Photo Editors Review – 42 Best Photo Editors for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android
Last Updated on February 8, 2023 by Peter Wood
Which is the best photo editor? It is a difficult question to answer. Photoshop might be a great photo editing program, but not a favorite choice for beginners. Even if you are a professional photographer, Photoshop is not the only choice, especially when you need to touch up the photos in a batch process. As for creating photo collages and retouching portraits, you can consider more professional photo editors.
The article compiles the 42 best photo editors for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. Moreover, you can also find different choices for newbies as well as professionals. If you have any difficulty getting the desired photo editor for your device, read the article and select the desired one accordingly.
Part 1: Top 12 Professional Photo Editors for Windows 11/10/8/7 and macOS
Top 1: Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is the ultimate photo manipulation program. It is the photo editor for many artists and designers to create and enhance photos, illustrations, and 3D artwork, design websites, and edit videos.
Pros:
1. Manage all the photographs with numerous filters, presets, and layers.
2. Creative Cloud to create with Photoshop tools wherever you’re inspired.
3. Step-to-step tutorials cover the basic to advanced techniques.
Cons:
1. It should be hard to master all the advanced features for beginners.
2. Subscribe to Photoshop and the collections of a creative app at a high price.
Top 2: Affinity Photo
Affinity Photo is another professional photo editor that works on Windows, Mac, and iPad. The program integrates with features, such as RAW editing, HDR merge, panorama stitching, batch processing, and PDS editing.
Pros:
1. Full RAW development includes PSD and HEIF with all the image details.
2. Huge macro and batch processing improvements for photo editing.
3. Effective noise reduction, hot pixel removal, and color space development.
Cons:
1. Cannot save the custom workspaces to edit the photos in a batch process.
2. Lack of the import files, photo management, or lens correction tools.
Top 3: Corel PaintShop
Corel PaintShop is a photo editor, photo viewer and organizer. It is a powerful, versatile, and intuitive tool for any photo or design project, which you can find multiple high-quality photo editing filters.
Pros:
1. Design photos with text, brush, drawing, and painting with great designs.
2. Remove flaws and distractions from a small scratch to the background.
3. Lay-based editing capabilities to retouch and enhance images.
Cons:
1. Ineffective chromatic aberration removal to reduce the image noises.
2. Slow for some operation and might get a cluttered user interface.
Top 4: CyberLink PhotoDirector
CyberLink PhotoDirector provides a wide range of filters to manage basic photo editing or do achieve effects. There are also automated effects like global and local adjustments to tweak for the best output image.
Pros:
1. Express layer packs contain all the layer components to make up images.
2. AI style engine to analyze images in detail and identify different aspects.
3. Create impressive photos with creative presets, such as HDR, B/W, etc.
Cons:
1. Lack of Len profile and inadequate chromatic aberration corrections.
2. It is a little slow to run the photo editor on a low-end PC.
Top 5: WidsMob AI Retoucher
WidsMob AI Retoucher is the best AI-based photo editor, in which you can touch up portraits, remove image noises, recover low light, reduce haze, hide faces with mosaic, convert photos to cartoons/paintings, extract photos from the background, and more automatically.
Pros:
1. Adjust contrast, brightness, temperature, tint, sharpness, luminance, chrominance, etc.
2. Apply HDR filters, light adjustments, B/W analog films, pencil sketches, and others.
3. Provide some basic editing features to crop, rotate, flip, mirror, and compare photos.
Cons:
1. Cannot make photos from scratch as the other photo editors, such as vector design.
2. Lack of other photo filters, such as bokeh, distortion correction, and more.
Top 6: ACDSee Photo Studio
ACDSee Photo Studio is another photo editor for professionals. It enables you to manage, edit, develop, view photos, and even share them online. There are numerous editing filters, effects, and brushes to touch up photos.
