Image Editing Software For Mac

New version of award-winning photo editor created by Skylum team for Mac & PC. Order Luminar today and get an exclusive price for the most advanced image editing software. SupremePaint Lite is a simple MAC photo editor software which can be used to edit images on MAC. Here you can choose the option to rotate, flip, and scale the images. You are also provided with the option to make use of layers and clip arts to edit the image.

When we think about a generic photo editor, Photoshop is the first name that comes to mind. A pioneer in its field, it’s one of the most tool-packed, multi-purposed programs and a great photo editor by all means. However, you need to be very skillful to feel comfortable working with Photoshop. Its features allow you to do wonders, but mastering them can be tiring and time-consuming for both beginners and professional photographers.

But don’t worry. There are many alternatives to Photoshop that are straightforward and easy to learn. The following list includes photo editing software for Mac and Windows that don’t necessarily address beginners but are very good for them. Which is the best photo editing software for you? There is no good answer. You have to try different types of photo editors and see what you prefer: a standalone photo editor, a phone editing application, or an online photo editor.

Before choosing a photo editor, consider your interests, skills, technical resources, budget, and workflow.

1. Luminar

When you open Luminar 2018 for the first time, you are immediately faced with a user-friendly and neat interface, extremely pleasant for a photo editor. There is a panel with presets in the lower part of the screen, a panel with photo filters and layers in the right part of the screen, and a few handy tools in the upper part of the screen. It’s straightforward even for beginners.

The filters’ range varies from basic such as brightness and contrast adjustments to powerful image enhancements and creative effects. Some of them use Artificial Intelligence algorithms to provide automatic adjustments for different types of images. Luminar offers many presets too. They are called Looks and cover a lot of photography styles (landscape, portraiture, aerial, street, etc.). More Looks can be downloaded from Luminar Marketplace.

Luminar provides intuitive masking tools and layers to create subtle adjustments and realistic-looking pictures. You can find many free learning materials, video tutorials, and examples on Skylum website.

The next Luminar release is announced for late December 2018 and includes a much needed digital asset management software that gives you access to photo albums, organizing, sorting, and browsing tools, the ability to rate and label your photos, and better tools for batch processing.

Luminar is suited for both professional photographers and beginners. The future release will make Luminar a powerful competitor in the market.

2. Adobe Photoshop Elements

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a compact-size version of Photoshop that gives you access to many of Photoshop cool effects without requiring so much learning time and skills.

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a great app for beginners and advanced users who want a quick fix. For example, it provides many tools for portraits retouching. It recognizes faces and facial elements and allows you to adjust specific parts of the face like lips, eyes, and nose. It also provides a function for fixing closed eyes.

Adobe Photoshop Elements is also a great way get to know the process of professional photo editing, as you can choose the difficulty of your tools and learn faster to use Photoshop.

3. Apple Photos

Apple Photos is the built-in photo editor for Mac and gets better and better with each update. It has Apple’s signature design and its modern interface is easy to navigate and learn.

Apple Photos provides options for iOS Live Photos, has amazing sharing features, and offers all the basic adjustments a photo editor needs. It also provides cool effects and filters. Unfortunately, filters aren’t customizable and more advanced features are missing. However, it satisfies the basic requirements and it’s a good start for a beginner.

A nice built-in editor, Apple Photos can help you with simple and fast edits and guide you on your path to perfect photos.

4. Microsoft Photos

Picture Editing Software For Mac Free

Microsoft Photos is Microsoft’s software for organizing and editing photos. It’s relatively new and supports only Windows 10 but it’s also available for Xbox One, HoloLens, mobile devices, and Hub.

Microsoft Photos provides tools for viewing pictures, creating albums and movies with your photos, adding 3D effects, and basic editing. You can only adjust color, clarity, and light, crop and rotate images, and add text or textures. However, if your use Microsoft products and want a free photo editing software, you can give it a try.

5. Aurora HDR

If you like to improve your HDR photography, Aurora HDR editor is the right program for you. HDR photography captures details from images with different exposures and creates unique results. It’s useful for architectural and interior design photography, real estate photography, landscape shots, and many more.

