Best Free Photo Editor Apps For Mac

Best of all, most of this software is extremely affordable (or even free), so dive in and find an app that's a good fit for your personal workflow. Prev Page 1 of 21 Next Prev Page 1 of 21 Next 1.
Lightroom is the Best Mainstream Photo Management and Editing App for macOS Adobe has been firing on all cylinders with Lightroom development this year, introducing an entirely new cloud-first version of the app, establishing a strong cross-platform presence, and improving core processing tools like color profiles.

When you think of image editors on any platform, your mind goes straight to Photoshop. For most of us, paying Adobe’s high costs will get us an app that does more than we really need or care to do. As a result, we feel Pixelmator will win the hearts of most users on the Mac. It handles just about every image editing task you’d think to throw at it, and for less than the cost of two months of a Photoshop subscription.

Pixelmator

Best pro photo editors for Mac 2018 It's no longer the case that Adobe is king when it comes to image editing and manipulation. We take a look at the best Mac photo editors for creative professionals.

Platform: OS X
Price: $30
Download Page

Features

Layer-based workflow allows for flexible adjustments
Several image adjustment tools for a variety of options
Layer styles save time when creating common effects
Includes a robust set of filters for image alteration and manipulation
Supports importing and exporting several popular image formats
Several helpful retouching tools, including a healing brush helps you easily remove unwanted blemishes and even objects in photos
Beautiful filters for quick image enhancements, color changes, and popular “retro” looks
Support for OS X Mavericks features like tags, multiple displays, and App Napp
Excellent brushes and painting tools
Over 160 awesome effects
Open and save in PSD, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, and many other popular formats
Save images in iCloud for automatic syncing across all your Macs
Share photos directly from Pixelmator via email and to popular social networks
Works seamlessly with existing Photoshop documents

Note: This doesn’t even begin to dive into the features in Photoshop, which are too long to name here. You can visit Adobe’s official Photoshop page to learn more, but even they don’t detail every single feature. Your best bet is to make use of their 30-day trial and explore for yourself.

Where It Excels

Pixelmator does so much for such a low price. Thanks to Adobe, we’ve come to expect powerful image editing tools to cost at least a few hundred dollars. You can buy Pixelmator for only $30 and it’ll do most everything you need. Cost-efficiency doesn’t make an app worth buying, of course, but you can do so much with this one that it’s hard to believe the price is so low.

If you take a look at the feature set you’ll notice it looks a lot like Photoshop’s. You won’t find some things (more on that later), but it can do the tasks most of us care about. You can repair photos with the healing brush, manipulate the structure of an image with the liquify tool, make all sorts of color adjustments with common tools like curves and levels but also employ filters for quick edits, save to a variety of formats (including Photoshop), and a ton more. Pixelmator has shapes and drawing tools, too, in case you’re creating images that aren’t just photos. You can add styles to those shapes, photos, or other elements quickly. The same works for layers. Pixelmator works a lot like Photoshop but with a more user-friendly and attractive interface. If you don’t feel like paying for Adobe software anymore, a small learning curve will have casual Photoshop users working well in Pixelmator very quickly.

Another huge advantage? Pixelmator is very fast. You don’t have to wait for much of anything. It utilizes a lot of OS X core technologies to stay optimized, and in version 3.0 FX the developers rebuilt its engine with speed enhancements in mind. The software just runs very quickly. For those with older hardware who feel Photoshop chugs along at too leisurely of a pace, Pixelmator will operate with less lag.

Where It Falls Short

You’ll realize Pixelmator isn’t Photoshop in several areas if they pertain to you. It doesn’t have a Camera RAW plug-in, which is immensely useful for those who shoot in RAW. It’s practically an application in itself. Pixelmator also can’t handle HDR (only through artificial means) animation, 3D rendering, color management, fine-grained space-efficient web image export, and a variety of other specific tasks that you may or may not need. For most, these shortcomings will not matter. To photographers and designers, however, they might. Of course, if you focus on photography and require complex editing you may prefer using Photoshop Lightroom anyway, and can use Pixelmator for your other image editing needs. Regardless, if you don’t need anything mentioned here you won’t feel Pixelmator falls short at all.

The Competition

If you don’t want to pay the hefty cost of Photoshop, you’ve come to the right section. Here are a few options that can help you do some of what Photoshop can do for a much lower price.

Adobe Photoshop ($19 per month) still reigns king as the image editor of the “elite” but not of the people. If you need to handle more complex tasks or have every feature imaginable at your disposal, you want Photoshop. Of course, you’ll have to pay for that privilege. Photoshop, as many of us know, doesn’t come cheap.

GIMP (Free) has been the go-to open source image editor for awhile, and it can do many things Photoshop can do. If you prefer Photoshop’s interface, however, you might want to check out GIMPshop (Free) instead, as it is basically the same program made to emulate the style of Photoshop.

