Ever Wanted to Make Your Photos Look More Professional? My favorite android image editors

My friend recently asked me for a recommendation on on an image editor for android. He wanted to primarily use for improving the looks of some of his photos.

I quickly tried several editors based on other reviews. And here is my conclusion.

  1. First off I tried Bonfire.

Pros

• It has lots of great features and has nice sliders (friendly user interface) for adjusting lots of the filters
• In my opinion has all you need for improving the look of your photos
• Lots of effects

Cons

• Once it came to saving photos I was disappointed. It doesn't save the image in the original resolution, but saves them based on your settings which you can set up to 6144x6144, but who wants to save there photos in higher resolution than the original.

 You can get it from playstore here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gogoinv.bonfire.android


  2. Next I tried Fotor

Pros

• Like bonfire it has lots of filters and effects
• All you need for improving your photos

Cons

• The user interface isn't as friendly as bonfire's. It doesn't have sliders to adjust the filters.

Get it from Google play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.everimaging.photoeffectstudio


  3. Finally I tried Snapseed. My favorite of them all

Pros

• The best user interface in my opinion (No clutter at all).
• Has all the filters you need to improve your photos
• Plenty of effects
• Can edit raw photos

Cons

• May not have as many filters and effects as some other editors 

Get it form Google play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.niksoftware.snapseed 


  4. An editor that I've used a lot before I tried new/different editors is the one called Image Editor

Pros

• Supports layers
• Multiple tabs/projects
• Plenty of filters
• Can do the usual canvas or free layer manipulation

Cons

• For adjusting the filters it doesn't have the best interface (no sliders)

Get it from Google play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pcvirt.ImageEditor


Thanks for reading this short review.

Leave a comment if you have any suggestions or for other reasons.

All You Need to Compress Videos on Android

Warning: Compressing videos on android devices can take a long time.

Download and install the FFmpeg Media Encoder from Google Play

Here's an example screenshot:



It's pretty straight forward to use. Select an input file then an output file and format. Next you'll want to select a template or create your own.
My templates:
240p veryfast (mp4):
-vf scale='-2:240' -preset veryfast -strict -2
360p veryfast (mp4):
-vf scale='-2:360' -preset veryfast -strict -2
480p veryfast (mp4):
-vf scale='-2:480' -preset veryfast -strict -2
720p veryfast (mp4):
-vf scale='-2:720' -preset veryfast -strict -2
1080p veryfast (mp4):
-vf scale='-2:1080' -preset veryfast -strict -2
veryfast (mp4):
-preset veryfast -strict -2
Explanation of the options I used.

-vf scale='-2:240' -vf stands for video filter and the video filter we are applying is scale='-2:240'. The -2 automatically calculates the width based on the height to an even number. If we used -1 instead of -2 it would calculate it to the exact whole number but this could result in an error because the codec (we didn't specify a codec, but the default for mp4 is H.264) we are using has to have even numbers for width and height. The 240 is pretty straight forward; it sets the height of the video to 240 pixels.

-preset veryfast -preset option is to set a preset for H.264 encoding. The general guideline is to use the slowest preset that you have patience for which will lead to a smaller file size. Current presets in descending order of speed are: ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow. The default preset is medium.

-strict -2 -strict experimental or -strict -2 option is needed to encode audio to aac.