- January 02, 2020
- 18 min to read
- Best Free Simple Photo Editor For Mac
- Simple Photo Editor Mac Os X
- Best Photo Editing Mac
- Simple Photo Editor For Mac
- Free Photo Editor
Most free photo editors available on the App Store are quite basic, offering just a limited number of filters and allowing you to easily and quickly liven up your photos before posting them on social media.
But if you’re an aspiring or professional photographer, you probably need a more powerful app with a broader set of tools to use your creativity to the fullest. Besides, you probably use your Mac for photo editing because working on a large screen makes it possible to adjust the slightest details.
GIMP is an open source free photo editing software for Mac. Its name means GNU Image Manipulation Program, and it is a raster graphics editor developed by volunteers worldwide. GIMP can be used for image retouching and editing, drawing, conversion between different image formats and more. Super Easy Photo Editing on a Mac: Full credit is to be given to fungus amungus for his Instructable mentioned below that inspired this one. Thanks fungus!:)Okay. Google doesn't offer Picasa for the Mac. Because we don't need it! If you purchased your Mac over the last few year.
1. Apple’s Photos (Built-in app)
Apple’s Photos app is included for free on all recently released Macs. It does a good job at organizing your photos, but its collection of photo enhancement tools leaves much to be desired. Hopefully, our selection of the best free programs for photo editing on Mac will help you choose the right app to suit all your creative needs.
2. Luminar (7 days trial)
Luminar is another full-featured photo editor that’s popular with both Mac and Windows users. It can work as a standalone app as well as a plugin for such popular programs as Apple Photos.
Best Free Simple Photo Editor For Mac
Luminar uses Artificial Intelligence to enable sophisticated yet quick photo enhancements. Among these AI features are Sky Enhancer, which adds more depth and detail to the sky in your photos while leaving other areas untouched; Accent AI, which analyzes a photo and automatically applies the best combination of different effects to enhance your image; and Sun Rays, which allows you to place an artificial sun and adjust the lighting to your liking or make the sun rays already in your photo look even more incredible.
Luminar has over 60 filters you can apply to your photos to enhance them in a moment. Luminar also provides a set of powerful tools for cropping, transforming, cloning, erasing, and stamping, along with layers, brushes, and many more incredible features. Luminar supports the Touch Bar on the latest MacBook Pro, making photo editing even more effortless and pleasing.
3. Photolemur 3 (Free Version with watermark)
Photolemur is a relative newcomer on the photo editing market but it has all the chances to win the favor of beginner photographers and hobbyists. Running on Artificial Intelligence, Photolemur is a completely automatic photo enhancer, meaning that it does all the editing for you in no time. It has the simplest interface, with only a few buttons and sliders to adjust the enhancement to your liking and view the before and after results.
All you need to do is choose a photo (or a few) that you want to improve, drag and drop or import them using the Import button, and let the program make enhancements. After it’s done, you can compare the edited version with the original image by using the before–after slider and, if you want, adjust the skin tone or even enlarge the eyes using additional sliders. Pretty easy, huh?
Photolemur also offers a number of impressive styles to touch up your photos and give them a sophisticated and professional look. With this app, you don’t need to stuff your head with photo editing nuances and terms. Just run Photolemur and watch the magic happen!
4. Aurora HDR (14 days trial)
As you probably can tell from the name, Aurora HDR is designed to help photographers enhance their HDR photos, making them even more detailed and beautiful. It’s an ideal tool for editing your photos, with an extensive collection of more than 20 tools including details, tone, mapping, color, glow, and vignette. Each tool has its unique selection of controls to adjust its effects.
Aurora HDR enables you to work with brushes, layers, and masks, and provides a number of automatic AI tools for recognizing and removing noise, enhancing colors, lighting, and details, improving clarity, and adding contrast to dull areas while leaving other areas untouched.
Aurora HDR does a great job dealing with difficult lighting situations and creating full-of-life images while being easy to use.
5. Pixelmator (Trial 30 Days)
Pixelmator is a photo enhancer beloved by many Mac users, as it offers a good combination of a modern and simple interface, the ability to work on multiple layers, and powerful features that take photo editing to a whole new level. With so many editing tools, brushes, and effects, you can enhance your photos to your liking. You can choose between two versions of Pixelmator – standard and pro – depending on your needs. The standard version is great for basic photo editing with its selection of essential tools and filters, while the pro version is packed with extra brushes, tools, and effects that let you push your creativity to new boundaries. You can decide which version is suitable for you according to what features you’re looking for in a photo editing app.
6. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 (Trial link)
Photoshop Elements isn’t as affordable as other photo enhancers for beginner photographers. But luckily there’s a trial version available, so you can check it out before deciding whether this app is worthy of your money. Photoshop Elements acquired many powerful features from Photoshop, only Elements is simplified for amateur photographers and enthusiasts. It includes a good number of effects and filters, plus automated editing options for improving lighting, color balance, and exposure, and even opening closed eyes and reducing the effects of camera shake.