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Pixlr

What We Like

Lots of useful tools
One-tap fix-it buttons
Adjust the strength of almost every tool
Tools can be favorited for quicker access later
Save to PNG or JPG

What We Don't Like

Isn’t completely ad free
Effects aren't as fluid as some apps

One great photo editor app is Pixlr. It’s free, has minimal ads, and includes lot of cool features.

One feature that stands out is that with each edit, you can press your finger down on a “before” button to see what the image looked like just before you applied that effect, which is great for deciding if you should commit to it or not.

You can share your edited image on social media as well as save it back to your phone or tabletin various sizes like small, medium, max, or a custom size.

Some of the tools included in this free photo editor app include the standard ones like crop and rotate, but it also has an autofix, adjustment, blur, splash, smooth, sharpen, red eye, double exposure, and spot healing brush tool.

Pixlr has a set of brush tools you can use to paint various things on the image. There’s one for brightness, darken, and pixelate. They’re extremely useful versus an image-wide option because instead of darkening the whole image, for example, you can apply darkened spots to specific problem areas. There’s also a regular doodle tool.

We really love the one-tap effect and styles you can apply to pictures with Pixlr. You can pick from options like a pencil, sketch, poster, cross, watercolor, polly, and other styles. There are lots and lots of effects, too, in categories like atomic, creative, unicolor, vintage, too old, subtle, and soft. In the same area of the app are overlays so that you can quickly drop a burn effect right over the picture, or an effect like bubble, glitter, glaze, metal, etc.

What makes Pixlr vastly different than some photo editor apps is that you get to really customize the level that an effect can take on your photo. For example, if you pick a glaze overlay to apply to your image, you can use the scroll bar to lessen how much of the effect is actually seen once applied, or the eraser tool to remove the effect on only parts of the image. You can do this to multiple effects, overlays, and styles to really personalize it how you wish.

The Pixlr app also has lots of borders and stickers that, again, are just one tap away. The text tool lets you change the font type to one of several options and can be any color you want. The opacity can be adjusted for all of those things as well.

This app does show ads sometimes, like when you’re about to save your picture, but they’re not intrusive at all. There’s a good chance you’ll glance right over them.

Probably the biggest issue with this photo editor is that when you're choosing how much of an effect to apply, by sliding the scroll wheel left or right, you can't see how the effect looks until you lift your finger. Most other apps show the result in real time but, unfortunately, Pixlr does not.

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Snapseed

What We Like

Free with no ads
Really simple to use
Edit RAW files
Precise control over how much of a tool is applied
Save a copy with the ability to undo edits later

What We Don't Like

Filters and other tools are mashed into one menu

Snapseed is a free photo editor app from Google. It’s really simple at first glance but does include quite a bit of editing tools.

Instead of using a scroll tool to increase or decrease the intensity or strength of effects and other tools, this app has you slide your finger to the left or right of the screen to see the changes in real time.

Another big feature not found in most photo editor apps is the View edits option in Snapseed. This lets you view a list of all the edits you’ve made since the beginning, and lets you jump back to a specific point in one tap. It's like the version history you might be used to in your online documents but with image edits. This definitely beats hitting an undo button a dozen times, and you can even save the picture and reopen it later to undo changes.

When you first open Snapseed, unlike other apps that often have lots of buttons, there’s just a LOOKS, TOOLS, and EXPORT button. The first two, of course, are where you’ll find the editing options and the last one is for sharing and saving the image. There’s also a small Settings menu for adjusting the sizing, format, and quality of exports—you can save a PNG or a JPG with custom compression.

In the first menu is a list of one-touch effects you can apply to your image that will apply preset effects automatically. Some of them are called Last Edits, Portrait, Smooth, Pop, Faded Glow, Morning, Bright, Fine Art, and Silhouette. Tap one to instantly apply it to the picture. Once you commit to one, you can go back and apply another on top of it, which is something many photo editors won’t let you do.

Or, if you want precise control over how the tools are used, use the TOOLS menu. Many of them are common and can be found in other photo editor apps but some are entirely unique to Snapseed. Filters and editing tools are combined into one screen.

For example, there’s a crop, rotate, perspective, and expand option but also a curves, white balance, selective brightness, exposure and dodge/burn brush, glamour glow, head pose, lens blur, HDR scape, and other fun tools.

Snapseed is also a great app for applying frames and text to a photo. There are over 20 frames to choose from and several meme-like text options.

You can get Snapseed free for iPad, iPhone, and Android devices.

Android

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Enlight

What We Like

Advanced yet not hard to use
Apply effects to specific areas only
Includes basic tools, too
Export to TIFF, PNG, or JPG with varying file sizes

What We Don't Like

Isn’t free
Could be overwhelming with all the options

The Enlight photo editor is pretty amazing. You can think of it like the Photoshop of image editors, but for your iPhone or iPad (it’s actually better than the mobile Photoshop app in our opinion). It has all those normal editing tools you hope to have in an app but is also really useful for putting creative spins on your images.

If you’re willing to trade just a few bucks, you’ll have quite a robust image editor in your hands at all times, one they call “every photo app you’ve ever needed, wanted, or dreamed of” combined into this one app.