Aurora HDR merges multiple images with different exposures and creates a single stunning image relatively fast. It can create a HDR photo from a single picture too. Of course, it isn’t just a merging tool as it allows you to retouch your photos and add creative effects.

Aurora HDR delivers high-quality images. It removes disturbing effects such as halos, ghosting, artifacts, and chromatic aberration and creates vivid and realistic images.

6. ON1 Photo RAW

ON1 can be used as a plugin and as standalone software. It provides powerful editing tools, ranging from basic to special image effects, HDR tools, panoramic stitching, and more.

ON1 offers all necessary tools for professional photographers at an affordable price. It has been upgrading and evolving quickly since its release in October 2017, trying to satisfy its customers’ requests. One drawback of this editor is the low performance of masks and layers. But ON1 offers a wide range of appreciated photo effects. If you are looking for your first photo editor, worry for your budget, or really want to experiment with a multi-purpose program, ON1 is a good choice.

7. Zoner Photo Studio

Zoner Photo Studio is a photo editor available for Windows. It offers a wide variety of tools and is a real competitor for Photoshop. Zoner Photo Studio is not expensive and has a monthly subscription that allows you to experiment for a short period of time and decide if you really need it without big investments.

Photographers claim that Zoner has a short learning curve. This is always a plus when you want to attract users dissatisfied with their current software. Overall, it has been described as intuitive and users can find similar tools in the Develop module (non-destructive editing) and in the Editor module (changes are integrated into the file). Users are still waiting for improvements in masking and layers area. That will elevate Zoner to the level of Photoshop.

Zoner is a powerful image editor, packed with a lot of professional tools.

8. Pixelmator Pro

For beginners who want more than a photo editor and look for graphic design, drawing, and vector graphics capabilities, Pixelmator is a good choice. It provides professional image editing tools and makes them accessible to everyone, beginners and advanced users.

Pixelmator values the user experience and a fluid workflow. It offers a single-window interface, which is elegant and focuses on the images you edit rather than on what’s around them. Using machine learning algorithms, Pixelmator provides great tools for selections, typography, and all sorts of editing. It has a very good price too.

Pixelmator Pro is professional software for photographers, designers, and artists. It’s a complete solution for creating digital art.

Warning: Pixelmator is photo editor for Mac only.

9. Corel PaintShop Pro 2018

Corel PaintShop Pro 2018 is the latest version of Corel PaintShop and comes with faster and more enhanced tools packed in its user-friendly interface. It’s a combination between a photo editor and a painting application that allows you to have fun while doing professional editing.

Corel PaintShop Pro 2018 provides manual and automatic image enhancements features. It’s a good choice for beginners because it’s easy to learn and use and offers a nice and straightforward workspace. However, some of its features require powerful resources and may be a little slow on older systems.

10. Paint.net

A free program, Paint.NET is an image editor developed to replace the build-in Microsoft Paint you can find in Windows. It’s also available for Mac. Even though it looks simple, there are a lot of surprising tools you can use. For example, it provides a plugin system with a selection of free plugins to allow you to customize your workspace.

The user interface isn’t cluttered, and it’s easy to understand. Simple features such as cropping, resizing, adding custom text, and working with layers are at hand. Unfortunately, working with layers has limited possibilities and image enhancing isn’t as good as in other applications.

Still, Paint.NET is a free application and its large amount of plugins can help you complete the task. It’s been growing a lot since the pixel-based application for drawing.

11. DarkTable

Another free and easy to use editor is Darktable. It’s available only for Mac. Even though it looks a lot like Lightroom, there are still many features missing. However, considering it’s free, it remains a good alternative. Darktable provides a database that manages your digital negatives and allows you to preview them in a panel equipped with lights and zooming tools. Also, it supports RAW editing.

Darktable has a great interface and cool features, and, most importantly, it’s free. So you definitely should consider it and give it a try.

12. СyberLink PhotoDirector

PhotoDirector is a smart photo editing software that provides a wide range of professional tools. It allows you to transform your pictures in works of art in no time.

