- January 02, 2020
- 18 min to read
Ideal for beginner and intermediate photographers, this photo editing software is a simpler version of its big brother, the industry-grade Adobe Photoshop. It has all the necessary features you need to organize, edit, and share your photos. Jan 27, 2019 Photo editing is not an easy art to master. Sometimes, editing a photo requires more skill than actual photography. This is why using complex photo editing software can be quite daunting for.
Most free photo editors available on the App Store are quite basic, offering just a limited number of filters and allowing you to easily and quickly liven up your photos before posting them on social media.
But if you’re an aspiring or professional photographer, you probably need a more powerful app with a broader set of tools to use your creativity to the fullest. Besides, you probably use your Mac for photo editing because working on a large screen makes it possible to adjust the slightest details.
1. Apple’s Photos (Built-in app)
Apple’s Photos app is included for free on all recently released Macs. It does a good job at organizing your photos, but its collection of photo enhancement tools leaves much to be desired. Hopefully, our selection of the best free programs for photo editing on Mac will help you choose the right app to suit all your creative needs.
2. Luminar (7 days trial)
Luminar is another full-featured photo editor that’s popular with both Mac and Windows users. It can work as a standalone app as well as a plugin for such popular programs as Apple Photos.
Luminar uses Artificial Intelligence to enable sophisticated yet quick photo enhancements. Among these AI features are Sky Enhancer, which adds more depth and detail to the sky in your photos while leaving other areas untouched; Accent AI, which analyzes a photo and automatically applies the best combination of different effects to enhance your image; and Sun Rays, which allows you to place an artificial sun and adjust the lighting to your liking or make the sun rays already in your photo look even more incredible.
Luminar has over 60 filters you can apply to your photos to enhance them in a moment. Luminar also provides a set of powerful tools for cropping, transforming, cloning, erasing, and stamping, along with layers, brushes, and many more incredible features. Luminar supports the Touch Bar on the latest MacBook Pro, making photo editing even more effortless and pleasing.
3. Photolemur 3 (Free Version with watermark)
Photolemur is a relative newcomer on the photo editing market but it has all the chances to win the favor of beginner photographers and hobbyists. Running on Artificial Intelligence, Photolemur is a completely automatic photo enhancer, meaning that it does all the editing for you in no time. It has the simplest interface, with only a few buttons and sliders to adjust the enhancement to your liking and view the before and after results.
All you need to do is choose a photo (or a few) that you want to improve, drag and drop or import them using the Import button, and let the program make enhancements. After it’s done, you can compare the edited version with the original image by using the before–after slider and, if you want, adjust the skin tone or even enlarge the eyes using additional sliders. Pretty easy, huh?
Photolemur also offers a number of impressive styles to touch up your photos and give them a sophisticated and professional look. With this app, you don’t need to stuff your head with photo editing nuances and terms. Just run Photolemur and watch the magic happen!
4. Aurora HDR (14 days trial)
As you probably can tell from the name, Aurora HDR is designed to help photographers enhance their HDR photos, making them even more detailed and beautiful. It’s an ideal tool for editing your photos, with an extensive collection of more than 20 tools including details, tone, mapping, color, glow, and vignette. Each tool has its unique selection of controls to adjust its effects.
Aurora HDR enables you to work with brushes, layers, and masks, and provides a number of automatic AI tools for recognizing and removing noise, enhancing colors, lighting, and details, improving clarity, and adding contrast to dull areas while leaving other areas untouched.
Aurora HDR does a great job dealing with difficult lighting situations and creating full-of-life images while being easy to use.
5. Pixelmator (Trial 30 Days)
Pixelmator is a photo enhancer beloved by many Mac users, as it offers a good combination of a modern and simple interface, the ability to work on multiple layers, and powerful features that take photo editing to a whole new level. With so many editing tools, brushes, and effects, you can enhance your photos to your liking. You can choose between two versions of Pixelmator – standard and pro – depending on your needs. The standard version is great for basic photo editing with its selection of essential tools and filters, while the pro version is packed with extra brushes, tools, and effects that let you push your creativity to new boundaries. You can decide which version is suitable for you according to what features you’re looking for in a photo editing app.
6. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 (Trial link)
Photoshop Elements isn’t as affordable as other photo enhancers for beginner photographers. But luckily there’s a trial version available, so you can check it out before deciding whether this app is worthy of your money. Photoshop Elements acquired many powerful features from Photoshop, only Elements is simplified for amateur photographers and enthusiasts. It includes a good number of effects and filters, plus automated editing options for improving lighting, color balance, and exposure, and even opening closed eyes and reducing the effects of camera shake.
In addition to all of these awesome features, Photoshop also offers editing modes for beginners, intermediate users, and experts. Beginners will probably prefer Quick mode, as it focuses on essential tools to quickly enhance your photos by improving color, lighting, and other basic settings. Guided mode provides intermediate users with step-by-step guidance with more professional features like artistic effects, skin tone correction, and background replacement. Expert mode gives you full access to the app’s really powerful editing features and is ideal for creating stunning images.
7. Affinity Photo (Free Trial)
Affinity Photo’s interface may seem overwhelming at first, especially for novices, but when you come to grips with it you’ll find that the app is just what you’ve been looking for. Its numerous professional tools, effects, and filters encourage you to get creative with your photos. Among the coolest features Affinity Photo has to offer is a before and after view to compare the original photo with its edited version.
Affinity Photo works with 15 file types, including common ones like PDF, PSD, JPG, and GIF as well as some less popular ones. The app amazes with its abundance of basic and top-notch editing tools, allowing you to tweak your photos using all possible kinds of instruments. Affinity Photo allows you to edit HDR photos, apply artistic filters and effects, play with masks and layers, and create breathtaking compositions by combining several images in one. If you find its interface a bit much and are afraid of getting lost in all those advanced tools, you should probably look for something more suitable for your level. But Affinity Photo is worth mastering.
8. Google Photos
Google Photos is a popular cloud storage service for photos and videos. It can’t boast countless masterly tools like other photo enhancers that we review in this article, but it includes some fundamental features like filters, color adjustment sliders, and transformation tools.
Although Google Photos may not be that helpful when it comes to editing photos, it does a pretty good job at storing high-resolution images and videos with 15GB of free online storage, compared to iCloud’s mere 5GB (which you can upgrade to 50GB for a monthly fee). If you’re planning to go on a trip and take plenty of photos, then it might be smart to sign up for Google Photos to use that extra storage space when you come back.
9. PhotoScape X (Free)
A relatively new photo editing app, PhotoScape X has been gaining popularity with many Mac and PC users since its release in 2008. Its interface is simple but unconventional, with a number of tabs running along the top of the window. Each is responsible for a specific stage of editing. The Viewer tab allows you to browse and organize your photos. After you pick a photo, you can switch to the Editor tab, which includes a broad set of instruments, filters, and effects and a useful feature that enables you to compare the adjusted photo with the original.
The next tabs, including the Batch tab, mainly concentrate on editing and renaming multiple photos at once. The GIF tab allows you to easily create an animated GIF from a group of selected photos.
The downside of PhotoScape X is a lack of selection tools, so all changes are applied to the whole image rather than to a selected part.
10. Gimp (Free)
Gimp is a free open-source photo editing app that has been on the market for over 22 years and is available for Windows, Mac, and even Linux. Unlike many free apps, Gimp doesn’t have any ads or in-app purchases. Its grey interface might seem a little old-fashioned and it may be a bit sluggish when it comes to complex effects, though.
Gimp offers a vast collection of advanced tools that hardly any free photo editor can boast. It has numerous enhancement options such as clone and heal brushes, layers and channels, accurate selection tools, a number of transformation instruments, and, of course, color adjustment controls. Gimp is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing photos and is beloved by so many users for its price (free) and versatility. But if you can’t come to grips with Gimp’s interface, it may be worth paying some cash for a more user-friendly program.
