There’s no argument—Adobe Photoshop remains the best photo-editing application on the market. But it’s a difficult program to master without formal training, and it’s not the cheapest option out there. That’s why we’re taking a look at the best free photo-editing software on the market. In fact, our top pick, is sure to grab your attention. GIMP is an open-source photo editing software that is available for all three of the biggest operating systems and offers up a huge workspace and a wide variety of professional editing tools.
Are you looking for professional photo editing software for your photos on Mac or Windows? Whether your a beginner or a pro, editing your photos before uploading to your photography website is essential. In this guide, we will share the best photo editing software for photographers.
The best photo editing software can help to bring focus to an image, highlight your key subjects and transform an average picture into something truly incredible.
But the question for most photographers is how do they choose the right editing software to supplement their skills.
There are countless different options out there to choose from, from better-known systems like Photoshop and Adobe to simple but effective choices like Canva. There’s even some great free options.
So, in today’s post we’re going to answer the question “What is the best photo editing software for photographers?” by looking at:
Top-rated software on the market (free and paid)
Features of each software
How you can use the software
1. Skylum Luminar
Luminar has quickly grown to become one of the the most popular editing tools for professional photographers around the world for many reasons. For one, you pay a one time flat fee — there are no monthly subscriptions, which has become the norm for Adobe and other software companies.
Luminar is a one-stop shop for photo editing that can be used by itself or as a plugin in with Lightroom, Photoshop and even Apple Photos.
Also, Luminar has gained popularity for its AI slider, which does an automatic quick fix for everything from brightening, clarifying, toning and other basic adjustments. Overall a strong professional grade contender to Adobe’s products.
Skylum Luminar features include:
AI Editor/Slider
Exclusive filters like Sunrays filter (which lets you add realistic looking sun rays to your images), top and bottom lighting filter, Orton filter (made famous by the Lord of the Rings, blurs some parts of the image and focus on others)
Adjustment Layers
Image Layers
Dedicated presets for DJI drone photos
2. Photolemur
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.
3. DxO PhotoLab Review
Pros: Clear interface. Best-in-class noise reduction. Excellent autocorrection based on camera and lens characteristics. Haze remover. Geometry corrections. Powerful local adjustments.
Cons: Few workflow tools. Highest noise-reduction setting can require long waits.
Bottom Line: Though it’s still not a complete photo workflow solution, DxO PhotoLab can deliver image results beyond what’s possible in other photo software.
4. Corel PaintShop Pro Review
Pros: Photoshop-like features at a lower price. Powerful effects and editing tools. Face recognition. Tutorials. Good assortment of vector drawing tools.
Cons: Some operations still slow. Interface can get cluttered. Ineffective chromatic aberration removal.
Bottom Line: Corel continues to add new photo-editing possibilities to its PaintShop Pro photo-editing software, making it a worthy Photoshop alternative at a value-conscious price.
5. ACDSee Photo Studio Professional Review
Pros: Full set of image editing tools. Good performance. Lens-profile-based geometry correction. Face recognition and geotagging. Good skin-improvement tools. Responsive performance. Cloud storage integration.
Cons: Interface not as polished as others. Lens-profile-based image correction tools less effective than the competition’s. Weak noise and chromatic aberration tools.
Bottom Line: ACDSee’s pro-level tool offers many powerful photo organizing and editing tools, but it falls short of competitors in raw camera file conversion and usability.
6. Gimp
GIMP is a free professional photo editing software. It is easy to download and install on your computer. GIMP has multiple features which help you with retouching photos, photo composition and picture enhancement. It also includes a built-in file manager.
Even more, you can create image authority with GIMP. It works great on Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. And you can edit photos of all formats.
Because it comes with a range of features that help with things like photo composition and image retouching, many photographers regard GIMP to be a great entry level alternative to Photoshop and Lightroom.
Features include:
Photo enhancements like corrective mode and vignette
File management and optimization modes
Digital Retouching
Clone and touch-up tools
Support for multiple plugins
7. Canva
Canva is a simple graphic design software with a huge following. It operates on a freemium model and comes with multiple photo editing tools and products.
Unlike some other editing software, you can download Canva on your mobile phone and edit instant photos. The Canva Marketplace has tons of templates, photos, cards and icons that make your life easy in creating the visual content of your site or blog.
Canva allows you to adjust various elements of your images with a simple drag-and-drop editor and add fonts and templates to your pictures if you want to use them on your website.
Features include:
Over 8,000 templates
Photo blur and vignette
Image cropping and straightening
Image transparency tool
Design grids and photo frames
Stickers and badges
Add texture
Speech bubble maker
Photo enhancer
8. Paint .NET
This is a case where the apprentice becomes the master. Paint.NET was created as a college undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft and it continues to be maintained by alumni of the program. It was originally developed as a free replacement for Microsoft Paint, which comes as part of Windows. Paint.NET has surpassed Microsoft Paint in functionality and has some more advanced features as well.
Paint.NET features an intuitive user interface that supports layers, an “unlimited undo” to back out of any mistake no matter how disastrous, various special effects, and other tools. Where Microsoft Paint was able to do little more than resize images, Paint.NET is able to handle more advanced photo editing that you’d expect to be limited to Photoshop and other paid programs.
9. PortraitPro
PortraitPro is a professional image editor specifically designed for photographers who specialize in portraits.
The application includes everything you might need to edit skin tone, remove blemishes or wrinkles from your subject’s face, add eyeshadows and more. Also, it allows you to add effects to fix things like poor lighting or get rid of sagging cheeks.
Features include:
Advanced layering options
Skin smoothing
Wrinkle Remover
Makeup tools
Award-winning editing using sliders
10. Fotor
Fotor is a famous cloud-based photo editing software boasting over 300M users. You can use its free desktop version with the all the features that are available on its online photo editing version.
Also, you can check the effects on your photos with scalable editing option. It has a simple to use interface which allows you to open RAW files and combine images in layers.
The cloud-based software allows you to save the incomplete designs for future editing. That way, you can start from where you left the work. All you need to do is upload your images onto the website and you can start editing, creating designs and more.
Features include:
Photo editing suite
HDR effects
Filters and image touch-ups
Portrait Retouching
Design templates
Hundreds of fonts, stickers, and shapes to choose from