Regardless your photographer skills, your photos always need a little retouching and enhancing. They may be subtle adjustments that improve exposure, colors, white balance, and lighting. Or they may be artistic transformations for fine art photography and collages. Whether you take pictures with your phone camera and share them right away or you use a professional camera and studio lighting and spend hours doing post-processing, this article is for you.

Finding the best photo editor that suits your workflow isn’t that easy. There are a lot of photo editors to choose from. They range from basic editors with several filters and tools to professional editors that require powerful resources and a large budget.

Dubbed by BBC as the lite Photoshop, Fotor is the best free photo editing software for mac! Ranking top in Mac Store in over 80 countries, Fotor is the only image editor you need on Mac! Polarr is a free photo editor, available for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Chromebook, and online. It’s great photo editing software foc Mac because it provides a dedicated workspace for beginners, with basic tools and adjustments. Snapseed is one of the most popular photo-editing apps on the market – and for good reason. It’s very intuitive and easy to use, which makes it great for beginners. At the same time, Snapseed. Suggestions for free and simple photo editing software? Last thread about this is due for an update. Edit: or inexpensive. More posts from the mac community. Posted by 1 day ago. Today my iMac arrived & I’m super excited! Posted by 6 days ago.

To help you take the best decision, we’ve tested many popular photo editing applications covering different levels of expertise and budgets. Choose wisely the best solution for you!

1. Luminar

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac
Notable Features – AI Filters: AI Sky Enhancer, Accent AI

Luminar is a popular color photo editor. It’s been competing with Lightroom and other top editors for some time and every version comes with new features and improvements. For example, one of the major improvements provided in the last version is an automatic lens distortion correction tool: the program detects what type of lens was used and removes the distortions associated with it.

The editing tools are smart and detailed. Luminar offers a lot of filters, easy to control and fine-tune through sliders. It provides all basic adjustments such as contrast, hue, saturation, highlights, and shadows. Furthermore, you can crop and rotate your images with a few clicks. Luminar is also an excellent tool for removing background noise without compromising the quality and clarity of an image, even at ISO levels of 6400.

Luminar is an outstanding photo editing software and one of our top picks. It has everything you need to make quick and detailed improvements to your photos.

2. Apple Photos

Format – Pre-installed program available with Mac devices
Available Platforms – Mac
Notable Feature – Automatic image enhancing

Apple Photos is a top photography editing software. It’s a long standing program that has been available for many years for Apple devices. Each new version of Apple Photos brings new features and improvements. The program has an easy to use interface that makes photo editing a breeze.

Among its photo editing features there are batch processing, automatic enhancement, and geometric transformations. Editing functions are split into several categories and it provides a quick-edit toolbar too. All tools are easy to use and give you precise control over your adjustments. Apple Photos offers all standard editing settings such as black point, shadows, highlights, and exposure. You can reduce noise and sharpen photos too.

There are a couple of other interesting features like the auto-enhancement tool and the curves tool. The auto-enhancement improves the basic parameters of your photo and creates a more balanced aspect. The curves tool on the other hand allows you to adjust color balance and create interesting effects. Combine these features and you can see why Apple Photos is one of the best photo editors for Mac.

3. Adobe Lightroom

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac
Notable Feature – Automatic lens detection and error correction

Lightroom has long been hailed as the king of photo editing. Adobe has created a magnificent product that is still one of the best on the market. It’s available as a one-off purchase and as part of the creative suite with subscription.

Lightroom has excellent photo management features. You can easily categorize and tag your photos, add ratings, and set labels based on colors and keywords. This is essential if you’re a professional photographer dealing with large amounts of pictures.

Furthermore, Lightroom provides top photo editing software qualities. You can adjust any aspect of a photo from contrast, clarity, exposure, highlights, and saturation to RAW settings using sliders.

Moreover, Lightroom can automatically detect the lens type used for a picture and fix distortions and chromatic aberrations. It allows you to save your settings like presets so that you can do batch processing in just a few clicks.

4. Aurora HDR

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac
Notable Feature – LUT Mapping

Aurora HDR is one of the best HDR photo editors, but it works great for usual photo editing tasks. This program is well-known for its exceptional quality and ability to deliver high-end HDR photos with minimal effort and maximum customization.

