Whether you shoot with a simple smartphone, are a professional photographer, or own a website with lots of photos, you need software to optimize and edit your digital photos. We have selected the best. Discover the best free and paid photo editing software. below in this article, we will cover the 30 Best Photo Editing Tools for Photographers.
In our current times, it doesn’t really matter if you’re a professional photographer, an amateur, or someone whose job just so happens to involve a lot of editing pictures. Creating beautiful images is important when catching the attention of your future client. Not just for your front page, good images make or break ad campaigns. They can also be in the way of someone becoming a success or a bad meme.
Photo editing software can be very expensive for most people. The premier photo editing of choice is usually Adobe Photoshop, however, not everyone can afford the exorbitant price tag that comes along with the subscription.
To help you on your journey to becoming the best, we have compiled some of the best photo editing tools for photographers. Some are free, and some you may have to pay a certain amount. Some can have specific purposes and others will have all the tools you need to edit your photo from start to finish. Whatever, your needs, you’ll probably find it on our list! Take note that not all of these are free, some of them come with a small price to pay. The pay structure may either be subscription-based or it could be a one-time payment with a catch. We’ll try to weigh both the pros and cons of each application so you can better decide which one of them best suits your needs.
30 Best Photo Editing Software for Photographers
One of the pains of being a photo editor is separating the important subject from its background. Sometimes, the background is messy but the subject itself is really in the perfect lighting. The traditional way would be to carefully go through the image and lasso tool every bit of hair. However, in 2021, we don’t do that anymore, we have editors like Removal.AI. The name pretty much speaks for itself.
It uses the power of AI to go over the uploaded image and pick out the subject. The service is free and you’ll get a clean image but the catch is it will be smaller than the upload size.
VSCO is a very popular app that mimics the purpose of Instagram: it comes with a camera, a free photo editor, and a robust online community. VSCO offers a lot of cool and beautiful filters which makes it attractive to different kinds of people who love to play around with the feature. It makes editing very easy since it’s just a click of a button and slight adjustments here and there.
According to Prisma, this application can help you take photos “that appear to have been taken by Picasso, Munch, or even Salvador Dali himself”. With that statement, you’d expect them to give you editing tools that could make your images look like they were painted. The filters and editing tools make it easy for the user to create images that look like they have been drawn.
Adobe Photoshop Express has all the tools you’ll need to create a beautiful image. Even though it has a lot of features and tools, they have translated it easily to a small screen. This tool has a lot of Photoshop’s best features. Despite its intricacies, it’s easier to use on a smaller screen. It’s obviously one of the best free photo editing tools out there!
Foodie has set itself apart by being the only photo editor that is dedicated to editing pictures of your favorite meals. Yes, you can edit your food on every other application but Foodie has been calibrated especially to make food especially scrumptious. This free app has thirty built-in filters and you can create montages with it.
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC has always been the standard when it comes to professional photography. Regular Adobe Photoshop has a lot of amazing features but it can be bloated and too much for people who are not interested in photomanipulation. Lightroom on the other hand focuses on tools that a photographer may need.
Collage Maker is, as the name implies, is a phone application that’s used to make collages with multiple images. It has a variety of layouts and you can utilize texts, colors, and backgrounds to fit your needs. It also comes with basic editing tools so you won’t have to jump from one app to the other.
Adobe Photoshop Fix is not like the other photo editors, you don’t slap a filter on your image and call it a day. It’s for correcting or removing certain elements that you don’t want in your image. It doesn’t have all the features of its predecessor, Adobe Photoshop, but that’s only because this is supposed to be a lightweight program. It has a very impressive fluidity tool.
This free photo editor app allows you to easily and quickly correct your portraits. Clearly, you can blur a photo, smooth the skin, reduce the effects of shine, whiten teeth, apply makeup, and much more. The app also offers an interesting selection of backgrounds and effects. Perfect for retouching a photo and sweeping away your complexes!
Photofox online photo editor is the ultimate free photo editing tool, which won the Apple Design Award in 2017. A great solution for free and easy photo editing! One of its most spectacular features is mixing photos together. Photofox offers many Photoshop-like tools, such as layers, but above all, it is still a free and easy-to-use photo editor app.
AirBrush is a face-centered photo editor that offers to do away with any imperfection your face might have. You want to post selfies but you have pimples on your forehead? This app is easy to use and popular among people who constantly have to keep appearances. Even though you will need to pay for more features, the free version is enough for a lot of people.
PicsArt is an editor that doesn’t only edit photos but videos too. There are numerous tools you can use to make sure your image and videos are the best they can be. You will have painting tools and layering for a more detailed way of designing an image. Although PicsArt is usually used on the phone, you can also download the PicsArt program on your PC and edit your photos there!
ON1 Photo Raw for Mobile is a free photo editing app that’s a little different from the rest in that it lets you work on your photo while you take it. It has all the tools of a professional camera to help you take the best photo, with the right brightness, the right contrast, and more. All this to avoid having to spend a lot of time retouching afterward! With ON1 Photo Raw, you can enjoy real-time rendering and change your photo settings.-
Even though it shares the same name as the famous Paint program in Windows, it’s more comprehensive than that. It’s a free photo editor that you will need to download before you can use it. It’s not always the best photo editor however one can find ways to use it for your needs.
