- The Best Photo Editing Software For Mac
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- Free Photo Editor For Mac
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Download PhotoPad photo editing software for Windows/Mac to easily edit digital photos. Resize, crop, touch up or add any number of effects to any image. PhotoPad lets you easily remove red-eye and blemishes, enhance colors, crop photos and more. Photos is the built-in editor that comes with your Mac. After they shut down Aperture in 2015, the Photos app on a Mac might be Apple’s best kept secret. It houses a fairly robust set of editing tools that do many of the tasks in Lightroom’s Develop Module or Photoshop’s Camera RAW. Fotor Photos Editor for Mac is a wonderful free alternative for photographers. With batch processing, you can apply various scenes, effects, borders, and many other options with just a click. It has a spectacular collage feature that lets you recollect your memories. Loved by photographers and creatives the world-over, Macs are renowned for their photo and image editing prowess. In fact, they have been associated with the mighty Adobe Photoshop since the 1980s, when it was exclusively Mac photo editing software. 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.
Free photo editing software for Mac 1: The GIMP for Mac OS X GIMP is a popular open-source image editor for Mac OS X and is often considered as the 'free Photoshop' because of its similar interface and features with Photoshop. Fotor Photo Editor is a free app with loads of features; you can to subscribe to the Pro version with an in-app purchase if you want even more. Fotor's batch processing allows you to add borders, effects, and filters.
Apple Photos, a free program built into the macOS and iOS systems, is our choice for the Best Free Photo Editor for Mac users, because it lives up to the company’s philosophy of fun technology that's simple to use. Compared to Corel PaintShop Pro and Adobe Photoshop Elements, Apple’s application is simpler and less powerful, but it fits the Apple lifestyle. As such, it's a playful app for saving, organizing and sharing your photos, and it offers a nice set of editing tools and easy access to your entire photo library on your various Apple devices through iCloud.
A No-Nonsense Interface
Apple Photos' interface is clean, simple and direct, so that your creativity is enabled by easy, uncomplicated shortcuts rather than the deep layers of functionality found in more feature-rich programs (such as Affinity Photo or Photoshop Elements).
The iOS version has four main tabs: Photos, Shared, Albums and Memories. The desktop version adds a fifth section: Projects.
Photos and videos are organized by years, collections or Moments (individual days), and can come from a variety of sources: your phone or camera, your iCloud account, other people’s iCloud accounts (shared with you) or your computer (synced via iTunes). Because iCloud works with Windows, Apple Photos can even access photos and videos stored on a PC.
In Memories, the app uses various algorithms to create 'surprise' collections or movies of images that are related by date, place, people and so forth. Periodically, the auto-created Memories offer a pleasant visual recollection; other times, they combine a hodgepodge of images that are not very meaningful.
In the desktop app's Projects section, you can create photo books, greeting cards, calendars and prints. The options for these projects are very limited compared with those offered by other photo print services. (To find out what we liked and disliked about Apple’s print services, check out our reviews of Apple Calendars, Apple Photo Books and Apple Photo Cards).
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Organizing and Finding Your Photos and Videos
Apple Photos gives you some control over organizing your photos, videos and albums. Specifically, you can create, name, rearrange and delete albums; add or remove individual photos or groups of photos and videos to or from an album; mark favorites; and hide photos or videos. On the desktop version (but not the mobile version), you can also add a description and keywords, which then can be used as search criteria on all devices.
The search engine is nice, but it doesn't extend to full object recognition. For instance, when I searched for 'dog,' it found most, but not all, of my dog pictures. When I searched for 'tree,' it found none of my tree pictures.
As on Google Photos, Apple Photos has a map view that shows where your images were captured (if you had geolocation features enabled when you took them). A very nice extra feature of Apple's geolocation is that when looking at the map detail for a specific photo or video, you can click to view nearby images, too.
Apple Photos did a pretty good job of recognizing faces, but it was no better or worse than every other app we've tested. More useful is its People album and functionality, which make it easy to find, identify and group specific individuals in all of the pictures of people in your library.
Memories
The most significant recent addition to the app is the new Memories section. Apple Photos scans through your library of photos and videos to create a collage card or slideshow movie of images that the app thinks are related (based on location, event, scene categories or people). These Memories pop up almost as surprise gifts, and after Photos is installed, it can take days for any to be displayed (even if your iCloud library is already quite extensive). If you like what you see, you can save the Memory to your Favorite Memories album and share it. You can also create your own memories from an Album or Collection.
A handful of Memory options let you choose a different 'mood' from 11 styles that define the title font, soundtrack and transitions. If you save the Memory, you have access to more meaningful custom options: change the title, choose a font style, select different music, set its duration, and add or delete images.
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Photo & Video Editing
Apple Photos' editing tools don't require much skill or time, but they are deeper and richer than what Google Photos offers.
In addition to tools for auto-enhance, red-eye removal and crop/rotate, the Apple Photos mobile app has thumbnail sliders to easily alter multiple aspects of a picture. For instance, under Adjust, you can simply slide an indicator over a thumbnail variation to alter the lightness or color intensity of a picture. The one-click filters are coarse, but they can create some nice effects. You can also trim a video and save it as a new clip, adjust the slow-motion section of a video and mark up a photo by typing text or using your finger on the screen.