PhotoDirector help you perfect your photos using impressive AI-powered tools, layers, and presets. The editing tools are well organized in tabs and intuitive labeled and the entire process it fast and fluid.

The distinctive feature of PhotoDirector is the AI Style Transfer tool. Using deep learning algorithms, it recreates the style of an artist or of a painting and transforms your photos accordingly. AI Style Transfer tool creates stunning results.

13. Affinity Photo

Affinity is designed for professional photographers. It’s available for Windows and Mac and provides all the tools you need. Affinity’s powerful toolbox offers features for image editing and retouching, working with multiple layers, and creating creative compositions.

Affinity provides quick correction and retouching tools, support for RAW files and a dedicated workspace, and dodge, burn, clone, patch, blemish, and red eye tools. You can also be impressed by the Inpainting Brush Tool, frequency separation capability, and liquefy features. Affinity doesn’t offer a digital asset management system and organizing files is quite hard. However, it’s one of the best photo editing software.

Affinity is a valid competitor for Photoshop and Lightroom and a much cheaper alternative to other photo editing programs. It’s also available for iPad.

14. PIXLR.COM

Pixlr Editor is an online photo editor. It provides more than 2 million effects, filters, and overlays, which makes it an extremely smart photo editor. Its drawbacks are the pop-up ads that distract you from the editing and the need to install Flash. However, it doesn’t require installation and works with many browsers.

Among its best features are layers and masks, a customizable interface, the possibility to open pictures from URL or import them from stock libraries, drawing tools, and retouching tools.

You can use Pixlr in a web page or as a mobile application. The mobile version is as good as the web one and allows you to edit your pictures on the go.

15. PicMonkey

If you want to use a photo editing program on Mac without installing anything, PicMonkey is a good choice for you. It’s an online photo editor that provides all the basic tools you need.

PicMonkey offers exposure adjustments, crop, rotate and resize tools, textures, themes and frames, effects, and image retouching tools. Unfortunately it doesn’t support batch processing and editing one image at a time can be time consuming.

PicMonkey is a great tool for beginners who want to learn more about editing and experiment with their photos without investing in expensive software right away. Still, PicMonkey is not free and requires a subscription.

16. Polarr

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. Polarr allows you to adjust exposure, brightness, contrast, highlights and shadows, color temperature, vibrance, and saturation. It also provides geometric transformations, filters, overlays, and effects. You can copy edits and apply them to other images.

Polarr offers image editing tools for advanced users as well. You can customize the interface by adding tools for creating distortions, adjusting sharpening and clarity, denoising, editing curves, adding borders and vignettes, and working with HSL.

Additional features like brush, color and depth masks, 3D LUTs, filters, overlays, double exposure, and batch exports are available for a monthly or yearly subscription.

17. IrfanView

IrfanView is a fast and compact free photo editor for Windows. It allows you to view images and convert them in other formats, create slideshows, do batch processing, and edit photos. IrfanView provides geometric transformation, color profiles, overlays and effects, screen captures, print options, and scan support. It’s a versatile program, perfect for working with large amounts of images.

IrfanView is a good choice for a beginner because it includes all the basic tools and supports many file formats. It’s perfect for adding watermarks and protecting your photos, resizing pictures before publishing them, and getting used with pictures’ information and settings.

18. BeFunky

BeFunky is another online photo editor and it truly lives up to its name. It’s designed to make photography fun and it’s a great way to learn to edit your photos. Among its features are tools that make your photos look like cartoons, oil paintings effects, or pop art styles. You can add a wide range of details to your photos like hand drawn graphics, photo frames, graphic overlays, customized text, and image layers.

BeFunky provides smart enhancement tools for fixing poor lighting, digital noise, fuzziness, and other common problems in seconds.

BeFunky feature is also available as a mobile application, which makes easy for you to learn how to edit pictures on the go. Even if it offers smart features, you still have to learn how to use it and practicing on your phone can be a good idea.

Every photographer has a preferred photo editing program. You just have to choose the best one for you. We hope this list will give you some ideas and help you decide what’s best for you.