Best Photo Editing software, free download
- January 02, 2020
- 30 min to read
Before you can upload your images to your personal blog, social media page or website, it is key that you first edit your images. Nowadays this is a step that you cannot afford to skip if you want your photos to be taken seriously. In fact, as there is such a wide range of software solutions on the market, there is no reason why you should skip this important step.
[Top10] Good Photo Editing Software for Beginners - Windows/ Mac
- Luminar 4
- Photolemur
- Adobe Lightroom
- Aurora HDR
- AirMagic
- Adobe Photoshop
- ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate
- Serif Affinity Photo
- ON1 Photo RAW
- PortraitPro
Though, seeing that users are spoilt for choice, to find the best photo editing tools that will boost your current set of skills can be quite a challenge. If you thought that Adobe Photoshop is the only photo editing software, you would be mistaken. Nowadays there are many much simpler software solutions too! The following are some of the best photo editing software that both professional and beginner photographers should check out.
1. Luminar (7-day Trial)
If you need a photo editing tool to get the job done in a flash, Skylum Luminar can help you to take your photos to new heights. It boasts a really useful AI slider that lets you play around with clarity, brightness and much more. There are also exclusive filters such as the Orton and Sunrays filters that you will absolutely love.
In fact, this software can give Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop a run for their money. Speaking of which, as you only have to pay a fixed fee once (eliminating those annoying monthly subscription payments), it makes sense why Skylum Luminar has become so popular amongst professional photographers. That being said, if you prefer to use Photoshop or Lightroom, it also boasts a plug-in that you will find quite handy.
2. Photolemur (Free version with watermark)
Photolemur is another photo editing software solution that realizes no photographer or designer has any time to waste behind a screen. With the help of AI and very sophisticated algorithms, this photo enhancer app will analyze all the necessary details and complete intricate adjustments on the spot.
All you have to do is just import your images to Photolemur and leave the rest to the app. The beauty of this tool is that you do not need any prior photo editing experience to complete basic things like getting rid of skin blemishes, whitening teeth or creating perfectly smooth skin as the app will automatically improve your images. Some of its other impressive features include sky enhancement, exposure compensation, color recovery and foliage enhancement. It is really easy to use (you can even enhance multiple photos at the same time) and compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems.
3. Adobe Lightroom(7-day Trial)
When Adobe Photoshop is too advanced for those straightforward touch-ups, Adobe Lightroom will be more suited for the task at hand. As a matter of fact, the fact that it is not as complicated as Photoshop is the whole beauty of Adobe Lightroom.
Some of its excellent features include: customizable sliders, gradient and brush adjustments, presets, blurring tools and other professional filters. Plus, you can use it with multiple devices and to help you keep your photos organized it uses face detection. All things considered, with this wide range of functional features and its easy-to-use interface, you can create just as remarkable photos with Lightroom.
4. Aurora HDR(7-day Trial)
Aurora HDR can either be used as a stand-alone app or Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom plug-in. Boasting more than 80 looks, you can transform your photos instantly to deliver first-class final results. Some of its more sophisticated features that professional photographers will welcome include masking and layers, blending modes, powerful batch processing and support for RAW files.
On top of that, it also offers exclusive tools like HDR Denoise and HDR Smart Structure. The Denoise feature will automatically identify any noise and remove it while still retaining all the details, while the latter tool is a slider that uses AI to create astonishing depth.
5. AirMagic(7-day Trial)
No photo editing software list will be complete without including a solution for drone photography. Similar to Photolemur, AirMagic uses sophisticated algorithms and artificial intelligence to enhance your aerial photography automatically. This drag-and-drop photo editing app boasts many unique features that help you to get rid of haze, improve the colours, enhance the sky and bring detail to the fore. As haze is unfortunately a common issue with drone photography, getting rid of haze is a must-have feature. After you have applied these unique features, you can also play around with different creative styles eliminating the need to purchase extra filters.