You can easily perform tone mapping on either bracketed images or single files. Moreover, it contains a myriad of HDR presets that emulate particular artist styles. For example, you can use the work of renowned photographers and artists such as Trey Ratcliff and Serge Ramelli.

To add extra depth to your HDR images, Aurora provides extensive color grading options – you can really transform your images into exceptional end products. Last but not least, Aurora offers adjustment layers for both targeted and global edits, which give you even greater control over the final style of your photos.

5. GIMP

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac & Linux
Notable Feature – Clone and Airbrush tools for quick error correction

GIMP is an open-source photo editing software available for all operating systems. It’s currently considered the best free photo editor available. GIMP has a powerful engine that competes with expensive photo editors, drawing functionalities, and image manipulation tools. It’s regularly updated and you can find support on forums and discussion groups.

Among other features, GIMP allows you to make fine-tuned settings for geometric transformations, edit levels, curves, saturation and brightness, and control contrast, white balance, and color temperature.

One of the tools we like is the healing tool that allows you to remove unwanted items from your photos. GIMP also offers many creative filters and textures, and the possibility to work with layers and masks.

GIMP is a great option if you are on a budget.

6. Photolemur

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac
Notable Feature – One-click AI Editor

Photolemur is an excellent photo editing software for beginners and advanced photographers. It provides a multitude of automatic tools that make editing easy. If you are a professional photographer and have a large amount of photos to edit, you can use the automatic features to edit groups of photos quickly.

For example, Photolemur offers tools such as color recovery, sky enhancement, exposure compensation, natural light correction, noise reduction, and smart dehaze. You can improve your photos in seconds.

Photolemur allows you to see your adjustments’ effect by splitting the main panel into a Before/After display. Furthermore, it provides basic editing tools like cropping and geometric transformation, so you can improve framing and composition.

Finally, the program doesn’t require powerful processing resources and can cope with large files easily. Photolemur is certainly a good photo editing software with a great deal to offer.

7. Corel Paintshop Pro

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac
Notable Feature – Customizable interface

PaintShop Pro is Corel’s flagship product. It has been one of the best photography editing software and an important rival to Photoshop for a long time. It’s one of the most powerful photo editors on the market.

If you are a beginner, you can choose a simplified interface that is easier to use. On the other hand, if you are an advanced photographer, you can choose the advanced layout that gives access to the entire set of editing tools.

Once you get into the actual editing, you can see that PaintShop Pro has advanced capabilities. For example, there is a warp brush tool that allows you to correct lens distortion. Moreover, there are standard photo editing tools such as clone, red-eye and eraser that allow for simple and quick adjustments.

The workflow is fluid and efficient too. All tools can be found in the top menu or in the left-hand toolbar. The editor provides many preset color pallets, which are useful if you want to edit your photo in a certain tone or vibe. PaintShop Pro is an excellent choice for a photo editing software.

8. Capture One

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows
Notable Feature – Lens Profiles

Capture One is created by the Danish company Phase One. The company is specialized in DSLR cameras and has branched out with this fantastic product. As photo editing software, Capture One has many similarities with Lightroom. It offers full RAW editing and organizing features.

Capture One supports a wide range of file formats. Aside from RAW, it works with JPEG, TIFF, and PSD. Furthermore, you can make general and local adjustments, the editing tools are well ordered and divided in categories such as “levels”, “curves” and “contrast”, local adjustments are automatically applied to new layers, and the entire editing process is fast and efficient.

Capture One is pleasant and user-friendly. It’s for sure a good competitor on photo editors market.

9. Affinity Photo

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac
Notable Feature – 360-degree image editing

Affinity is renowned for its usability and simplicity and it’s considered one of the easiest photo editing software. It has an intuitive interface with well-structured toolbars and features. The only downside we found is that it doesn’t have any file management capabilities.

With Affinity you can make seamless and smooth adjustments to your photos. If you want to improve image quality, you can use sliders to adjust clarity and contrast. You can edit RAW files, create HDR composites and panoramas, and do batch processing.

