- Best Free Photo Editor For Mac 2017
- Download The Best Photo Editor For Free
- Best Photo Editors For Mac
- The Best Photo Editor Software
- Best Photo Editor For Mac 2017 Free
If you’re a Mac-using professional photographer, you’re probably already paying $10 a month for Adobe Creative Cloud’s Photography plan, which includes Photoshop and Lightroom. But what about the rest of us, who occasionally edit images but not enough to justify a $120 annual bill? Are there any free Mac image editors?
A few, but none without compromise. Most of the options either don’t offer that much power, or don’t have the best user interfaces. But if you’re willing to put up with limitations, or put in the time to learn something that’s not necessarily intuitive, you can edit your photos for free. Here are the best choices.
GIMP: Feature Complete With a Steep Learning Curve
In terms of features and flexibility, open source stalwart GIMP is the best free Mac image editor you can find. This layer-based editor supports most file formats, and has all of the tools you need to touch up photos: adjustments for things like color balance and contrast, yes, but also filters and simple drawing tools. You can customize the user interface, putting tools you use regularly front-and-center and burying the tools you don’t.
You just need to find those tools, and figure out how they work. Experience with software like Photoshop won’t help much, because GIMP does things its own way, and expects users to figure those ways out on their own. There’s going to be a learning curve, and it’s going to involve a lot of Google searches. If you’re the kind of person who likes thinking about design, you might end up wondering what exactly the creators were thinking. The GTK interface also doesn’t feel 100% at home on in macOS, and that may turn some diehard Mac users off.
So there are downsides, but they might be worth it, because this is a full-blown photo editor that’s completely free. No ads, no gimmicks: just open source software that you’re free to use as you like.
You need the best photo editing software, either for Windows or for Mac, which wins in its ease of use, powerful editing capabilities, abundant image effects/patterns, and amazing photo output quality. Sometimes you get photos with several mistakes, like red eye, image noises, etc. Simple Photo Editor will improve all your photos in one click with the help of artificial intelligence. Revolutionary Easy Image Editing Software for PC and Mac by Photolemur The world's first automated photo enhancement solution for Mac and Windows using image recognition, artificial intelligence, and a little bit of real-world magic.
Editing your photos on your iPhone is one thing, but editing your photos on your Mac can take your photography skills to a whole 'nother level. Work like the pro you are with these photo editing apps. Asking which is the best pixel-based photo editor for Mac OS X may sound like a simple and straightforward question, however, it is a more complex question than it may at first seem.
Fotor: Quick Photo Tweaks From a Simple Interface
If you’re not concerned with flexibility, and just want to quickly make a few changes to your photos, Fotor might be what you’re looking for. This simple app gives you access to a bunch of one-button adjustments. When you load a photo, you’ll see the “Scenes” toolkit, which allows you to choose from one of several lighting adjustments.
There’s not a lot of fine-tuning: just click a button and decide if it looks better. There are similarly simple tools for adjusting the focus, adding text, and cropping your image.
Again, if you’re looking for a full-blown photo editor, this isn’t it. But it’s free, with one tiny ad in the bottom-right corner. It’s worth a look.
Preview or Photos: Built-In Basic Editing Tools
RELATED:Use Your Mac’s Preview App to Crop, Resize, Rotate, and Edit Images
Not everyone realizes this, but you can use macOS’ built-in Preview app to edit images. Just open any image, then click the toolbox icon. A second toolbar of icons for editing images will show up.
From here, you can add simple shapes and draw. You can also adjust the color and contrast levels by clicking Tools > Adjust Color in the menu bar. It’s not the most complete photo editor on the planet, but it gives you access to the basics without any third party software.
RELATED:How to Edit Your Pictures with Your Mac’s Photos Application
If you organize your photo collection using the built-in Photos tool on your Mac, you can also edit images in Photos. Just open any photo, then click the “Edit” button, which looks like a bunch of sliders.
This will open a variety of editing tools, which let you do things like choose filters, adjust the lighting, or crop the image.
There’s nothing like layer-based editing here, but it’s easy to use and built into software you’re probably already using, so give it a shot.
