Jun 24, 2019 The best free photo editors offer useful features such as removing red-eyes, resizing, black and white conversion, effects, presets and styles, textures, tools for creating collages, and tools for image retouching. The following list includes some of the best free photo editing software available for Windows.
- March 12, 2019
- 18 min to read
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.
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 (30 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.
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 2019 (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.
Availability and affordability of the good quality Smartphone camera and digital camera enables the people to click pictures of every moment of their life. People now are very active in clicking pictures and uploading them on their social media accounts to update their friends about the happenings in their life. Uploading the original pictures can be less interesting and you may not get as many likes as you expect. Using the best quality of photo editing tools makes your photos attractive and grabs everyone’s attention on your posts and the profile pictures. These days, various types of photo editing softwares are available for desktop and mobile users.
Part 1. Top 15 Free Photo Editor Software in 2018
People are constantly sharing digital pictures and images for the personal and the professional reasons. They not only have to regularly update their social media profiles but also to keep their professional image high. Using the photo editing software empowers you to gain attention from others. There are so many types of free photo editor software so you are required to first make the comparison between the best ones. It helps you to choose the best one for transforming your pictures and images for the better.
1. Adobe Photoshop
URL: https://www.adobe.com/in/products/photoshop.html
It includes tutorials and templates for editing the pictures easily. The full gamut of this software makes your picture attractive. Along with this, 90 creative filters for images add impressive effects to your pictures. This program is little bit hard to use because it is developed for the professional photo editor only. Adobe Photoshop is not just a photos editor even you can prepare your own photos from scratch as well. It supports windows operating system.
2. Picasa
URL: https://picasa.google.co.in/
It is another free photo editor program which allows the desktop and laptop users to edit, share, print, find and organize the photos easily. It organizes all your pictures in a single album to make it easier for you to locate your photos for editing without any trouble. This photo editor supports PSD, GIF, JPEG, BMP and movie files. This program is now owned by Google and the system version is not available for the installation from the official site but still you can download and use the previous versions from software provider websites.
3. Photoscape
URL: http://x.photoscape.org/
This photo editing software is available for download for Windows 7, 8 and 10 and Mac. It offers multiple photo editing tools that make your picture interesting. One addition feature which it offers is creating your own animated GIFs which can be shared online. In this program you easily find whatever you need to edit the photos. You can edit using the available tools such as batch editing, crop, create gif, make college, RAW images editing, screen capturing etc.
4. GIMP
URL: https://www.gimp.org/downloads/
If you are looking for the professional photo editing software for free then GIMP is the best one. You should try this software as a retouching program, image renderer, Paint software and image format converter. It allows the users to make use of extensions and plugins to make your photos more impressive. This is a cross platform program and available for mostly all types of operating system. This is open source as well so you can get the source of the program directly from the website and edit it as per your need.
5. Paint.net
URL: https://www.getpaint.net/features.html
Users who want to get the simple user interface in their free photo editing software should get this photo editor. It offers plugin support as well for recomposing the photos. It supports many file formats. Blurring, red-eye removal, sharpening, noise, distortion, and embossing tools are there to make your photos attractive. This program is also a fully featured open source available for the windows OS. The interface of this image editor program is same as the Microsoft paint.
6. Photo! Editor
URL: http://pho.to/editor/features/
If you want to optimize and fix your digital images then this software is the best to use. Cropping feature and light adjustment facility, caricature tool and color adjustment features are also available. You can turn your photo, add or remove objects and make complex adjustments to get the professional looking photos. This program can help you to fixing the Red eye, enhance photos color, makeup, Crop or give brightness to your photos. This is a free program can be used without any charge.
7. Raw Therapee
URL: http://rawtherapee.com/#
It supports raw files and allows the editing with the attractive user interface. White balance, color panel and many other editing features are available. Advanced color handling with non-destructive editing can be done with this software. Batch editing and parallel editing facility is also provided by this software. In this software you can get mostly all advanced photo editing features for editing photos on the system right away.
8. Photo Pos Pro
URL: http://www.photopos.com/PPP3_BS/Default.aspx
This smart photo editing software offers an array of editing tools with novice layouts. The basic editing tools are color enhancing, erasing, history, layers and filters. Add the stunning text effects, frames and collages can be created. Poor photos can be fixed by easily with the powerful user interface. This program offers different types of tools to edit the photos so you can’t get everything in a single software.
