right.
Select QR Look.
Select Create QR Look.
Have the person you want to share it with scan the QR code that appears on your screen.

To be able to receive the Look, your friend will need to follow the above process but select Scan QR Look instead of Create QR Look. The camera should then open and they can scan the code. Once they have it, they need to save it otherwise they will lose it when they close Snapseed.

Snapseed is an awesome image editing app that I cannot believe I was so slow in discovering. Sure it isn’t Photoshop but it is much more approachable and easier to work with. The app also contains most of the effects the average mobile photographer could need.

The ability to create and save filters in Snapseed is a neat one and if you like adding the same effects to multiple images for a particular style then this is the tool for you. Have you created anything amazing with Snapseed Looks? Link to them below if you have!