The desktop version of Photos adds sharpen, white balance, levels and a clone-like retouch tool to the mix. There are also Apple and third-party extensions that can plug into Apple Photos.
Sharing & Compatibility
Sharing is as simple as can be. With just a couple of taps or clicks, you can share your photos and slideshows via Message (text), Mail (email), iCloud Photo Sharing, Notes, Twitter, Facebook or Flickr, and you can even save a PDF to iBooks or share across Apple devices through AirPlay.
Apple Photos organizes, edits and shares not only photos and videos, but also Live Photos (the iPhone's burst capture of sound and movement before and after a photo is snapped on an iPhone 6s or later).
The newest version of Apple Photos is compatible only with more recent hardware that has 64-bit processors, such as the iPhone 5s or newer. Even if your older phone or laptop can update to the newest operating system, the new Memories tab will be missing from the app's interface.
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iCloud
When you set Apple Photos to use iCloud to sync your image library, any changes you make to a picture or video in the app are updated on all of your devices that use iCloud, including your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, Mac, iCloud.com and, yes, your Windows PC.
You get 5GB of iCloud storage for free, but that isn't enough for most people's image libraries. It costs 99 cents a month for an additional 50GB of storage, $2.99/month for 200GB, $9.99/month for 1TB or $19.99/month for 2TB.
The My Photo Stream feature, which doesn't count against your iCloud storage limit, uploads your newest photos to iCloud, which holds up to 1,000 Photo Stream images for 30 days. If you want to keep those pictures, you need to download them to your computer or mobile device.
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Bottom Line
For Mac and iPhone users who want to have and share the fun of their photos and videos, Apple Photos is a great choice. It's easy to use, and offers uncomplicated sharing and full access to your image library on your various devices. What's more, it provides a nice level of editing options to give you a sense of fun personalization and even some artistic satisfaction. However, for consumers who want more control over the finer details of photo editing, we recommend either Photoshop Elements or, for advanced users, Affinity Photo.
Today's best Apple Photos deals
There are dozens of free photo editors out there, so we've hand-picked the very best so you can make your pictures look amazing without paying a penny.
We've spent hours putting a huge range of photo editors to the test, and picked out the best ones for any level of skill and experience. From powerful software packed with features that give Photoshop a run for its money to simple tools that give your pictures a whole new look with a couple of clicks, there's something for everyone.
Many free photo editors only offer a very limited selection of tools unless you pay for a subscription, or place a watermark on exported images, but none of the tools here carry any such restrictions. Whichever one you choose, you can be sure that there are no hidden tricks to catch you out.
1. GIMP
The best free photo editor for advanced image editing
GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the best free photo editor around. It's packed with the kind of image-enhancing tools you'd find in premium software, and more are being added every day.
The photo editing toolkit is breathtaking, and features layers, masks, curves, and levels. You can eliminate flaws easily with the excellent clone stamp and healing tools, create custom brushes, apply perspective changes, and apply changes to isolated areas with smart selection tools.
GIMP is an open source free photo editor, and its community of users and developers have created a huge collection of plugins to extend its utility even further. Many of these come pre-installed, and you can download more from the official glossary. If that's not enough, you can even install Photoshop plugins.
2. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2019
Fuss-free photo editing with automatic optimization tools
If you've got a lot of photos that you need to edit in a hurry, Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2019 could be the tool for you. Its interface is clean and uncluttered, and utterly devoid of ads (although you'll need to submit an email address before you can start using it).
Importing pictures is a breeze, and once they've been added to the pool, you can select several at once to rotate or mirror, saving you valuable time. You can also choose individual photos to enhance with the software's one-click optimization tool. In our tests this worked particularly well on landscapes, but wasn't always great for other subjects.
If you want to make manual color and exposure corrections, there are half a dozen sliders to let you do exactly that. It's a shame you can't also apply the same color changes to a whole set of pictures at once, but this is otherwise a brilliant free photo editor for making quick corrections.
For more advanced editing, check out Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7 – the premium version of the software with enhanced optimization tools.
3. Canva
Professional-level photo editing and templates in your browser
Canva is a photo editor that runs in your web browser, and is ideal for turning your favorite snaps into cards, posters, invitations and social media posts. If you're interested in maintaining a polished online presence, it's the perfect tool for you.
Canva has two tiers, free and paid, but the free level is perfect for home users. Just sign up with your email address and you'll get 1GB free cloud storage for your snaps and designs, 8,000 templates to use and edit, and two folders to keep your work organized.
You won't find advanced tools like clone brushes and smart selectors here, but there's a set of handy sliders for applying tints, vignette effects, sharpening, adjusting brightness, saturation and contrast, and much more. The text editing tools are intuitive, and there's a great selection of backgrounds and other graphics to complete your designs.
4. Fotor
One-click enhancements to make your photos shine in seconds
Fotor is a free photo editor that's ideal for giving your pictures a boost quickly. If there's specific area of retouching you need doing with, say, the clone brush or healing tool, you're out of luck. However, if your needs are simple, its stack of high-end filters really shine.
