So here’s the workaround to get a good new image.

First, you start with a picture that you want to play with…Snapseed Workaround|2|©JamesECockroft-20150417I shot this one from the elevator on the way out of the office this morning.

As an aside, it’s great to have the flexibility to 1) go in early; 2) have a flexible-enough schedule to work slightly longer hours at the beginning of the week so that you can 3) get off at 10:30am on Friday and have time to do chores, go pray the Jummah prayer, mow the lawn, and spend hours playing with pictures and writing posts, all before dinner. Alhamdulillah.

Anyway. So then you edit:Snapseed Workaround|4|©JamesECockroft-20150417Snapseed makes it fun, like many other editing apps. I have to say that I like the big buttons. Other of my go-to apps have similar functions, but the buttons are much, much smaller.

Anyway, when you get something you like, you can save the stack if you like. Just save or save a copy as normal.

I skipped that here.

Hit the three little dots in the top right corner, and select ‘Share…’Snapseed Workaround|6|©JamesECockroft-20150417

Then, choose Copy.

Snapseed Workaround|7|©JamesECockroft-20150417Back in Snapseed, press ‘Open’ in the top left. If you forgot to save—or didn’t care to—Snapseed will helpfully warn you.Snapseed Workaround|8|©JamesECockroft-20150417Press ‘Open’ again, and choose ‘Paste’ from the dialog.Snapseed Workaround|9|©JamesECockroft-20150417

Then you can save away, and it will cook the edits into a new image.

The only visual indication you’ll have is that the stack count will drop to ‘0,’ but you will have a new image with all your edits baked in.

From here, you just save it, and…

So there’s the workaround.

Just one thing… Many other good, fun editing apps simply don’t require any workaround. Hopefully, Snapseed joins the ranks of apps that can save their edits.

Until then, is Snapseed good enough to mess with Workarounds?

Here in a bit, I’ll do a bit of compare/contrast between the Snapseed edit and edits from another app or two.

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  1. James, maybe you found a solution already.
    Otherwise, have you tried to save as a copy in Snapseed, then share using the default iOS photos app (or even directly from Snapseed)?
    That’s what I’m doing, I share to Smugmug and still have the exifs. They were gone when I overwrote the original image instead of a save as.

    1. Sharing directly from the phone isn’t much of a problem, admittedly. But I can’t save images and exif directly to my computer, not without some sort of mediator. I have the same problem with Hipstamatic DSPO and anything that uses Apple’s .AAE sidecar files for edited images.

      The only currently known method for getting edited images from the phone to the computer for backup involves using AirDrop or Dropbox, and both methods destroy metadata.