Pros:
1. Add several tags on photos, like GPS locating and rate and label photos.
2. Organize the photos with face detection and facial recognition tools.
3. Built-in support for over 500 camera modes and edge-aware brushing.
Cons:
1. Fall short of the RAW camera file conversion and usability as competitors.
2. Pay for a monthly subscription charge to use the online storage service.
Top 7: WidsMob Portrait Pro
How about photo editors for portraits? When you need to touch up the selfies and portrait images within clicks, WidsMob Portrait Pro can touch up your skin, enhance all portrait points and even have great makeup for a portrait.
Pros:
1. Customize the touchup presets to edit the portraits within one click.
2. Makeup blush, lipstick, colored contacts, eye, nose, cheek, and more.
3. Manually select the skin areas to smooth skin, change color tone, etc.
Cons:
1. Lack of hair touchup features to change the styles for hairs.
2. The Photoshop plugin is not available to edit portraits within Photoshop.
Top 8: Zoner Photo Studio
Zoner Photo Studio is another layer-supported photo editor with multiple presets, retouching tools, cataloging, and video editing features. The program supports both RAW and JPEG photographs.
Pros:
1. Import the photos automatically and sort the photos with different data.
2. Get unlimited storage space for photos on the zone camera online gallery.
3. Standard editing tools and over 35 special effects filters to edit photos.
Cons:
1. A Limited number of advanced features to apply stunning photo effects.
2. Complicated process to do a simple and easy transition process.
Top 9: Capture One
Capture One is another RAW editor that offers end-to-end capture, organize and edit workflow for designers and professional users with editing tools and high-quality results.
Pros:
1. Connect to the camera to compose images, adjust settings and carry out files.
2. Organize and manage many collections of images by creating a catalog.
3. Adjustments for different filters in various tabbed panes.
Cons:
1. Non-response editing elements problem and frequently crash issues.
2. Lack of some essential features for HDR, panorama and face recognition.
Top 10: DxO PhotoLab
DxO PhotoLab is an advanced photo editor with the most flexible and powerful processing and correction tools. You can make several settings to adjust the correction and other imperfections to get a perfect image.
Pros:
1. Intelligently applied to all similar points within the area you’ve identified.
2. Maintain the same level of detail and colors with noise reduction technology.
3. Optical correction modules to correct any flaws in your lenses.
Cons:
1. Do not support correct the lenses for the latest Fujifilm camera.
2. Default settings include too many automatic adjustments.
Top 11: On1 Photo RAW
On1 Photo RAW is an ultimate multiple layers photo editor and image manager that provides all new editing features. It enables you to browse, organize and edit the RAW photos in a batch process.
Pros:
1. Manage and organize hundreds of built-in filters, presets and LUTs.
2. Effortless advanced masking tools with four different masking modes.
3. Advanced features to combine HDR, stitch photos, and blend images.
Cons:
1. Provides only some basic and immature features to edit photos.
2. Lack of dual monitor support for advanced editing features.
Top 12: Ashampoo Photo Commander
Ashampoo Photo Commander is one of the best photo editors, viewers, and managers. You can get more than 200 functions to make stunning collages, cards, designs, and frames. It also provides auto-correction, removes compression artifacts, etc.
Pros:
1. Provide fast multi-purpose image editing features to fix common image issues.
2. Come with multiple wizards for multiple tasks with step-by-step assistance.
3. View photos with advanced algorithm, smart group, and sort by multiple parameters.
Cons:
1. Difficult to manage the photo editor with the cluttered and complicated user interface.
2. Lack of chromatic aberration correction, face tags, and other editing features.
Part 2: 10 Best Free Photo Editors for PC and Mac
Top 1: GIMP
GIMP is an open-source and free photo editor with photo editing tools, like select, crop, eraser, paint bucket, brush, and more. It's custom and enhances photos with advanced photo retouching techniques, even for the interface.
Pros:
1. Extended add-on programs to enrich the program with flexible features.
2. Support all the photo formats as well as most of the popular RAW images.
3. There is a community developed for the program with frequent updates.
Cons:
1. Free photo editor is not fully compatible with the latest Windows 11.
2. Complicated to beginners since documentation is often missing or outdated.
Top 2: PhotoScape
PhotoScape is another free photo editor, which bundles with lots of filters and tools for photos, such as viewer, batch editor, page, combine, animated GIF, print, splitter, screen capture, color picker, rename, face search, and more.
