Facebook may have purchased Instagram, but Google isn’t going to be left behind when it comes to owning a photo editing app, as Snapseed creator Nik Software has announced it has been acquired by the search company.

Nik Software is a well-established firm in the world of photography, having written a variety of popular plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop, however, it’s with Snapseed that they became best known to mobile users.

We reviewed Snapseed a few months ago, and described it as “the best all-round photo editing app for iOS”, thanks to its extensive feature set and amazingly intuitive control system. It brings powerful editing tools to the iPhone and iPad, then makes them beautifully simple to apply.

The app has subsequently been launched for Windows and Mac OS, plus an Android app is in development too, something which we expect to get a boost now that Google is more heavily involved.

Writing on its blog, Nik Software said: “We’ve always aspired to share our passion for photography with everyone, and with Google’s support we hope to be able to help many millions more people create awesome pictures.” According to CNET, the iPhone version of Snapseed has 9 million users.

Google’s Vic Gundotra echoed Nik’s statement, saying “we want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone”.

Despite being labelled as an Instagram competitor, Snapseed is a very different beast, and it’ll be interesting to see how Google intends to integrate it with Google+, Drive and even Picasa.