We also liked the 360-degree image editing tool. If you have a 360-degree image stitched together from various shots, you can edit the whole picture.

Because it lacks image management, Affinity isn’t appropriate for professional photographers. Still, it remains a powerful and easy to use editor that delivers beautiful pictures.

10. ON1 Photo Raw

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac
Notable Feature – Automatic HDR creation tool

ON1 is another popular photo editing software. ON1 2018 is an awarded program and ON1 2019 is annouced to be even better. ON1 has a wide range of features for photo editing and it’s often compared with Lightroom and PaintShop Pro. The only drawback we found is the need for powerful processing resources.

ON1 gives you complete control over the editing process. You can use sliders to change basic parameters such as clarity, hue, saturation, and color temperature. You can use basic photo filters like vignette and noise reduction and creative preset filters that are high quality and can emulate a wide range of photo styles.

The editing process is smooth and fast, and it works in a non-destructible environment – any changes can be undone. The combination of editing controls, presets, and image enhancing features makes ON1 top rated photo editing software.

11. DxO Photo Lab

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac
Notable Feature – Local adjustments

DXO Photo Lab is the successor of DXO Optics Pro. Launched in 2017, DXO Photo Lab is mostly a RAW photo editor and it’s one of the best photo editing software for editing RAW images. The RAW processing engine is extremely powerful and allows you to edit your photos fast and efficient. We’ve much appreciated the noise reduction and tonal range of the RAW editor – you can clean up your photos and improve their quality.

Aside from simple editing functionalities, DXO PhotoLab provides local adjustment features. If you want to make adjustmenst to certain areas of a photo, such as a person or an object, you can use the local adjustment tool. You don’t have to create new layers or save the image – everything is non-destructible.

Finally, DXO can detect the camera lens used for a picture. It offers full compatibility with a variety of different lenses – you can easily make auto adjustments and overcome issues like chromatic aberration, lens flare, and lens distortions. DXO PhotoLab is definitely an improvement on the previous versions and is excellent photo editing software for beginners.

12. Pixelmator Pro

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Mac
Notable Feature – Advanced quick selection tool

Pixelmator is a brilliant program for Mac and a great competitor to Apple Photos. Some say it’s actually the best photography editing software for Mac. The latest version has received very good reviews – basic performance and functionality has improved ten-fold. It provides a good workflow and fast access to basic photo editing tools.

Pixelmator provides basic adjustments such as contrast, clarity, saturation, and brightness. You can easily transform photos from camera version to vivid artworks.

Furthermore, Pixelmator offers some awesome automatic features such as automatic horizon detection, quick selection, and context sensitive object removal. You can remove unwanted objects from your photos and level out any irregular horizons. As you would expect from one of the best basic photo editing software, you can also save your settings like presets as use them anytime. We were impressed by the usability of Pixelmator and the changes it made from the last version, while still remaining an easy to use photo editing software.

13. Raw Therapee

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows
Notable Feature – Automatic noise reduction tool

This is one of the best software for editing photos and it’s also free – what could be better? Raw Therapee has reached version 5.0 and has many new features. It provides many basic editing tools, which makes it perfect for fast and simple image processing, but also advanced features. For example, you can remove chromatic aberration, adjust luminance, and reduce noise using just simple sliders. Moreover, you can use the curve pipette feature for more control over colors and the color picker and navigator can now show RGB, HSV, and L*a*b values, which gives you more flexibility for color selection.

The developers at Raw Therapee have worked hard in the last two years to improve processing speeds and fix a lot of problems. Today, you can count Raw Therapee among the top photography editing software.

14. Zoner Photo Studio

Format – Monthly subscribtion plan
Available Platforms – Windows
Notable Feature – Six groups of automatic photo enhancements

Zoner Inc. has been working hard on Zoner Photo Studio for the last few years. The latest version aims to be an easy to use photo editing software and a great improvement over previous versions. The menu structure has been improved and everything is easily accessible now. Moreover, the adjustment sliders and toolbars have had a very welcomed redesign.