Pros:
1. Provide different templates to print photos and create slideshow files.
2. Work with animated GIF files as well as the popular RAW formats.
3. Stitch photos in different modes, such as panorama and photo collage.
Cons:
1. Basic photo editing features without advanced parameters and settings.
2. It should be a complicated process to get a combined result.
Top 3: Photos
How about the free photo editors for Mac? Photos and Preview should be the two default programs of your MacBook. It can handle RAW images from popular digital cameras and the Live Photos/HEIC/JPEG/PNG/BMP.
Pros:
1. Import images and automatically group photos into different albums by date.
2. Support live photo editing with Live, Loop, Bounce, and Long Exposure.
3. Provide editing tools and enhance auto-correction features.
Cons:
1. Limited photo filters and cannot adjust them to get a satisfactory result.
2. Cannot edit the automatically generated albums accordingly.
Top 4: Google Photos
Google Photos might take granted as a cloud service to store photos and videos from iPhone, Dropbox, Flickr, OneDrive, and more. It is also an excellent free photo editor with advanced features.
Pros:
1. Image search technology for personal photos with artificial intelligence.
2. Free unlimited cloud photo storage space within resolution limits.
3. Use AI to suggest the photos to share with different contacts.
Cons:
1. Limited editing features to undo for editing or blemish/red-eye removal.
2. The photo categorization feature is not useful as the other photo editors.
Top 5: Photo Pos Pro
Photo Pos Pro is another free photo editor that offers an array of editing tools with novice layouts. Whether you need to remove the unwanted parts or fix poor photos, you can always find a desired feature within the program.
Pros:
1. Preset curves options and one-click adjustment tools to enhance images.
2. Multiple filters, effects, and even brushes with further customized options.
3. Create stunning text effects, frames, and collages with different types of tools.
Cons:
1. Lack of layer effects for the texts and controls over the files.
2. Duplicating layers seems convoluted, especially for beginners.
Top 6: Paint.net
Different from the other free photo editors, Paint.net uses a tabbed document interface. It can handle multiple images with ease, which the tabs display a live thumbnail instead of the text description to the photo.
Pros:
1. Blur, sharpen, distort, emboss and remove that pesky red-eye effect.
2. Record every change you make in a list that you can undo and redo easily.
3. Support user-created plugins to add more desired filters and functions.
Cons:
1. Limited editing features, brush works, no burn, and dodge filters.
2. No text correction after applying other effects.
Top 7: Pixia
Pixia is one of the best free photo editors with multiple overlays, layers, concealing, features, and more. If you are a creative talent in comics, you can use this program to create funny images.
Pros:
1. Full-color graphics with masking and layers to manipulating the images.
2. Create as many layers as memory lasts with the max graphic size.
3. Apply a small collection of different filters on the frames you use.
Cons:
1. Frequent freezing problems when you apply filters on the photographs.
2. Complicated and outdated user interface, which is hard to find a feature.
Top 8: Image Trick
To apply some cool effects to your photographs, you can choose Image Trick. It is a simple and free photo editor with 48 filters and photo effects. You can adjust and apply the color, focus, distort, Gaussian blur, crystalize, star-shine.
Pros:
1. Each filter has a set of controls to tweak the parameters you want to apply.
2. Image generator to produce designs and patterns to use in your artwork.
3. 30 different masks that you can apply for heart frame, Apple logo, and more.
Cons:
1. Photos integration does not work well as the other programs.
2. Need to upgrade to the Pro version to release all the features.
Top 9: Inkscape
Inkscape is another open-source vector photo editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It offers drawing pencils, shape tools, text tools, embedded bitmaps, clone features, and manipulation features for editing photos.