9. Luminar
URL: https://skylum.com/luminar
It is the trendy image editing tool for windows in 2018. The intuitive interface makes it easier for the users to edit single photo, batch editing, splitting tool and similar face search tool as well. It is compatible with Windows and Mac. It is the high performance photo editing software that completes the editing work faster. Luminar is developed by skylum officially which is known as the best photo editing software maker company just like Adobe.
10. Corel PaintShop Pro 2018
URL: https://www.paintshoppro.com/en/pages/camera-raw/
Standard red eye removal, color enhancing and customization tools are available on this software. It also offers geo-tagging support and dual monitor mode which is helpful in graphic designing as well. Automatic image correct feature and dozens of brushes, textures and backgrounds are available. This program is developed for the most professional photo editor people and mostly it is used by the people who do work like making flex boards and designing logos.
11. On1 Perfect Effects
URL: https://www.on1.com/products/photo-raw/
With the 170 filter effects and multiple photo editing tools, this is one of the popular software among the professional photographers. If you want to try it for free, download Perfect Effect 9 version. various stackable filters, presets and textures are there to make your photos better. This perfect photo editor software helps you to edit the photos very easily as compared to the other software. You can use this program on Mac and windows. There is no need to pay monthly subscription.
12. PortraitPro
URL: http://www.portraitprofessional.com/
This software is free for editing the portrait pictures. Skin tones, blemishes and wrinkles from the face can be edited with its advanced editing tools. Various makeup tools are also there which make your photos look the best. This software also has the face detection technology. This program enables you do makeup control, enhance the mouth very easily to give professional look to the photos. There is free program testing is available for this program so you can use it before buying the premium version.
13. Inkscape
URL: https://inkscape.org/en/
It is the photo editing program that is loaded with the advanced features of photo editing. It offers cloning, copy/paste styles and multiple text along with basic editing tools. Images can be created with the help of pencil tool and several manipulation tools are there to modify the photos. Fillers and strokes can also be used with multi-line text support. There is broad file format compatibility and powerful text tools available for the people who like to edit the photos.
14. Image Tuner
URL: http://www.glorylogic.com/image-tuner.html
It is the free image editor for Windows PC. It offers watermarking and changing over, batch resizing and other editing features within few clicks. Social media profiles can also be resized and edited with the help of this tool. Photos from one file format can be converted to any other. You can easily colorize, rotate, and flip the photos using this software. There are lot of effects available to apply on the images and it works perfectly on windows 10.
15. Pixia
URL: https://pixia.en.lo4d.com/
This is the best free photo editing software for Windows PC which is helpful in saving images in various formats other than GIF. Overlays, layers, concealing, features are available with this software. Full color graphics with masking and layer functions are available for manipulating the images. This program is developed for those people who are very creative and always like to create something new different from others.
Part 2. Top 10 Free Photo Editing Apps in 2018
Smartphone is not only used for making calls or sending messages but there are many more purposes. One of the most popular uses of Smartphone these days is uploading and sharing edited pictures. There are various types of photo editing apps which are helpful in editing the pictures and instantly sharing them on your social media account. Using such types of apps is more convenient as you can edit the images anywhere without opening your computer. Here is the list of top 10 photo editing apps that you can download in your smartphone.
1. Google Snapseed
URL: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.niksoftware.snapseed
Platform: Android/iOS
Price: Free
It is the best free picture editor app that can make many of the desktop software’s at shame. It is loaded with several numbers of features. It allows the modification to the depth, curve and brightness of field that makes your pictures attractive. This app is developed by Google for photo editing and you can easily edit the photos on the android and iOS devices directly instead of the desktop.
2. Prisma
URL: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prisma-photo-editor/id1122649984?mt=8
Platform: iOS 8.0 and later / Android 4.1 and later
Price: Free
It is compatible for Android and iOS devices and the drawing’ and ‘painting’ filters are there. Additional filter options are available in the in-a pp purchases. Once you have edited the photos using this app on your mobile you can share the pictures easily through email, sms, whatsapp, Facebook or Instagram. This is easy to use and supports mostly all images formats.
