If You Find Your Snapseed Windows Laggy …


Ever since I installed Snapseed on my iPad 2 I’ve been hooked on its simplicity to enhance my photographs quickly and easily sharing them on Facebook, Twitter or Email. I bought a license when Snapseed was released on Windows but just as quickly turned disappointment when performance was less than thrilling. Whether it was a small image or a full res one, the experience was dismal — lag sprang to mind when describing the experience with each effect I tried applying.

I contacted Snapseed Support with my observation to which I received the following recommendation that fixed the laggy performance.

Dear Jan,

Thank you for contacting Nik Software.  It sounds like you could be encountering a problem with how your graphics card unit (GPU) is working in conjunction with Snapseed.

In order to resolve this, the first measure would be to update the Display Adapters or GPU driver. Locate the manufacturer of the GPU as well as the model number.Once this is determined, it is then recommended to go directly to the GPU manufacturer’s website (best option) or if that is not possible to go to the computer manufacturer’s website (secondary option) to obtain an updated video card driver. It is NOT recommended to use Windows Update as in general we have found that these drivers are not updated as frequently. To identify which video card you have please do the following:

  1. Click on Start >Control Panel>System & Security >System >Device Manager and then click on the plus next to Display Adapter, this should display the make and model information.
    Windows XP users: Click on Start >Control Panel>Performance & Maintenance >System then click on the “Hardware” tab followed by the “Device Manager” button. Locate “Display Adapter” in the list and click on the plus next to it, this should display the make and model number of the GPU.
  2. Go to the manufacturer’s website (you may need to search for it via Google) such as Nvidea.com and with the model number you should be able to search for the latest driver. If you are unable to locate the driver you may need to contact the manufacturer of your computer to obtain an updated driver.
  3. Once the latest GPU driver is located,download and install the new driver.
  4. Restart the computer and try Snapseed once again.

About Jan Shim
Professional Photographer in Brunei Darussalam with diverse portfolio in commercial food, corporate, tourism and travel photography. Follow me on Facebook | Twitter.

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