Paintbrush: Basically Microsoft Paint for macOS
If every one of these options seemed too complicated for you, and all you want is the ability to doodle with your mouse, check out Paintbrush. This open source application is basically paint.exe for you Mac, and it’s glorious. I used it to supplement my wife’s photo, I think it really highlights the nuance of her art.
Use this tool to make similar masterpieces, and not a whole lot more.
Paid, but Worth a Look: Pixelmator
RELATED:The Best Cheaper Alternatives to Photoshop
Pixelmator isn’t free, but it is a great cheaper alternative to Photoshop. It doesn’t offer all the features of Adobe’s premier image editor, but it offers a lot of them, and with a beautiful user interface that won’t hurt your head to use.
You’ve got layer-based editing, advanced effects, and a native user interface that even supports newfangled features like the touch bar. Pixelmator costs $30, but there’s a one-month free trial. That should be more than enough time to figure out if it fits into your workflow.
If none of these tools quite work for you, it might be time to look into some of the other paid, but cheaper photo editors on the Mac. You’d be surprised what you can get for under $100.
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Apple Macs are great devices for photo editing, especially for professionals. The Mac’s Retina display, coupled with powerful processors, make for a seamless image editing workflow.
No matter if you’re an amateur looking to enhance your family vacation photos or a professional photographer working under pressure, there are Mac image editors to suit your needs.
Here are the best free and paid image editors for Mac.
The Best Free Mac Image Editors
If you’re looking for a basic editor, you don’t need to buy a fully featured editing suite. A basic image editor is both easy to use and has all the features that you’d need to fix and enhance your personal photos.
1. Photoscape X
Photoscape X is a great basic image editor for Mac you’ve probably never heard of. It’s an all-in-one app that lets you edit RAW images, fix photos, add filters, and more. Using the brush tool you can quickly fix small issues with your photos. Photoscape has a batch mode that lets you resize and rename photos with just a click.
Download:Photoscape X (Free)
2. GIMP
GIMP is an open source project that’s been in active development for over twenty years. It’s often referred to as the best free photo editor. Thanks to its community-based development, it offers professional features that you only otherwise find in paid apps like Photoshop.
GIMP is laid out like a professional editing tool and has a steep learning curve. But it has all the basic and professional features you would expect from a graphic design suite. GIMP’s Layers feature is powerful and you can even use some Photoshop plugins with GIMP. If you’re new to GIMP, use our introductory guide to GIMPAn Introduction to GIMP Photo Editing: 9 Things You Need to KnowAn Introduction to GIMP Photo Editing: 9 Things You Need to KnowGIMP is the best free photo editing app available. Here's everything you need to know about editing photos in GIMP.Read More to learn the basics.
Download:GIMP (Free)
3. Photos
If all you’re looking for is a simple way to manage your photo library on Mac8 Starter Tips for Managing Your Photos Library on Mac8 Starter Tips for Managing Your Photos Library on MacAre your Mac photos a mess? Follow these beginner's tips to get them under control and improve your picture organization.Read More and perform some basics edits to fix or enhance your personal photos, the built-in Photos app will be more than enough.
The Photos app has a good auto-enhance tool, a crop tool, basic image editing, and filter support. Plus, it has a familiar user interface. If you feel comfortable editing photos in the iPhone Photos app, you’ll be right at home on the Mac version as well.
4. Pixlr X
Best Free Photo Editor For Mac 2017
Pixlr X runs smoothly on any modern web browser. If you only need to edit a couple of photos every now and then, it doesn’t make sense to download a feature-rich image editor. Instead, see if Pixlr’s web-based image editor is enough for you.
Pixlr X has all the basic image editing features you’d expect. You can crop, resize, add filters, and easily remove the background from any image. There are a couple of tools for adjusting the visual elements of the picture and you can add text and doodle over images. If you have a stock image, you can use Pixlr X to quickly create a poster or flyer as well.
Visit:Pixlr X (Free)
The Best Paid Mac Image Editors
If you’re serious about photo editing, you’ll need professional tools. A fully-featured photo editing suite will help improve the quality of your work. Because paid apps are designed for professionals from the ground up, you’ll end up saving a lot of time once you get used to the workflow.