3. Adobe lightroom
URL: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adobe.lrmobile
Platform: Android / iOS
Price: $9.99 per month for subscription
It is the image manipulation app that is designed to build your photography skills faster. There are a large number of digital images can be edited, viewed or organized by this app. It offers 1 TB of cloud storage as well so that cloud backup of images can be created. This app gives you a very powerful solution to edit the images on the Android and iOS mobile devices directly. There are one tap preset available to edit the images in one tap.
4. Aviary
URL: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aviary.android.feather
Platform: iOS / Android
Price: $9.99
It is best free photo editor app that offers great reliability in editing pictures. Manual adjustments for the color, brightness, contrasts and saturation can be done using this app. Cropping and resizing option also available there to resize the size of images for Facebook or other social media sites. Playful stickers and overlays are also available for this app. This app also offers in app purchases to remove ads and get few additional features.
5. AirBrush
URL: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.magicv.airbrush
Platform: Android 4.1 and up
Free Software For Mobile Phones
Price: $1.99
This photo editing app for Android is best for you to keep editing your photos in batches. It can easily make the quick fixes for blemishes on your face, reshaping, teeth whitening and, adding filters. Easily take away pesky imperfections. This app offers love photo filters to apply on images and mostly it is used by the youngsters to edit and make the images.
6. Fotor Photo Editor
URL: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.everimaging.photoeffectstudio
Platform: iPhone / Android
Price: up to $3.33 per month
This app is available for free with the in- app purchase options. It allows basic editing with over 100 of filters to choose from. It allows the users to make the collage as well and share it online in the real time. It offers you wide range of effect to apply on images and you can easily edit the photos because interface of the app is very easy to use for everyone. College photo making option is also there so you can use up to 9 photos to make college.
7. PhotoLab
URL: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=vsin.t16_funny_photo&hl=en
Platform: Android
Price: Free/ 9.99$ (for essential version)
To add an artistic touch to your images, download this photo editing app on your Android device. It allows the users to use more than 640 filters, frames and effects to make your photos outstanding. It offers realistic photomontages. PhotoLab app works fast that’s why you can easily edit the photos in seconds and make the perfect one. There are many frames available to give the final touch to your photos.
8. VSCO
URL: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vsco.cam
Platform: Android / iOS
Price: $19.99 USD per year subscription
It is the great photography mobile app available for download for free. Subtle one-tap presets with various adjustment tools. This app provides photo sharing platform with the high quality camera for clicking HD pictures. VSCO app is actually a community of people just like the Instagram so you can use this app to edit photos and to connect with different people as well.
9. Filterstorm Neue
URL: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/filterstorm-neue/id728479183?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D8
Platform: iOS / Android
Price: Up to 14.99 USD
This Photo editing app for iOS is integrated with advanced settings. Clone tool, tone mapping, channel mixer and masking tool can be used in this app to make the pictures attractive. This app comes with every tool that you must have to edit the photos. There are more than 100 effects available in the app to edit the photos and make them cool.
10. Pixelmator
URL: https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/pixelmator/id924695435?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D8
Platform: iOS
Price: Up to $29.99
It is one of the free photo editing apps that is ideal for the iOS devices. With the help of this app, you can create impressive pictures. Retouch and distort tools can be used. There are dozens of beautiful frames available to use with the images. If you are facing the issue of color cast with the images then you can instantly remove and set the accurate white balance to your images.
Part 3. Recommended Photo Editing Program for Desktop Users
Wondershare Fotophire Editing Toolkit is one of the most interesting and the useful photo editing programs for desktop users. It is loaded with amazing features that can transform your pictures. This is the fast and efficient free photo editing software for the computers. It offers more than 200 effects to make the pictures or images perfect. If you are looking for the photo editor free download then Wondershare Fotophire is the best option. Photo editing, cutting and erasing are the key features of this photo editor. It also features the photo maximization and photo focus to give the professional touch to your photos. More than 100 styles of photo frames are provided by this software. You can easily turn your photos into an art piece by getting the full control of the overall intensity.
Best Photo Editing Software For Mobile Free Download For Windows 7
You can Get Wondershare Fotophire Editing Toolkit for Mac Here.
Free Easy Photo Editing Software
The most important feature for which you should try this software is that it is available for 7-day free trial. Thus, you can use this software for the personal or business purposes both.