  • August 27, 2019
  • 23 min to read

If you do digital photography, you need software to edit your pictures. When they hear photo editing, many people imagine Adobe Photoshop. That’s fair. Photoshop gives you all the tools you need to create any effect you can imagine. But at the same time, you need to do a lot of work and have a lot of experience to unlock the potential of Photoshop. So it’s not the best choice for beginners.

There’s a lot of other functional, sometimes simpler, software with friendly interfaces. We’ll tell you about it.

1. Luminar (7 day free trial)

Luminar positions itself as the most innovative way to edit photos. The interface looks like Lightroom, excluding the Library column, which is combined with Edit and Info in one menu. The adjustment tools are the same as in Lightroom, from white balance and temperature to exposure, contrast, shadows, and so on. Lens correction and transform tools are also available.

The secret weapon of Luminar is Artificial Intelligence, or AI. AI technology powers three Luminar features:

Sky Enhancer – unique filters that make the sky in your pictures more expressive and increase contrast

Accent AI – analyzes your photos and applies enhancements automatically so you don’t have to make a dozen manual adjustments

Sun Rays – adds realistic sun rays to your photos and lets you customize them

In Luminar you have over 60 default styles, or presets, created by pro photographers. You can use them to edit images with one click. The program has toolsets for portraits, landscapes, and aerial photography. Luminar’s interface is clear and logical. Like Lightroom, it has a thoughtful placement of tools. Just move the sliders and see what happens.

There’s no subscription for Luminar. Just buy it and use it. Skylum will give your money back within 60 days if you don’t like it.

2. Adobe Photoshop CC (7-day trial)

PC: 2GHz Intel Core 2 or AMD Athlon 64 processor, 2GB RAM (8GB recommended), Windows 7 to 10 Mac: Multicore Intel 64-bit processor, 2GB RAM (8GB recommended), OS X 10.11 or later Hard drive: 4GB Minimum screen resolution: 1024x768 pixels

Photoshop isn’t cheap and it’s not the simplest program, but it’s the best tool in the world. Nowadays, the only way to get Photoshop is to subscribe to one of Adobe’s subscription-based Photography plans.

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Photoshop isn’t only for photographers. It’s for illustrators, designers, videographers, and artists. It lets you work with masks and layers, add ready-made filters, and make your own filters. You can change every characteristic of your photo - single colors, shades, etc.. You can change the white balance and create a picture with any form: diptych, triptych, collage, etc. But you need to watch tens of tutorials to master all these features.

There are no image browsing or cataloging tools in Photoshop itself, but since Lightroom is included in the same Photography Plans as Photoshop, that’s not an issue. RAW conversions are taken care of by Adobe Camera Raw, which is so powerful it’s practically an image editor in its own right. On its own, Photoshop is powerful but limited; with Adobe Lightroom, it’s half of an unbeatable image editing double act.

3. Photolemur(Free version with watermark)

Photolemur promises the quickest photo editing. Just drag and drop your pictures to get the result. Artificial Intelligence does all the work. This program is good for portrait photographers because of Face Finish technology, which removes imperfections, enhances eyes, and whitens teeth. The smart browsing option lets you improve multiple photos at once.

Photolemur is a simple program for beginners. If you want to improve your pictures fast without understanding tens of options, use Photolemur.

4. Aurora HDR(7 day free trial)

CHIRP runs on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10. New Mac OS X must install the runtime once before running CHIRP. After it is installed, the runtime does not need to be downloaded or installed each time. Download the KK7DS Python runtime for Mac OSX. OS X support is limited to Intel architecture. PowerPC is not supported. Chirp for mac. CHIRP Beginners Guide¶ The Beginners Guide has general help. Click here for the Beginners Guide If you need Mac-specific help, you are at the right page. Join the Mailing list & search the archives for similar problem reports & how they were resolved, and/or ask the group. Mar 28, 2007  Chirp is fully cross-platform, working identically on Windows and Mac, so everyone on your team can be fully integrated. And you can try before you buy. Chirp is available in a 30-day trial for you and your team to use for free so you can get better at managing people, and meeting deadlines - using Chirp.

