Snapseed, an iOS Instagram-like app for users who like to think of themselves as more sophisticated than simply slapping a filter on photos of household vegetables, is now being released on both iOS and Android for free:

This is not a head-to-head battle with Instagram. Google’s strategy here is to go after the photo geeks, the prosumers, the folks who resent how 90 percent of images now have the same retro filter. “It’s not like Instagram with one click filters,” says Josh Haftel, a 12-year-veteran of Nik Software now working out of Google’s Mountain View HQ as a product manager on Snapseed. “You’re not in and out in 5 seconds. You do more customization, from color saturation to light leaks.”

Having Google’s resources at its disposal allowed Snapseed to do way more than it originally thought was possible on Android. “We had assumed we would be limited to tablets with the Nvidia chipset for Android,” said Haftel. “But we were able to pull this off for all chipsets and for tablets and smartphones, which is pretty amazing considering this is a high end photo editing tool which does not compromise.”

There are unconfirmed reports that I have already downloaded it.