This intuitive photo editor is a Windows exclusive. It is to photos what Window Movie Maker is to videos. It’s easy to master and has all the basic photo editing tools you need. This even has a mode for beginners so you won’t get lost while using it.
PhotoFiltre is a classic in Windows photo editing. Currently in version 7, the free software allows easy online photo editing: cropping, adding filters or text, and deleting elements (eraser tool). You can also work with layers (a little on the principle of free photoshop photo editing but with PhotoFiltre which is free). What makes PhotoFiltre strong is its extreme simplicity!
Gimp is another example of a popular freeware that you can download and use automatically. A lot of people have cited Gimp as their first photo editor and some even continue using it deep into their careers. It doesn’t always have the most friendly user interface however it does offer a lot of tools that can be found on Photoshop.
Darktable is open-source software created by professional photographers. So it is like a free professional photo editing software. It is available on both Mac and PC. With Darktable, you will be able to do very sophisticated photo editing. You can change all the settings like white balance, color saturation, sharpness, brightness, angle, etc.
This is another free photo editing software for Mac and Windows. The free version of this online photo editor is a bit limited but worth checking out for free and easy photo editing. Photoscape X is popular photo editing software on both operating systems because it has several great features. It even has a tool to easily create GIFs from your photos.
Pixlr bills itself as the # 1 online photo editor on the net. It includes two tools: Pixlr X, a quick photo editor, and Pixlr E, an advanced photo editor. One of the big advantages of this online photo editing solution is that it can open almost any photo format, including PSD, PXD, JPEG, PNG, and SVG.
SumoPaint is the online Photoshop- it has pretty much everything Photoshop offers. The biggest difference between them is that it’s online and it’s free. The biggest similarities between them are aside from the similar tools, it will take a while to master them if you’re not tech-savvy or have no experience editing pictures before.
Snapseed may not be as popular as its competitors however Google’s photo editor should not be ignored. Like all editing applications, it already comes with built-in filters. Nonetheless, a fun thing you can do is create your own filter by adjusting some of the filters so that it can highlight what you want in a photo.
iPiccy seems to have found the right compromise between sophistication and efficiency. This online photo editor site offers a lot of possibilities but remains easy to use and learn. There is everything you need for quality photo editing! Other appreciable aspects of iPiccy: the photo library and the possibility of creating a collage, an ideal format for social networks!
Fotor makes your life easy by just being simple. It doesn’t make you go through videos or articles to understand how to use the application. All you need to do is download the app and just start using it. It’s free to use however if you want to access its other features, you can pay $3.33 /month.
Afterlight 2 advertises itself as “The Most Complete and Powerful Photo Editing Experience”. Which is a pretty realistic definition. This photo editing application has all the basic features, including tools to adjust exposure, hue and saturation, contrast, and tonality. In addition, the options for adding and personalizing text are very numerous.
Who has never taken a beautiful picture that is completely wrong? Maybe a little problem with perspective? The SKRWT photo editing application corrects these types of errors. This editing tool allows you to fix the angle of your photos, so everything lines up smoothly. It has automatic cropping and perspective correction.
If you follow a lot of influencers, you’re most likely to hear Facetune. There’s a reason why it’s very popular among those who bank on their image to sell themselves. It focuses on one’s features and makes use of editing tools like smoothening the skin, whitening one’s teeth, removing redness, and you can even slightly adjust the position of your face.
If you have a beautiful image marred by one photobomber, you can use TouchRetouch to remove the offending person. The same can be said for unwanted items in otherwise perfect photos. The application has tutorials that can walk you through how to use it. It’s easy to use once you get the hang of it.
PicMonkey is a basic online photo editor that’s good for everyone from seasoned editors to newbies. Its interface isn’t complicated and very intuitive. It’s not a free photo editor, you’ll need to pay € 10.99 per month. If you’re unsure if the subscription is worth it, you have a seven-day free trial to check if PicMonkey is the editor for you.
Movavi Picverse is available for download on iOS and Android. It has over 300 effects and color filters and allows you to do photo editing via your phone and fix your fuzzy pictures. Both beginners and professionals will enjoy the simple interface and the diverse options it has.
Your turn…
You can quickly feel overwhelmed by the number of free photo editing apps available today. We hope this article has helped you identify the best free photo editing software and which free photo editing software is best for your needs. Better to have great skills on one app than to be average on a lot. This is how you can learn how to better edit a photo.
Here you are, you have all the keys in hand to make a photo montage photo online, free and easy! Did we miss some awesome free photo editing software? Do you know any online software? What photo editing app are you using? Please let us know!
Short Author Bio
Jenn Pereira is an experienced web designer and digital marketing strategist. She loves to travel and capture photos of nature and portraits of people. You can read most of her articles at Medium.
Working as the Lead Marketer at Removal.AI, an AI-powered technology that can remove background from bulk images automatically and instantly, she believes that creating valuable content is essential to any business.