In addition to all of these awesome features, Photoshop also offers editing modes for beginners, intermediate users, and experts. Beginners will probably prefer Quick mode, as it focuses on essential tools to quickly enhance your photos by improving color, lighting, and other basic settings. Guided mode provides intermediate users with step-by-step guidance with more professional features like artistic effects, skin tone correction, and background replacement. Expert mode gives you full access to the app’s really powerful editing features and is ideal for creating stunning images.
7. Affinity Photo (Free Trial)
Affinity Photo’s interface may seem overwhelming at first, especially for novices, but when you come to grips with it you’ll find that the app is just what you’ve been looking for. Its numerous professional tools, effects, and filters encourage you to get creative with your photos. Among the coolest features Affinity Photo has to offer is a before and after view to compare the original photo with its edited version.
Affinity Photo works with 15 file types, including common ones like PDF, PSD, JPG, and GIF as well as some less popular ones. The app amazes with its abundance of basic and top-notch editing tools, allowing you to tweak your photos using all possible kinds of instruments. Affinity Photo allows you to edit HDR photos, apply artistic filters and effects, play with masks and layers, and create breathtaking compositions by combining several images in one. If you find its interface a bit much and are afraid of getting lost in all those advanced tools, you should probably look for something more suitable for your level. But Affinity Photo is worth mastering.
8. Google Photos
Google Photos is a popular cloud storage service for photos and videos. It can’t boast countless masterly tools like other photo enhancers that we review in this article, but it includes some fundamental features like filters, color adjustment sliders, and transformation tools.
Although Google Photos may not be that helpful when it comes to editing photos, it does a pretty good job at storing high-resolution images and videos with 15GB of free online storage, compared to iCloud’s mere 5GB (which you can upgrade to 50GB for a monthly fee). If you’re planning to go on a trip and take plenty of photos, then it might be smart to sign up for Google Photos to use that extra storage space when you come back.
9. PhotoScape X (Free)
A relatively new photo editing app, PhotoScape X has been gaining popularity with many Mac and PC users since its release in 2008. Its interface is simple but unconventional, with a number of tabs running along the top of the window. Each is responsible for a specific stage of editing. The Viewer tab allows you to browse and organize your photos. After you pick a photo, you can switch to the Editor tab, which includes a broad set of instruments, filters, and effects and a useful feature that enables you to compare the adjusted photo with the original.
The next tabs, including the Batch tab, mainly concentrate on editing and renaming multiple photos at once. The GIF tab allows you to easily create an animated GIF from a group of selected photos.
The downside of PhotoScape X is a lack of selection tools, so all changes are applied to the whole image rather than to a selected part.
10. Gimp (Free)
Gimp is a free open-source photo editing app that has been on the market for over 22 years and is available for Windows, Mac, and even Linux. Unlike many free apps, Gimp doesn’t have any ads or in-app purchases. Its grey interface might seem a little old-fashioned and it may be a bit sluggish when it comes to complex effects, though.
Gimp offers a vast collection of advanced tools that hardly any free photo editor can boast. It has numerous enhancement options such as clone and heal brushes, layers and channels, accurate selection tools, a number of transformation instruments, and, of course, color adjustment controls. Gimp is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing photos and is beloved by so many users for its price (free) and versatility. But if you can’t come to grips with Gimp’s interface, it may be worth paying some cash for a more user-friendly program.
- January 02, 2020
- 22 min to read
There is a long list of photo editing software solutions available today that beginner as well as professional photographers can use. That is great news, but what is the use if you have to spend hours trying to figure out just how to use the software? So, to ensure that all your valuable time goes toward taking your pics to the next level, here are easy-to-use photo editing software solutions.
1. Luminar 4
With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), Luminar makes tricky editing jobs much easier. Unlike many other similar tools for which you need to pay a monthly subscription fee, Luminar 4 requires only a one-off payment which includes any ongoing updates.
Its library module, presets (called Looks), advanced masking, batch processing, adjustable gradient and layered editing are just a couple of the features that make Luminar 4 so unique. All things considered, with Luminar 4, image retouching becomes much more accessible and simple. This tool is really easy to use and boasts a long list of cool features.
✅ Pros
The AI editing tools can help you to work faster
The interface is intuitive
It supports basic file organisation
It can be used as a standalone photo editing app or as a plug-in for Apple Photos, Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop
✖️ Cons
The metadata and export options can be improved
It is difficult to tell which features each panel offers without first clicking on it
2. Adobe Photoshop Elements
This specific photo editing software solution is very popular among busy non-professional photographers who are searching for a tool that will help them to put their creativity to the test. Adobe Elements uses artificial intelligence (AI) to choose which videos and photos to include in your collages. So, it is a great tool if you want to create collages of your favourite family memories, but always have a difficult time deciding which pics to pick.
However, while it is one of the simplest Adobe tools to master, there are other photo editing software solutions on the market that are easier to use.
