Reading Time: 3 minutes

Snapseed is a very under-rated app. Mostly because I think people don’t know how to use the tools it has, even I didn’t for the longest time. I received a great response to my previous Snapseed Tutorial, so I decided to post one more on it!

In this tutorial, I’ll tell you how to make the background black and white in your pictures. We’ll be editing on Snapseed.

How to make the background black and white

Select the picture on which you want to achieve this effect. Done?

If you don’t have Snapseed installed you can download it from here if you have an Android Phone and from here if you have an iPhone.

Open the picture in Snapseed and select Brush from the tools section.

Also Read: Get ROSY TONES in your pictures by Lightroom: 5 Step Editing Tutorial

Select the brush tool

Try to make the selection as accurate as possible. Now, from the options at the bottom, choose Saturation and decrease it to -10.

Decrease the saturation to -10

Selecting the background by painting over it

Now, what you have to do is simply paint over the background or any part of the picture which want to convert into black and white.

If you click on the icon that looks like an eye, you’ll see where you have painted exactly highlighted in the color red.

Red is the region I have painted with the brush

To make more accurate brush strokes, you can zoom in by pinching with your fingers or use the rectangular box in the bottom left of the screen. The brush will automatically adjust its size.



Zoom in with the help of the rectangular box at the bottom left

Once you are satisfied with the selections you have made, click on the tick and your changes would be applied on the image. I suggest altering some settings after this for the best results.

I applied a filter from the Grainy film in the tools and pumped up the contrast a little and this was the result:





If you have questions or any other tutorial that you’d like me to write about, let me know in the comments below.

Let’s connect on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Subscribe to never miss a post!