Last night while I slept, Jorge sent me an email with a workaround to the Snapseed image saving problem: “The best way I ahve found is to import your photos using AirDrop. Your edits will all be intact and it works a lot faster than uploading to DropBox…”
Thanks, Jorge!
After reading Jorges email, curious about why this might be, I did a bit of searching around and read up a bit on Snapseed’s new ‘Stacks’ feature, which Google uses to add a ‘non-destructive workflow’ enhancement to Snapseed.
With Stacks, edits are stored in a metadata file, and you can go back and modify adjustments or remove them entirely at any time.
When you save a file, all you really save is this metadata file. And when you save a copy, Snapseed copies the original image, adds a new file name, and associates a new metadata file with that image.
As I surmised, it’s a feature and not a bug, and it comes via Apple: this is the exact same behavior you find with the Edit options in the Camera Roll.
Still sounds buggy, but at least it’s on purpose, and not entirely Google’s fault (though they could easily add a ‘Save as…” option that baked in the edits and make this easy on us).
In researching and finding the source of the problem, I came across another workaround and a description of how the whole process works.
It would be nice if Google modified the Save as Copy to save the image with edits baked in, or if they implemented another save option that saved the image with edits in place, but until then, we have two workarounds.
Sad thing is, Enlight is as good and needs no workaround; VSCO is as good and needs no workaround; there are likely other apps that provide similar options and don’t require a workaround. Don’t believe me? I’ll post some compare/contrast later tonight, InshaAllah.
Here in a bit, I’ll post screenshots of the workaround. I was going to post them here, but this post has gotten long enough already.