This software is based on a Quantum HDR Engine powered by Artificial Intelligence. It provides 20+ tools to help you get beautiful HDR photos. At your disposal are a polarizing filter, color toning, vignetting, dodge and burn, and other features. And Aurora HDR has a few exclusive tools:

  • HDR Denoise – intelligently cleans noise

  • HDR Smart Structure – improves depth and details in your images

  • HDR Clarity – boosts clarity and adds localized contrast only where needed, without touching the whole photo

Aurora HDR gives you 80 unique Looks, or presets, which can turn your photos from RAW to creative in a few seconds. Manual mode is available too. Aurora HDR come with no subscription and a 60-day money back guarantee.

5. Alien Skin Exposure X4 (30-day Trial)

PC: Intel Core 2 or equivalent processor, Windows 7 64-bit or later Mac: Intel Core 2 or higher processor, OS X 10.10 or later Hard drive: Not listed Minimum screen resolution: 1280x768 pixels

Alien Skin Exposure X4 has a strange name and a good pack of tools. This all-in-one program focuses on analog effects and has a rich library with presets. Alien Skin Exposure is a mix of Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. With this software, you can adjust colors, shadows, lighting, and sharpness and crop pictures. The program also supports layers and masks and has a lot of one-click presets. You can create your own presets too.

One important feature of Alien Skin is virtual image copy, which creates a photo clone that doesn’t take any space on the hard drive. Another useful option is the ability to preview a preset before applying it. One flaw, however, is that Exposure X4 can be a little bit slow when scanning big catalogs.

6. Adobe Photoshop Elements (30-day free trial)

Virtually playable on any platform with an internet connection, its cross-platform feature allows players to play with friends on different platforms in real-time. Mmorpgs for mac.

PC: 64-bit 1.6GHz or faster processor, 4GB RAM, Win 7 SP1 to 10 Mac: Multicore Intel 64-bit processor, 4GB RAM, OS X 10.11 or later Hard drive: 5GB Minimum screen resolution: 1280x800 pixels

Elements is Photoshop for beginners. Its interface is simpler.

Photoshop Elements is based on two programs:

  1. Organizer: Helps you sort pictures. You can browse photos by folders, create albums, and mark pictures with hashtags. It makes it easier to create a series.

  2. Editor: Includes tutorials, fast effects, guided mode with a list of walkthroughs, and expert mode with tens of tools from exposure and color editing to noise removal.

  3. From flaws: Photoshop Elements has a limited version of Camera Raw with a small set of tools from classic Photoshop. It doesn’t support lens correction profiles or chromatic aberration removal, though. Many options are missing. For example, you don’t have curves even in expert mode.

Advantages of this software are its modern design and friendly and easy interface. It’s best for beginners, and tutorials are available.

7. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic/CC (Free 7-day trial)

PC: 2GHz or faster Intel Core 2 or AMD Athlon 64 processor, 2GB RAM (8GB recommended), Windows 7 SP1 to 10 Mac: Intel 64-bit, 2GB RAM (8GB recommended), OS X 10.11 or later Hard drive: 2GB (10GB for CC) Minimum screen resolution: 1024x768 pixels

Adobe Photoshop + Lightroom = the perfect weapon.

Photoshop is great for hardcore manipulation: pro retouching, working with masks, layers, and levels. Adobe Lightroom was made mostly for corrections to shadows, lighting, exposure, and colors. You can edit photos fully manually quite easily: just slide the sliders and see what happens. Or use presets. You can save all settings and create your own presets to use later. Lightroom is convenient for editing a series of photos – you just need to create a catalog and apply one preset.

Lightroom is an all-in-one image cataloging, RAW processing, and editing program. But Adobe has made things more confusing by splitting off the old Lightroom, now called Lightroom Classic, for regular desktop storage and introducing a new, slimmed-down Lightroom CC which stores all your photos online. With Lightroom CC, you have to pay for Adobe Cloud storage, starting at 1GB for around £10/$10 per month, and there are now three Photography plans to choose from.

Lightroom CC offers the convenience of having your whole image library available everywhere, but the storage costs are high and the software itself lacks some key features you might take for granted in the desktop version – it doesn’t support plug-ins, for example, and supports only Photoshop as an external editor.