This photo editor app is definitely a bit more advanced than the others listed above, but don’t let that come off as a bad thing. While some apps loaded with features are difficult to use because of poor design, Enlight uses pop-out menus for organization and has tutorials for help understanding all the features—just pull down from the top of the screen for info about any tool.

Enlight can flip, rotate, skew, and straighten images. A similar feature that makes this app stand out from others, especially free ones, is its Refit tool. Select the parts of the image that should remain in the photo, and if the background is simple enough, refitting will move those parts together to crop the photo without affecting those objects. It's very neat!

Another thing that makes Enlight so different than most free photo editors is its selective editing tool called Target. Use it to apply color, exposure, contrast, sharpness, and clarity to particular parts of an image instead of the whole canvas. This is really useful since some photos don’t need a blanket edit.

Enlight is also known for its filters, separated into categories like Analog, BW, and Duo. Pick a category, choose a filter, and use your finger or stylus to control how strong the preset should appear on your image, by swiping to the left or the right. The Duo section is particularly interesting because it lets you tint the image with a blend of two colors, with custom overlap options.

There are also artistic tools in Enlight so you can convert your photos into paintings or drawings. Much like the other options in this photo editor, you can provide as much control over the effect as you like to make it only partially sketched, for example, or provide a full painted look.

One more thing worth noting about the Enlight photo editor app is the Mixer tool that lets you create a double exposure effect to combine two images together, forming a hybrid photo like you see in the image above. It’s a bit like Union and similar apps but better since you can edit in Enlight and stay there for double exposure, too.

The same creators of this app, Lightricks, have a free app called Enlight Photofox, but it has different features.

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PhotoGrid

What We Like

Lots of unique features
Most of the tools are free to use
Very easy to use

What We Don't Like

Saves with a small 'PHOTOGRID' watermark
Has ads

PhotoGrid is a different kind of photo editor app. Instead of providing just editing tools, you can use it to make a photo or video collage, scrapbook, GIF or still meme, slideshow, poster, filmstrip, and more.

This free image editor app also works as an augmented reality camera, letting you overlay stickers and hats and other things directly onto your face in real time.

Plus, you can follow other PhotoGrid users and keep tabs on what they post in the Feeds section of your app.

PhotoGrid is on an entirely different level than the other image editors in this list. While it does have normal editing capabilities, it doesn't seem built for that, and honestly that's probably not why most people use this app.

On the main screen of the app are all your options. You can pick any of these: Grid, Edit, WowCam, Video, Retouch, Big Head, Scrapbook, Meme, Slide Show, Filmstrip, Poster, Pattern Venus Filter, Twinkle, and Instant Share.

These tools let you do things like combine videos and images into collages, take videos or image selfies with live stickers, build GIF memes, make new wallpapers for your phone, build stylish posters, make your head look like a balloon, and, of course, typical editing where you can add text, draw on the image, crop or rotate the photo, adjust skin tone, blur, and add a border.

This app clearly has a lot built-in to it, but at the same time it lets you customize a lot of what you do. For example, when making a collage with PhotoGrid you can adjust each individual image in its frame and combine other tools to round the edges, add text, import stickers, apply filters, and more. Sometimes, you can even adjust the intensity or opacity of a tool.

PhotoGrid is free for Android and iOS. If you want more features, you can watch ads to get something for free, otherwise you can pay (usually around $1) to get things like more poster templates, backgrounds, stickers, etc.

Android

Best Free Photo Editing Programs

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PicsArt Photo Studio & Collage

What We Like

Best Free Photo Editor For Mac

Advanced for a free app
Millions of free stickers
Supports layers in some tools
Lots of one-touch effects
Save to your PicsArt account

What We Don't Like

Must log in to edit photos
Many of the filters and other options are only free during a 3-day trial
Lots of ads, both sectional and fullscreen

PicsArt Photo Studio & Collage is different from these other photo editors in a number of ways, but the most notable is that when you're editing a portrait, there are various tools that can automatically recognize where the person is located and isolate it from the rest of the picture to make editing a lot easier than manually tracing out the background.

Some photo editors let you adjust the strength of some of the tools, like filters, so that only part of it bleeds through to the photo. While this isn't possible with the PicsArt app, it does have an eraser tool that can remove a filter for select areas of the photo, plus an even more impressive button that will identify a face/body and immediately remove the filter from that area.

Tons of other advanced editing tools are included, too, like a crop, dispersion, clone, stretch, motion, perspective, curves, and shape crop tool.

Images can be shared with friends through the app via Remix Chat. Plus, every user has a profile page friends can visit to see what they've been sharing with the community.

Best Free Photo Editing Apps For Macbook

You can take part in what the app calls Challenges to remix certain images and possibly win prizes. For example, one might be a picture of a woman with a bare arm where you have to apply a tattoo.

In addition to all the stickers made by other members that you can freely use as often as you like, there are also free images accessible from inside the app.

Editing Apps For Mac

This free photo editor runs on iOS, Android, and Windows 10.

Best Free Photo Editor For Windows 10

Android