• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Organizing
  • Editing
  • Explainers
  • Photo-editing A-Z
  • About

Life after Photoshop

  • Lightroom Classic
  • Capture One
  • Nik Collection
    • Analog Efex
    • Color Efex
    • Silver Efex
    • HDR Efex
    • Viveza
    • Sharpener
    • Dfine
    • Perspective Efex (retired)
  • DxO PureRAW
  • ON1 Photo RAW
  • Exposure X

Did you know you can stack filters in Google Snapseed?

September 11, 2016 by Rod Lawton

I am a huge fan of Google Snapseed. I’m not a huge fan of what Google has done with it, dropping the desktop Snapseed app and then the online Snapseed editing tools built into Google+ Photos. This has been replaced by a separate Google Photos option with much simpler editing tools.

Thankfully, Snapseed still exists as an iOS and Android app, and while it’s still around I aim to make the most of it – and I suggest everybody else does the same!

Now although it’s a mobile rather than a desktop app, there are ways to get it to work nicely alongside your desktop photo collection. I’ll come on to that in a later post, but for now I want to look at one of Snapseed’s hidden depths – the ability to stack multiple filter layers to create much more complex effects than you might imagine.

It’s simple to do. Once you’ve added one filter, you click the add filter button, bottom right (the button with a pencil in a white circle) to add another. You can keep going until the image looks exactly how you want it.

snapseed-filterstack-01

Here’s one I made earlier. If you look at the top right corner next to the SAVE button you’ll see the number 5. This indicates the number of filters that have been applied to the image. And if you tap this number, Snapseed will display the filter layers in the bottom right corner.

snapseed-filterstack-02

You’ll see that all the filters are labelled by type, and right at the bottom there’s the ‘Original’ image. If I tap this, I see the original photo before any of the filters have been applied. So next, I’ll step through each of the filters I’ve added – it’s an opportunity to explain some of my thinking behind this gritty black and white end result, too.

snapseed-filterstack-03

So what I wanted was a harsh, gritty, contrasty look to complement the weathered stone of the castle. Snapseed’s Noir filter seemed a good place to start, since this added a contrasty, grainy look to the photo.

snapseed-filterstack-04

But I also wanted the photo itself to have a damaged, weathered look, so I added Snapseed’s Grunge filter, choosing a preset which mimicked the look of an aged, stained print.

snapseed-filterstack-05

I also wanted the picture to look as if it came from an old-fashioned plate camera with strong vignetting towards the edges of the frame – and Snapseed’s Vignette filter is made for the job. By this stage, though, I thought some unwanted colour tints were creeping in.

snapseed-filterstack-06

So my next step was to add the Black & White effect. This stripped out the coloured tints and I picked a preset to give me rich tone and contrast, but not too harsh.

snapseed-filterstack-07

I finished off with one of Snapseed’s preset frames, choosing one which had a weathered, hand-finished look of its own. I’m quite pleased with the results, though this process took quite a few steps, and there’s no way to save these recipes in Snapseed… or is there? The menu in the top right-hand corner has an ‘Apply last edits’ option, and in a future post I’ll look at how you can use this to apply the same effects, however complex, across a whole batch of images.

Related

Filed Under: TutorialsTagged With: Black and white

Rod Lawton has been a photography journalist for nearly 40 years, starting out in film but then migrating to digital. He has worked as a freelance journalist, technique editor (N-Photo), channel editor (TechRadar) and Group Reviews Editor on Digital Camera World. He is now working as an independent photography journalist. Life after Photoshop is a personal project started in 2013.

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to this site

Enter your email address to subscribe to Life after Photoshop and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Adobe Lightroom: what is it, where do you get it, what does it cost in 2025?

Adobe Lightroom is not one program but three. You could … [Read More...] about Adobe Lightroom: what is it, where do you get it, what does it cost in 2025?

The best photo editing software for organizing, editing, RAW and effects

Choosing the best image editing software used to be easy. … [Read More...] about The best photo editing software for organizing, editing, RAW and effects

Layers explained

Layers explained: what they do and how to use them

Layers are a central part of many photo editing processes, … [Read More...] about Layers explained: what they do and how to use them

BAN adjustments… Basic And Necessary image corrections to do first

Photo editing software does two quite different jobs. It can … [Read More...] about BAN adjustments… Basic And Necessary image corrections to do first

More Posts from this Category

Mission statement

Life after Photoshop is not anti-Photoshop or anti-subscriptions. It exists to showcase the many Photoshop alternatives that do more, go further, or offer more creative inspiration to photographers.

Affiliate links

Life after Photoshop is funded by affiliate links and may be paid a commission for downloads. This does not affect the price you pay, the ratings in reviews or the software selected for review.

Contact

Email lifeafterphotoshop@gmail.com

Copyright © 2025 Life after Photoshop · News Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OK