Zoner Photo Studio provides support for JPEG and RAW files. It identifies the type of camera and lens used for a picture and makes automatic corrections like fixing alignment and balance. You can save your settings as presets and use them anytime – this really speeds up the process as you can create presets for specific types of photos like portraits and landscapes.

Zoner Photo Studio is certainly heading in the right direction and for this reason it’s an excellent choice for photo editor software.

15. Cyber Link

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac
Notable Feature – Copy styles from one picture to another with AI Style Transfer

Cyber Link PhotoDirector 10 is a photo editor that uses AI technology to improve the editing process. Like ON1, it requires a powerful computer to run at its full potential. One of the improvements in the last version is the capacity to edit layers – you can add layers on top of your photo to make selective edits and this gives you more precision.

Moreover, PhotoDirector provides basic photo editing features, automatic tools for skin smoothing and body shaping, and the AI Style Transfer. The AI Style Transfer uses Artificial Intelligence technology to learn photo styles and copy them to your own photos. Automatic features make PhotoDirector easy to use and efficient.

16. BeFunky

Format – Web based photo editor
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac with a browser
Notable Feature – Automatic image enhancement tool

BeFunky is a fantastic photo editor that works in a browser. It has a smooth interface and works with popular browsers such as Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. It’s certainly a good option for a free photo editing software.

The edit toolbar contains most of the features you need. You can use sliders to adjust exposure, vibrancy, sharpness, clarity, and other basic parameters. Furthermore, BeFunky provides the Auto Enhance feature and options to add vignettes and glow.

We’ve also appreciated the touch up panel that gives you tools for portraits retouching like blemish fixing and skin perfecting. Overall, BeFunky is easy to use and creates beautiful images. Whilst this may not be suitable for professional photographers, it is certainly a great photo editor for beginners.

17. Photoscape X

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows
Notable Feature – Presets and textures

Photoscape X is simple but effective photo editor software. It’s undeniably basic in its look and design, but it provides powerful features. The editor gives you precise control to adjust contrast and color curves and it provides many presets for quick editing.

Photoscape X supports RAW files and converts them to other formats. It also provides batch processing for applying the same adjustments to multiple photos in a single step. Photoscape X offers automatic image editing tools for red-eye reduction and removing imperfections.

18. ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows
Notable Feature – Photo management

ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate is one of the best digital assets managers and a powerful photo editor. It provides RAW support, adjustment layers, face recognition, and selective edits.

The latest version brings many new features and improvements. ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate isn’t just a photo organizer anymore. It allows you to import presets or create your own and share them with others. It also allows you to copy adjustments from one image to another, import LUTs, use images as luminance masks, and import/export actions.

ACDSee provides powerful image enhancement features such as luminosity selections, the possibility to selectively apply adjustments (vibrance, saturation, hue, brightness, color temperature, tone, and contrast) using brushes and gradients, adjust contrast in specific tones, and dedicated black and white editing.

Best Photo Editing Mac

ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate is for sure a product to consider when you choose your photo editing software.

19. Alien Skin Exposure X4

Format – Downloadable Software
Available Platforms – Windows & Mac
Notable Feature – Customizable presets

Exposure X4 is an awarded RAW photo editor produced by Alien Skin that works as a standalone application and as Photoshop plugin. It’s been improving for over a decade and today it provides exquisite photo management, neat workflow, and amazing non-destructive photo editing features.

Exposure X4 is known for its high quality RAW processing. Its best features are highlight and shadow recovery, noise reduction, sharpening, color toning, and hue, saturation, and contrast adjustments on specific colors. It also provides a lot of presets and creative effects that you can customize. Exposure 4 works with layers and allows you to combine filters and effects and blend them together for unique results. Also, you can edit just specific areas of an image.

Exposure X4 remains an excellent image organizer. It features fast access, the same folder structure your computer has, categorizing, tagging, and rating. You can group photos based on a selected criteria and use smart searching tools. It’s a great editor for professional photographers.

• January 02, 2021
• 18 min to read

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 2021 (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.

Free Mac Photo Editor Download

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.

Best Free Photo Editing Programs

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.

What Is The Best Photo Editing Software For Mac Free

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.