Pros:
1. Gradient editor of multi-stop gradient, color selector, and color picker.
2. Multi-line text with outline fonts, kerning, letter-spacing, and line-spacing.
3. Live watching and editing the document tree in the XML editor.
Cons:
1. There are lots of crash and freeze issues with the Mac version.
2. Steep learning curve and weak text formatting tools.
Top 10: Image Tuner
If you need to resize some photos for your blog, you can consider Image Tuner. This free photo editor can resize, rename, convert and watermark the images within a batch process.
Pros:
1. Convert between most popular image formats, rename images as desired.
2. Multiple editing features to flip, rotate, colorize, crop, round, and apply filters.
3. Add either a watermark or image to your photos with a logo or image name.
Cons:
1. Limited editing features and enhanced options to get the desired photo.
2. It is not fully compatible with the latest Windows 10 64 bits.
Part 3: 10 Best Online Photo Editors to Enhance Photos Online
Top 1: Pixlr
Pixlr is a free online photo editor available on the web as well as smartphones. It has a similar user interface as Photoshop that you can edit/adjust/enhance images on layers or uses extensive photo effects and filters.
Pros:
1. Built-in collage maker with many templates to make photo collages.
2. Auto Fix feature to correct, enhance and fix imperfect photos.
3. Provide extensive pro-level photo editing features to enhance photos.
Cons:
1. Lacks features like the other photo editors, such as photo card templates.
2. It should be hard to use the program crossing different devices.
Top 2: PicMonkey
PicMonkey is another popular online photo editor for free. The built-in touch-up tools can help you retouch selfies online or on mobile phones. Moreover, you can design social media covers, photo cards, posters, or more.
Pros:
1. Dedicated collage maker to create photo collage with personal pictures.
2. Integrates all photo editing features to adjust, enhance or decorate photos.
3. Enjoy the photo editing features across platforms seamlessly.
Cons:
1. Ask for your personal information to the registry of the online photo editor.
2. Add a watermark on each result automatically without an upgrade to Pro.
Top 3: Fotor
As a web-based photo editor, Fotor offers all photo editing tools, like crop, resize, text, retouch, and more, over 100 photo effects and filters to produce special image effects and dozens of picture frames or hundreds of stickers.
Pros:
1. Integrate over 1000 templates for social media covers, posters, cards, etc.
2. Support uploading images from the local hard drive and social media sites.
3. Easy to adjust exposure, highlights, shadows, reset curves, and more.
Cons:
1. To release more features and remove Ads, you have to use Pro.
2. Bugs and freezes should be another headache problem for the program.
Top 4: Pizap
Pizap is another free online photo editor for social media sites in both HTML5 and Flash. You can upload the pictures from your hard drive using social networks, cloud storage, or a catalog of stock images for further editing.
Pros:
1. Apply emoji, filters, effects, stickers, and other elements.
2. Multiple functions to manage, edit, collage, design, and touch up photos.
3. Design your own YouTube cover, Twitter cover, and Facebook cover maker.
Cons:
1. Constant advertising and paid content are available here and there.
2. Poor color correction algorithm to touch up and edit the photos.
Top 5: Canva
If you are a novice designer or a professional artist, you can always create a great photo with Canva. The online photo editor provides quick filters that you only need to edit images online without much effect.
Pros:
1. Advanced settings of filter, adjust, crop, resize, rotate, flip and download.
2. Access to more than 8000 templates to design a satisfying result with ease.
3. Provide 1GB free storage to upload photos and assets to edit photos.
Cons:
1. The performance of the program depends on your Internet connection.
2. It works with JPEG files with outdated Flash players only.
Top 6: BeFunky
BeFunky is the top online photo editor to edit photos, make collages, and create designs. You can find hundreds of eye-catching fashion styles, photo effects, and well-designed templates.
Pros:
1. All these filters are with sliders or choices.
2. Get layer manager, edit tools, touch-up, image effect, frames, graphics, etc.
3. Autofill service to get pretty good picture collages automatically.
Cons:
1. 80% additional content of the online version requires purchasing.