AirMagic can be used either as an Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom plug-in or stand-alone app. Plus, it can identify the type of camera that you have attached to your drone and adjust its lense corrections and enhancements to that particular camera.
6. Adobe Photoshop(7-day Trial)
You are most likely already very familiar with Adobe Photoshop. It is arguably the best known photo editing tool that countless photographers and designers rely on and is aimed at professionals that require all the extra features.
Its layering, masking and retouching features are still arguably the best and ideal for those advanced touch-up jobs. It also offers a wide range of brushes and filters, three-dimensional design functionality and multilayer editing. If you are searching for photo editing software, you can rest assured that Adobe’s products are really superior.
7. ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate (Free or Full version with 30-day moneyback option)
Do not let the oversimplified interface of ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate fool you as it can still get any job done. This comprehensive photography software is still relatively new on the market and boasts a couple of useful features. Two of its best features are that it uses facial recognition to organize and index your photos and there is no need to import. This means that you can edit your source file directly from your drive.
8. Serif Affinity Photo
This vector graphic design app has very similar features to the popular Adobe Photoshop and shares identical interfaces. For an affordable once-off fee, you can access professional tools similar to the likes of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop for editing your photos.
9. ON1 Photo RAW
Similar to Skylum Luminar and Aurora HDR, ON1 Photo RAW also offers an add-on for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. Plus, it is compatible with whichever operating system you prefer to use.
All you have to do is download it to your device and install it to unlock countless custom presets, borders, textures and stackable filters. All things considered, it is a comprehensive photo editing tool that enables you to improve your photos quickly.
10. PortraitPro
If your niche is portrait photography, PortraitPro is the tool you should give a go. This professional image editor app boasts all the features you require to remove wrinkles, sagging cheeks and other skin imperfections, enhance skin tone and add eyeshadows. Some of its other features include make-up tools, sliders, skin smoothing and sophisticated layering.
11. Corel PaintShop Pro
Photographers who value simplicity will really like Corel PaintShop Pro (and if you still get stuck, you can rest assured as there are learning tutorials available as well). That being said, do not let its simple approach to photo editing fool you as it does not make its editing capability any less effective.
This software boasts everything you require to enhance your pics from AI enhanced presets to graphic design templates to options such as blur and fix. Plus, if the wide range of brushes, textures and backgrounds do not float your boat, do not dismiss the software just yet as brand new features are being added continuously. Overall, it really offers some of the best user experiences.
12. DxO Optics Pro 10
It does not matter if Windows or Mac is your preferred operating system, DxO Optics Pro 10 works equally well with both. It boasts a suite of tools and features such as automatic and manual mode, customized profiles, optical corrections and U-point local adjustment technology. All things considered, it is a reliable tool that professional photographers can use to edit their photos and convert their RAW files to JPG format without any issues.
13. Inkscape
Just like DxO Optics Pro 10, Inkscape is also compatible with both Mac as well as Windows operating systems. What is more, you can use its source code if you would prefer to use it in your very own application.
It is ideal for aspiring photographers and boast a great number of features such as copy-paste object cloning, decorative handwriting tools, and a colour picker. It also supports multiple text formats and offers available extensions and add-ons. With the help of these tools, it is real easy to clone an object, overlay text or add a specific colour to your pics.
14. Capture One
This RAW image editor boasts some features that set it apart from the other software solutions available. For starters, if you need to work with big volumes of photos that are more than 20 megapixel RAW files, you will be impressed with its speed. What is more, to help you work more efficiently, the interface boasts some great customizability which means that you can change the keyboard shortcuts and layout to suit your preferences better.
If you often work with layers, you will also love the fact that it does not become slower when you have too many layers. Plus, it lets you make several adjustments per layer.
