A few weeks ago I made a grave error in leaving my iPhone on the kitchen counter as I prepared my lunch. While putting the final touches on the salad I reached for the large and full bottle of olive oil. I made the grave error of picking up the bottle by the lid and unfortunately the lid slipped off and the edge of the bottle landed directly on top of my iPhone 5s on the glass side of the camera. The glass shattered instantly into very tiny, sharp and dangerous pieces. I had to replace it the glass immediately.

This poor iPhone has had it’s glass replaced three times now. The first time due to it being stolen but found with a completely smashed screen. The thief was kind enough to call me using the Find my iPhone call feature and leave it at lost and found at a train station in London. I assume when he figured out he couldn’t break into the iPhone he smashed the screen and then left it with the lost and found. The second time was an unfortunate drop off a desk without the protective case. And the third was last week’s slippery move with the olive oil bottle.

My iPhone camera withstood the damage of the first two crashes but the third one damaged its focusing abilities. However, the camera’s exposure settings still worked well. Of course I was depressed as I love taking photos and posting them on Instagram or posting family photos on my private Facebook page.

I remember downloading Snapseed, a fun photo editing application made by Nik Software, a subsidiary of Google. It works on iOS and Android.  I thought I would make the most out of my camera while waiting for the iPhone 7 to release and deciding whether or not to upgrade or try to repair my iPhone 5s.

Over the past few weeks I’ve had a lot of fun making pictures by combining three to four filter layers on top of the soft focus photos images. Here are a few examples of images I turned into #filterart (as I’ve tagged them on Instagram).

Here are two photos I made before applying the filters. You can see the results above.

Here is the four step process I follow.

First I take the photo with the iPhone Camera and then I open the image in Snapseed. I will first crop the photo and then apply two or three layers of filters. I often apply the grainy film filter, followed by a vintage filter, and sometimes I’ll work with the colour saturation filters. When I then take the photo into Instagram I apply a final touch with the Lux filter that often makes details and colours pop.

Here is a photo I made applying four or five filter steps.

Here are a few more before and after photos.

 

 

Here are some of the filter options in Snapseed.

I hope you enjoyed this short overview of Snapseed. I’m really enjoying the artistic process and having fun discovering the results. The feedback on Facebook and Instagram has been positive.

Enjoy!

PS. I have no affiliations with Apple, iPhone, Google, or Snapseed.