Best Photo Editing Apps For Mac

8. Affinity Photo (Free trial available)

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PC: Processor not specified, 2GB RAM (4GB recommended), Windows 7 SP1 to 10 Mac: 64-bit Core Duo 2 or better processor, 2GB RAM, OS X 10.9 or later Hard drive: 670MB Minimum screen resolution: 1280x768 pixels

Do you want a low-cost and powerful Photoshop alternative? Now you’ve got it. Affinity Photo 1.6 has the same features as the famous Adobe product but it’s price is much better. Previously, Affinity Photo worked only on Mac, but now it’s available for Windows too.

It matches Photoshop in terms of selection, masking, and layer tools, and Serif, the developer of the Affinity products, has focused particularly heavily on retouching, with cloning, healing, and retouching tools, an inpainting tool for automatic object removal, and a dedicated Liquify Persona (workspace) for localized image distortion effects.

These Personas are part of the whole Affinity Photo workflow. The Photo Persona is where the regular image editing is done, but there’s also a Develop Persona for RAW processing, a Tone Mapping Persona for HDR effects, and an Export Persona for exporting finished images.

But Affinity’s creators didn’t come up with any browsing and cataloging tools.

9. DxO Photolab (Free 30-Day Trial)

PC: Intel Core 2 or AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor, 4GB RAM (8GB recommended), Windows 7 SP1 to 10 Mac: Intel Core i5 or higher, 4GB RAM (6GB recommended), OS X 10.11 or later Hard drive: 4GB Minimum screen resolution: Not listed

Owners of Fujifilm cameras, we’re sorry but this tool is not for you. DxO Photolab 1.2 does not support RAWs from Fuji cameras.

This program is a basic tool without any supernatural options. With the new gradient, brush, and U-point adjustment tools, it’s now possible to enhance your photos within Photolab rather than in an external editor, all while using DxO’s excellent RAW processing engine. You can do good editing with Photolab, which boasts strong noise removal and effective optical correction.

The basic version of Photolab has limited features. To open the ClearView feature and perspective corrections, you need to buy the Elite edition. This will also give you access to the FilmPack set of analog effects.

10. ON1 Photo RAW 2019 (30-day trial is fully-functional)

PC: Intel Core 2 Duo, Xeon, or better processor, 4GB RAM (16GB recommended), Windows 7 to 10 Mac: Intel Core 2 Duo or better processor, 4GB RAM (16GB recommended), OS X 10.9 or later Hard drive: 1.5GB Minimum screen resolution: 1280x720 pixels

What can you do with ON1 Photo RAW?

  1. Organize your photos into series and explore your image folders

  2. Work with RAW files

  3. Use one-click presets from a huge library

  4. Explore manual mode and change any characteristics of your images, from exposure and lighting to contrast and saturation

Photo RAW is compatible with cloud services such as Dropbox, which makes managing images easy. ON1 Photo RAW doesn’t have the most useful and friendly interface, but it has a wealth of effects and tools that make it worth using. But it’s not the best choice for beginners – you need some knowledge of editing to use it fully.

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The latest version of ON1 Photo RAW has one unique feature called the LUT filter. This filter lets you use LUT (lookup table) files for image editing (they’ve long been popular in cinematography), and with the addition of perspective transformation tools, there’s little that ON1 Photo RAW can’t do.

11. PhaseOne Capture One Pro (30-day free trial)

PC: Dual-core CPU or better, 8GB RAM, Windows 7 SP1 to 10 Mac: Dual-core CPU or better, 8GB RAM, OS X 10.11.6 or later Hard drive: 10GB Minimum screen resolution: 1200x800 pixels

Best Free Image Editing Software For Mac

If you like Lightroom, you’ll like Capture One. It has a smart and logical cataloging system so you can browse, group, and search for photos easily. This program has pretty much the same potential as Lightroom. But unlike Lightroom, Capture One Pro works in a single window. Editing RAW files with Capture One is quite easy, just like in Lightroom. You can make manual adjustments to colors, shadows, lighting, sharpness, and other characteristics. A big library of presets (Styles) is also available, and an option to save presets has been added.