2. There is too much advertising when using the free online version.
Top 7: LunaPic
Compare with other online image editors, LunaPic seems lagging in the interface. It has a solid slate of unique photo edits and effects. You can make B/W photos and add scratchy moving vertical age lines to design a movie effect.
Pros:
1. Important images from Facebook, Chrome, Instagram, URL, etc.
2. Adjust GIF animations, add B/W background, get cartoon files and effects.
3. Get over 200 image effects, doubles edit, and adjust tools online.
Cons:
1. Both the photo effects and the designs are outdated and boring.
2. Restriction on the maximum size for the output image files.
Top 8: iPiccy
iPiccy is a versatile online photo editor to touch up meals tastier as well as portraits. It has a large set of tools for editing images online and even enables you to change the color of hair, pupil, blemish, shine, and even your skin.
Pros:
1. Change the tonality, shadow, contrast, and other parameters with ease.
2. Image enhancements to crop, color correction, filters, and effects.
3. Offer virtually all of its content free, except filters.
Cons:
1. It only works with the JPEG, but is incompatible with the RAW formats.
2. Lack zoom function and cannot edit the photos in a full-screen mode.
Top 9: FotoFlexer
FotoFlexer is an online photo editor with basic edits, effects, animations, and the ability to beautify, distort and decorate your images. Moreover, there is an eyedropper tool that helps you use color freely to make more creations.
Pros:
1. Full-screen editing canvas with all editing tools, such as rotation, crop, etc.
2. Provide unlimited work with some advanced masks and layers.
3. Offer tools with a single mouth click and some extra editing tools.
Cons:
1. Provide beautify module and advanced edits only for controls.
2. Sign in for certain operations that you cannot navigate back.
Top 10: PhotoFunia
PhotoFunia is an attractive free online photo editor with an easy user interface. It provides filters, clip art, light effects, funny faces, and in-built posters to add glamorous image effects to your photos with your imagination and creativity.
Pros:
1. Face-recognition technology can bring much fun to your photos.
2. Choose from more than 300 scenes or fun effects to touch up files.
3. Allow you to create photographic masterpieces with pre-sets.
Cons:
1. Provide the basic editing features and filters to beautify photos.
2. Have detection problems in bright and dark photos.
Part 4: 10 Best Photo Editors on Android and iPhone
Top 1: Photoshop Express Mobile
Adobe Photoshop Express is the free photo editor for Android phones and iPhones. It enables you to create magic in each of your photos and modify everything you need to find a spectacular design in a short time.
Pros:
1. Provide Looks, Crop, Corrections, Redeye, Borders, and Healing Brush.
2. Allow adjusting multiple parameters to balance the colors of your photos.
3. Transplanted photos from Photoshop and able to fix photo noises.
Cons:
1. Limited filters, sacrifice creativity and versatility for simplicity.
2. The frequently reported crashing problems for the Android versions.
Top 2: Camera360
Camera360 is a selfie photo editor with funny stickers. Instead of rotating, cropping, and other basic features, the program provides more than 200 related filters to makeup portraits look beautiful.
Pros:
1. Revolutionary 3D funny stickers to make selfies creative and more fun.
2. Embed a face fix tool to deal with wrinkles within one click.
3. Real-time makeup beauty camera for eyes, teeth, lips, nose, and face.
Cons:
1. Lags and crashes in most low-end Android phones and old version iPhone.
2. Provide only the basic editing features with image effects.
Top 3: FaceTune
FaceTune is another selfie photo editor to smooth the face, crop unnecessary parts, apply filters, and add frames. You can widen smiles, make teeth brighter, remove blemishes, and wrinkles and correct the angle of the selfie photos.
Pros:
1. Great face recognition that controls effects and filters with high efficiency.
2. Localize fingertip brushing of effects and edits to edit the portraits.
3. Improved skin smoothing, skin tone color, and other algorithms.
Cons:
1. Limited support for the social media websites, such as Instagram.
2. The advanced features, such as a healing brush available in the Pro version.
Top 4: Prisma
Prisma is another photo editor with special effects, which turn any photo or video into art. Multiple filter features make your photos look like a negative, a sketch, or even a painting that you must have wanted.
