The Mac is still the best device for serious photo editing, so you need some serious photo editing apps to make an impact. The built-in Photos app on Mac offers several useful photo editing tools. You can crop, adjust lighting and color, set the white balance, add filters, remove unwanted blemishes, and a few more things. The best photo editing software for spectacular photos and graphics. Capture attention with beautiful, high-impact visuals. Adjust clarity, color and tone and create image manipulation effects or perfect your graphic design work. Take your pictures to the next level with the most powerful image editing software for web, desktop, and mobile. There is a plenty of image editing apps for MacOS, but it`s really challenging to pick up truly the best photo editing app for Mac. In this article we selected 10 best photo editing apps, some of them are paid, some photo editing apps are free, but each and every one will.
- 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.
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.
![Photo Editing Software For Mac Photo Editing Software For Mac](/uploads/1/3/3/3/133300757/898456559.jpg)
3. Photolemur(Free version with watermark) Grammerly for mac.
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)
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)
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
8. Affinity Photo (Free trial available)
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. Growl for mac.
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?
- Organize your photos into series and explore your image folders
- Work with RAW files
- Use one-click presets from a huge library
- 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.
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
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.
Photos in macOS Catalina has an immersive, dynamic look that showcases your best photos. Find the shots you’re looking for with powerful search options. Organize your collection into albums, or keep your photos organized automatically with smart albums. Perfect your images with intuitive built-in editing tools, or use your favorite photos apps. And with iCloud Photos, you can keep all your photos and videos stored in iCloud and up to date on your Mac, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and even your PC.
A smarter way to find your favorites.
Photos in macOS Catalina intelligently declutters and curates your photos and videos — so you can easily see your best memories.
Focus on your best shots.
Photos emphasizes the best shots in your library, hiding duplicates, receipts, and screenshots. Days, Months, and Years views organize your photos by when they were taken. Your best shots are highlighted with larger previews, and Live Photos and videos play automatically, bringing your library to life. Photos also highlights important moments like birthdays, anniversaries, and trips in the Months and Years views.
Your memories. Now playing.
Memories finds your best photos and videos and weaves them together into a memorable movie — complete with theme music, titles, and cinematic transitions — that you can personalize and share. So you can enjoy a curated collection of your trips, holidays, friends, family, pets, and more. And when you use iCloud Photos, all edits automatically sync to your other devices.
The moment you’re looking for, always at hand.
With Search, you can look for photos based on who’s in them or what’s in them — like strawberries or sunsets. Or combine search terms, like “beach 2017.” If you’re looking for photos you imported a couple of months ago, use the expanded import history to look back at each batch in chronological order. And in the My Albums tab, you’ll find your videos, selfies, panoramas, and other media types automatically organized into separate albums.
Fill your library, not your device.
iCloud Photos can help you make the most of the space on your Mac. When you choose “Optimize Mac Storage,” all your full‑resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud in their original formats, with storage-saving versions kept on your Mac as space is needed. You can also optimize storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, so you can access more photos and videos than ever before. You get 5GB of free storage in iCloud — and as your library grows, you have the option to choose a plan for up to 2TB.
Make an edit here, see it there. When you make changes on your Mac like editing a photo, marking a Favorite, or adding to an album, they’re kept up to date on your iPhone, your iPad, and iCloud.com. And vice versa — any changes made on your iOS or iPadOS devices are automatically reflected on your Mac.
All your photos on all your devices. iCloud Photos gives you access to your entire Mac photo and video library from all your devices. If you shoot a snapshot, slo-mo, or selfie on your iPhone, it’s automatically added to iCloud Photos — so it appears on your Mac, iOS and iPadOS devices, Apple TV, iCloud.com, and your PC. Even the photos and videos imported from your DSLR, GoPro, or drone to your Mac appear on all your iCloud Photos–enabled devices. And since your collection is organized the same way across your Apple devices, navigating your library always feels familiar.
Resize. Crop. Collage. Zoom. Warp. GIF. And more.
Create standout photos with a comprehensive set of powerful but easy-to-use editing tools. Instantly transform photos taken in Portrait mode with five different studio-quality lighting effects. Choose Enhance to improve your photo with just a click. Then use a filter to give it a new look. Or use Smart Sliders to quickly edit like a pro even if you’re a beginner. Markup lets you add text, shapes, sketches, or a signature to your images. And you can turn Live Photos into fun, short video loops to share. You can also make edits to photos using third-party app extensions like Pixelmator, or edit a photo in an app like Photoshop and save your changes to your Photos library.
- LightBrilliance, a slider in Light, automatically brightens dark areas and pulls in highlights to reveal hidden details and make your photo look richer and more vibrant.
- ColorMake your photo stand out by adjusting saturation, color contrast, and color cast.
- Black & WhiteAdd some drama by taking the color out. Fine-tune intensity and tone, or add grain for a film-quality black-and-white effect.
- White BalanceChoose between Neutral Gray, Skin Tone, and Temperature/Tint options to make colors in your photo warmer or cooler.
- CurvesMake fine-tuned contrast and color adjustments to your photos.
- LevelsAdjust midtones, highlights, and shadows to perfect the tonal balance in your photo.
- DefinitionIncrease image clarity by adjusting the definition slider.
- Selective ColorWant to make blues bluer or greens greener? Use Selective Color to bring out specific colors in your image.
- VignetteAdd shading to the edges of your photo to highlight a powerful moment.
- Editing ExtensionsDownload third-party editing extensions from the Mac App Store to add filters and texture effects, use retouching tools, reduce noise, and more.
- Reset AdjustmentsWhen you’ve made an edit, you can judge it against the original by clicking Compare. If you don’t like how it looks, you can reset your adjustments or revert to your original shot.
Bring even more life to your Live Photos. When you edit a Live Photo, the Loop effect can turn it into a continuous looping video that you can experience again and again. Try Bounce to play the action forward and backward. Or choose Long Exposure for a beautiful DSLR‑like effect to blur water or extend light trails. You can also trim, mute, and select a key photo for each Live Photo.
Add some fun filters.
With just a click, you can apply one of nine photo filters inspired by classic photography styles to your photos.
Share here, there, and everywhere.
Photo Editing Software For Macbook Air
Use the Share menu to easily share photos via Shared Albums and AirDrop. Or send photos to your favorite photo sharing destinations, such as Facebook and Twitter. You can also customize the menu and share directly to other compatible sites that offer sharing extensions.
Free Photo Editor For Mac
Turn your pictures into projects.
Making high-quality projects and special gifts for loved ones is easier than ever with Photos. Create everything from gorgeous photo books to professionally framed gallery prints to stunning websites using third-party project extensions like Motif, Mimeo Photos, Shutterfly, ifolor, WhiteWall, Mpix, Fujifilm, and Wix.