Some of its other fabulous features that will help you to work more efficiently are its sophisticated color editing and annotations. Its sliders make it much easier to tweak the granularity, while the annotations feature lets you jot down ideas to ensure that you can collaborate smoothly with other photographers and designers.
15. Fotor
Fotor is another photo editing software solution that boasts an intuitive interface. Some of its main features include: design templates, filters, HDR effects, and portrait retouching. Alternatively, if you are looking to create a bit more informal design, there are countless shapes, fonts and stickers that you can play around with. And, when you feel as if your creative juices are running low, you can save your design and continue editing from where you last stopped.
This well-known cloud-based software boasts more than 300 million users already. Surely millions of users cannot be wrong? You simply need to upload your pics to their site and you are all set to begin the editing process.
16. Pixlr Editor
Best Free Editing Software For Mac
If you have grown accustomed to Adobe Photoshop, but are exploring alternatives, be sure to try out Pixlr Editor. With this online photo editing software, you can add an image to a blank canvas and come up with one-of-a-kind effects. Some of its other main features include overlays, filters and more than two million effects free of charge. If you prefer to use an app, rest assured you can download it to your mobile device or desktop as an app. At the end of the day, if you are not entirely impressed with the features and options offered by Pixlr Editor, you can upgrade to another version (there are various to choose from) that offers more sophisticated options.
17. Gimp
This free professional software for editing photos is another excellent Photoshop alternative for beginners. It boasts a variety of features that can assist novices with digital photo retouching and composition. With the help of features like vignette and corrective mode, you can also take your photos of any file format to the next level.
Photo Editing Software For Beginners
If this sounds like the photo editing software solution for your needs, all you have to do is download it and install it on your device (it is compatible with Linux, Windows and Mac operating systems). Plus, thanks to its built-in file manager, file management will be one less thing on your to-do list.
18. Snappa
Snappa is a great solution for photographers who work with social media platforms on a regular basis. It lets you convert pics into Facebook banners and share images on different social media sites.
In short, it is a graphics and design software that enables you to add new effects (such as texts or graphics) to your photos in a flash or change the dimensions easily with the help of image dimension templates. Alternatively, if you are searching for some inspiration or running out of time, you will be glad to know that there are also stock photos available and a useful drag-and-drop photo editing feature. As the software is available online, users do not first have to download something in order to start designing.
19. PicMonkey
If you are searching for a more comprehensive graphic design solution as opposed to just photo editing features, PicMonkey is the perfect pick. With this package, you can create collages, edit your photos, crop and add touch-ups to mention only a couple of its features.
It is the ideal software solution to help you take your design skills to a more advanced level and unleash your creativity. Some of its other main features are basic filters, blank canvas design, and templates. Plus, if you regularly have to work with the different social media platforms, you will love its automatic sizing feature.
20. Canva
Best Photography Editing Software For Mac
Canva is another easy-to-use graphics and design software that you have most likely heard about before. Trusted my millions, it boasts various tools and features to help you edit your photos. Whether you simply want to crop or straighten a photo or want to get creative with textures, fonts, badges and stickers, Canva can help. Some of its other features include vignette, photo blur, a speech bubble maker, an image transparency tool, photo frames and design grids.
Easiest Free Photo Editing Software For Mac
Though, if you do not know where to start, be sure to visit the Canva Marketplace where you can find more than 8000 templates. Its basic features are available free of charge, but the more advanced features must be paid for. If you need to edit on the go, you will be happy to know that you can download it to your smartphone. All things considered, it is one of the best resources if you need to come up with visual content that you can use on your website or personal blog. Thanks to its user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, you do not need to be a professional photographer to take advantage of all its features.
Easiest Photo Editing Software for Beginners
With the right photo editing software, you can turn any photo into a masterpiece. Whether you want to highlight an important object, bring more focus to your pic or just want to reduce the size of your photo files to improve the loading speed of a website, there is the right photo editing tool for the job and your skills.