Pros:
1. More than 300 styles, like Van Gogh, Munk, Picasso, Levitan, etc.
2. Apply artistic and stunning effects for both photos and videos with ease.
3. Integrate with deep learning algorithms to apply the filter correctly.
Cons:
1. Reduce the image resolution and provide square images only.
2. Limited photo correction adjustments, editing features, and B/A modes.
Top 5: Instagram
Instagram is one of the most popular social media applications around the world. It is also a photo editor app with photo editing tools and photo adjustments, including color, saturation, contrast, and more.
Pros:
1. Create some special photo effects, such as vignette, shadows, and fade.
2. Effect filters range from simple B&W to retro film styles to cross-processing.
3. Slider control zipping across to this best-guess setting and adjust it to taste.
Cons:
1. Provide some photo editing tools to touch up and edit the photos.
2. Instagram camera does not add HDR and panorama options.
Top 6: Snapseed
Snapseed is a comprehensive picture-editing app, which has selective adjustments for photo filters and effects. Besides the basic editing features to enhance and correct photos, you can also create HDR and Pano photos.
Pros:
1. Provide lens blur, grainy films, vintage styles, curves styles, frames, etc.
2. Offer tools and filters, including brush, HDR, crop, transform, and so on.
3. Ranges of exposure, color, masking, and reshaping tools, brushes, and filter.
Cons:
1. Require a certain level of photographic expertise to edit the photos.
2. Autosave feature is not available to save the edits automatically.
Top 7: VSCO
VSCO is not only a great photo editor but also integrates excellent camera function. It has advanced presets and filters, which you can use revolutionary film X tools and presets to personalize easier, even for the RAW editing.
Pros:
1. Provide extensive presets to make the editing process easily.
2. Editing tools to crop, contrast, trim and other picture editing processes.
3. Active community for photographers to communicate and share photos.
Cons:
1. No frame, text, or funky special effect is available within the photo editor.
2. The crop tool works only with preset aspect ratios.
Top 8: Enlight
As the all-in-one photo editor for iPhone, Enlight provides the basic editing and adjustment tools to stylize photos. It offers comprehensive image editing tools to customize pictures without losing image quality.
Pros:
1. Provide a masking option for all tools to make the editing seamless.
2. Reproduce classic cameras, vintage films, and other analog film effects.
3. Photo mixer that overlays two photos to get double exposure image.
Cons:
1. Lack of some editing tools than the competitive photo editors.
2. More and more similar features are available with other free tools.
Top 9: Aviary
Aviary is the photo editor for Android and iOS that offers creative filters to perk up your pedestrian image. Moreover, the program also lets you fine-tune them with controls for brightness, contrast, color cropping, and more.
Pros:
1. Cool Memo lets you add text as cat photos with large block letters.
2. Portrait touchup with blemish remover, red-eye remover, and teeth brusher.
3. Crop tool uses touchable corner controls and offers preset aspect ratios.
Cons:
1. Cannot share the edited photos directly with the community of Aviary.
2. Purchase more advanced filters to release all the features.
Top 10: AirBrush
AirBrush is the professional photo editor Android app to beautify self-portraits. It includes features to whiten teeth, smooth blemishes and pimples, brighten eyes, and other retouch filters.
Pros:
1. Provide natural and radiant filters to beautify portraits in detail.
2. Real-time editing technology to edit self-portraits before shooting.
3. Attractive to makeup in front of cameras on the picture editor on Android.
Cons:
1. Lack a deep method to slim your body or face with the help of clothing.
2. Out with a set of impressive editing and enhancing tools, such as tilt-shift.
Conclusion
What should be the most suitable photo editor for your device? If you have any difficulty choosing an editing program for your Windows, Mac, Android phones, or iOS devices, you can check out the desired one from the compiled list. Read the review and even download the program to have another try.