There's a foolproof tilt-shift tool, for example, and a raft of vintage and vibrant colour tweaks, all easily accessed through Fotor's clever menu system. You can manually alter your own curves and levels, too, but without the complexity of high-end tools.
Fotor's standout function, and one that's sorely lacking in many free photo editors, is its batch processing tool – feed it a pile of pics and it'll filter the lot of them in one go, perfect if you have a memory card full of holiday snaps and need to cover up the results of a dodgy camera or shaky hand.
5. Photo Pos Pro
Advanced photo editing tools packaged in a simple interface
Photo Pos Pro isn't as well known as Paint.net and GIMP, but it's another top-quality free photo editor that's packed with advanced image-enhancing tools.
The Best Photo Editing Software For Mac
This free photo editor's interface is smarter and more accessible than GIMP's array of menus and toolbars, with everything arranged in a logical and consistent way. If it's still too intimidating, there's also an optional 'novice' layout that resembles Fotor's filter-based approach. The choice is yours.
The 'expert' layout offers both layers and layer masks for sophisticated editing, as well as tools for adjusting curves and levels manually. You can still access the one-click filters via the main menu, but the focus is much more on fine editing.
6. Paint.NET
Looking a little dated, but still a dependable all-rounder
More is not, believe it or not, always better. Paint.NET's simplicity is one of its main selling points; it's a quick, easy to operate free photo editor that's ideal for trivial tasks that don't necessarily justify the sheer power of tools like GIMP.
Don't let the name fool you, though. This isn't just a cheap copy of Microsoft's ultra-basic Paint – even if it was originally meant to replace it. It's a proper photo editor, just one that lands on the basic side of the curve.
Paint.NET’s interface will remind you of its namesake, but over the years, they’ve added advanced editing tools like layers, an undo history, a ton of filters, myriad community-created plugins, and a brilliant 3D rotate/zoom function that's handy for recomposing images.
7. PhotoScape
Raw image conversion, batch processing and much more
PhotoScape might look like a rather simple free photo editor, but take a look at its main menu and you'll find a wealth of features: raw conversion, photo splitting and merging, animated GIF creation, and even a rather odd (but useful) function with which you can print lined, graph or sheet music paper.
The meat, of course, is in the photo editing. PhotoScape's interface is among the most esoteric of all the apps we've looked at here, with tools grouped into pages in odd configurations. It certainly doesn't attempt to ape Photoshop, and includes fewer features.
We'd definitely point this towards the beginner, but that doesn't mean you can't get some solid results. PhotoScape's filters are pretty advanced, so it's if good choice if you need to quickly level, sharpen or add mild filtering to pictures in a snap.
8. Pixlr X
A comprehensive browser-based photo editor for quick results
Pixlr X is the successor to Pixlr Editor, which was one of our favorite free online photo editors for many years.
Pixlr X makes several improvements on its predecessor. For starters, it's based on HTML5 rather than Flash, which means it can run in any modern browser. It's also slick and well designed, with an interface that's reminiscent of Photoshop Express, and a choice of dark or light color schemes.
With Pixlr X, you can make fine changes to colors and saturation, sharpen and blur images, apply vignette effects and frames, and combine multiple images. There's also support for layers, which you won't find in many free online photo editors, and an array of tools for painting and drawing. A great choice for even advanced tasks.
9. Adobe Photoshop Express Editor
A convenient way to correct lighting and exposure problems
As its name suggests, Adobe Photoshop Express Editor is a trimmed-down, browser-based version of the company's world-leading photo editing software. Perhaps surprisingly, it features a more extensive toolkit than the downloadable Photoshop Express app, but it only supports images in JPG format that are below 16MB.
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Again, this is a Flash-based tool, but Adobe provides handy mobile apps for all platforms so you won’t miss out if you’re using a smartphone or tablet.
This free online photo editor has all the panache you’d expect from Adobe, and although it doesn’t boast quite as many tools as some of its rivals, everything that’s there is polished to perfection. Adobe Photoshop Express Editor is a pleasure to use. Its only drawbacks are the limits on uploaded file size and types, and lack of support for layers.
10. PiZap
A fun photo editor for preparing your pictures for social media
Free Photo Editor For Mac
Free online photo editor PiZap is available in both HTML5 and Flash editions, making it suitable for any device. You can choose to work with a photo from your hard drive, Facebook, Google Photos, Google Drive, Google Search, or a catalog of stock images. This is an impressive choice, though some of the stock images are only available to premium subscribers, and you'll need to watch out for copyright issues if you use a pic straight from Google Images.
piZap’s editing interface has a dark, modern design that makes heavy use of sliders for quick adjustments – a system that works much better than tricky icons and drop-down menus if you’re using a touchscreen device.
When you’re done, you can share your creation on all the biggest social media networks, as well as piZap’s own servers, Dropbox and Google Drive. Alternatively, you can save it to your hard drive, send it via email, or grab an embed code. You can only export your work in high quality if you’ve opened your wallet for the premium editor, but for silly social sharing that’s unlikely to be a problem.
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