✅ Pros
It is compatible with both PCs as well as Macs
There are many stunning templates that you can use to create a collage
Features are easy to access thanks to the new home screen
It offers automated slideshows and collages
It supports HEIF files
Guided edits has a step-by-step guide that lets you work on your photos directly
✖️ Cons
You must first sign in with your Adobe ID before you can use the software
Not so many new features have been introduced with the latest update
3. Aurora HDR
As HDR is tricky to get right, Aurora HDR is a great tool to get. Its wide range of different HDR effects will help you to create natural results. In a single click of a button, you can apply one of the many Looks. Though, if you would like to play around more, you can use the masking and layer features to add extra edits.
✅ Pros
It is very easy to use and has an intuitive interface
You can effortlessly undo any changes that you have made or even go back to your original picture
It can be used as a standalone app, Apple Photos extension, or plug-in to Adobe Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop
It has a batch processing feature that you can use to import many images or folders
✖️ Cons
It is not a full-featured image editor
4. Photolemur
Among all the other photo editing software solutions mentioned in this list, Photolemur is the easiest to use. What makes it so simple to use is that about 90% of it is fully automatic. Thanks to its artificial intelligence (AI), you can create great pics without having to struggle with manual editing. This makes it the ideal photo editing tool for amateur photographers who do not necessarily have the skill to make custom edits.
✅ Pros
It offers impressive batch enhancement
It supports a wide range of image formats including RAW image format
✖️ Cons
It does not offer zoom tools
While GIMP is not as easy to use as some of the other tools already mentioned, it is still simpler than Photoshop. If it does not boast a specific tool, you can rest assured as updates are introduced regularly. That being said, it does offer loads of features including brushes, layers and filters.
✅ Pros
It has many high-quality tools and features
It can virtually open all image files
✖️ Cons
The interface could be more sleek and streamlined
6. Pixlr
Pixlr is an online photo editor that has received hundreds of five-star reviews online already. While it does not offer so many options, you can use it to perform all the editing tasks that other standard photo editors can complete.
✅ Pros
As it is a web app, there is no need first to download a big programme
The app is easy to navigate and use
✖️ Cons
If you have grown used to Adobe, you will find that it lacks the same level of sophistication
It is not the most powerful web app for photo editing
The interface is slightly outdated
7. Paint.NET
You might be taken aback that this simple tool has made this list. While it was initially just planned to replace the basic Microsoft Paint software, it has actually become an impressive photo editing tool. All in all, it is a functional software solution that focuses more on actual photo editing as opposed to creativity.
✅ Pros
Paint.NET boasts a big selection of handy tools and special effects
The user interface is modern, yet easy to use
If you get stuck, there is a big online network that can help you
Simple Photo Editor Mac Os X
✖️ Cons
It is only available for Windows users
8. Photos for MacOS
Sometimes you do not need to look too far to find the right photo editing tool. If you use a Mac, Apple Photos offers more than enough functionality to create high-quality photos. While it might be simple to use, rest assured there is nothing simple about the editing tools on offer. Over the years the editing tools have developed and today they are not bad at all. That being said, do not grow too excited just yet as it does miss a couple of handy features.
✅ Pros
It is very simple to use
It has the basic edits such as red eye removal, crop and white balance
✖️ Cons
It is only available for Mac OS
You cannot adjust the brush
It does not offer a history panel
While it does offer a good selection of filters, graduated filters are not included
9. XnView
If you use Windows, XnView is a handy image viewer, converter, photo editor and browser to add to your arsenal of tools. What is more, it supports over 500 image file formats!
✅ Pros
If you get stuck, you can consult the Online Help file, forum or FAQ page
The user interface is very practical
It supports a wide range of file formats that include GIF, JPEG, and PNG
✖️ Cons
Some users have reported that the controls are a bit too sensitive
It is only compatible with Windows
10. IrfanView
Like most of the other photo editing tools, IrfanView boasts an intuitive interface which makes it ideal for novices. While it may not offer every single feature that other professional photo editors boast, it is still powerful enough to satisfy most of your requirements. And, if you are searching for a more specialist feature, you might just be able to find a plug-in that can help.
✅ Pros
Best Photo Editing Mac
You can use it to create slideshows
It offers watermarking
It supports plug-ins
Simple Photo Editor For Mac
✖️ Cons
While the interface is easy to use, its appearance is a bit dated
11. AirMagic
No list with photo editing software solutions will be quite complete without a tool especially for drone lovers. As drones offer a different perspective, there are many other elements that must be considered when modifying the pics taken by a drone.
Free Photo Editor
The magic quality of AirMagic is that it has been specifically created to edit the photos captured by drones. In fact, it will read the metadata or the photos taken by your drone automatically and then apply the modifications that match your particular model of drone.
✅ Pros
It uses artificial intelligence to deliver the best results
It supports JPG, RAW, PNG and TIFF file formats
You can edit your final photo with the use of a practical side-by-side view
✖️ Cons
The colour can appear exaggerated and in some instances there is a blue tint visible