mac.iLounge

The best way to describe this app in a nutshell: Snapseed is an awesome photo editing tool. In our review of the iPad and iPhone version, we said the app “focuses solely on making photos look more professional, employing a user interface with a modest learning curve that’s actually worth learning” and highly recommended it to our readers. Now Nik Software has brought Snapseed ($20) to the Mac.

We really love the elegant multitouch UI in the iOS version of the app, and Nik has done its best to bring the same simple but powerful tools to OS X. Using simple sliders, users can adjust everything from Brightness and Contrast to Cropping to adding effects and textures. New features are added in updates, signaled with “new” badges that encourage you to explore their potential. Snapseed offers a fun way to interact with your photos, and a practical one too. While the Mac version costs four times as much as the universal iOS edition for the same feature set, Nik promises that the under-the-hood performance of the Mac version is dramatically improved, with the ability to handle bigger files, do faster processing, and make more point-specific adjustments within photos at the same time.