1. Lightroom
Lightroom is the default photo editor for professional photographers. Lightroom’s workflow sets it apart. Other than the stellar photo editing features, it also has a simple yet robust image organization feature. And this is why a lot of professionals stick with Lightroom.
If you’re clicking thousands of photos for a project and you need to select a couple of dozen good ones, Lightroom makes the process easy for you. You can skim through thousands of RAW files, mark the important photos, move them to a different directory, edit them in a particular style, save that style as a preset, go back and apply it to other photos, and then finally export the images in multiple formats.
And once you’re done with the project, you can use Lightroom’s library to keep the important photos and back them up using your Adobe Cloud account. For professionals, this is what makes Lightroom’s $9.99/month starting price palatable.
Download:Adobe Lightroom ($9.99/month)
2. Photoshop
Photoshop is a different kind of photo editor. You can think of it as Lightroom’s bigger brother. Photoshop is designed specifically for image manipulation and enhancement. Photoshop is famous for its advanced selection tools, complex layer system, and infinitely customizable brushes.
You can use Lightroom to bring out all of the details from a RAW image file or to enhance an image aesthetically (to fix colors and saturation levels). Once you’re done with that, you can import the image in Photoshop to kick things up a notch. In fact, you can’t edit RAW images in Photoshop without the Camera RAW plugin.
Photoshop is a massive, complex application with over two decades of consistent updates. It has way too many features, but once you master the basics, Photoshop gives you the tools to turn your imagination into reality.
Using Photoshop, you can merge multiple images together, completely change the color palette of an image, and fix parts of an image to make them better (particularly portraits).
Download:Adobe Photoshop ($9.99/month)
3. Affinity Photo
Download The Best Photo Editor For Free
You can think of Affinity Photo as a lightweight version of Photoshop. It has the most common features from Photoshop like the advanced selection tools, brushes, and layer support. Affinity Photos weighs in at 350 MB instead of the 2GB behemoth that is Photoshop. Affinity Photo is also much faster than Photoshop, especially on Macs without a dedicated graphics card.
Best Photo Editors For Mac
Plus, unlike Photoshop, you can buy Affinity Photo outright for $49.99. If you don’t like Adobe’s shift towards subscription pricing and increasing dependence on cloud syncing, take a look at Affinity Photo. If you’ve already learned the basics of Photoshop (you can open PSD files in Affinity Photo), it will be much easier to pick up Affinity Photo.
Download:Affinity Photo ($49.99)
4. Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro is a powerful image editing app that’s designed to be easy to use. It’s an all-in-one tool for image manipulation. Pixelmator Pro is a mix of Lightroom, Photoshop, and Illustrator. It has basic features from all three apps.
You can use it to edit RAW images, enhance photos, fix parts of images, and create posters by adding beautiful text and other elements. Pixelmator Pro can stretch itself from being a basic photo editing app to a graphic design suite, depending on your needs and skillset.
Download:Pixelmator Pro ($39.99)
Other Great Mac Apps Worth Using
There’s something for everyone in the apps listed above. We recommend most people start with Pixlr X and see if that does the trick. However, if you’re looking for a fast, beautiful, and feature-rich photo editor that’s designed for the Mac, Affinity Photo is a great choice.
The Best Photo Editor Software
There are many more great Mac apps out there just waiting to be explored. Take a look at our list of the best macOS appsThe Best Mac Apps to Install on Your MacBook or iMacThe Best Mac Apps to Install on Your MacBook or iMacLooking for the best apps for your MacBook or iMac? Here's our comprehensive list of the best apps for macOS.Read More to discover some of the apps you should be installing on your Mac.
Explore more about: Adobe Photoshop, Batch Image Editing, Image Editor, Photography.
Best Photo Editor For Mac 2017 Free
- I would definitely add Luminar - https://macphun.com/luminar
It was initially developed for Mac, but they had announced the open Windows Beta just today.
For Mac, it has really useful and effective tools, even 'AI' enhancement filter, which is a prototype of the legendary 'Make it awesome' button everyone was looking for.
Take a look at it, you won't regret it! - For RAW images editing i would like to recommend 'Raw Therapee', pretty full featured free software, very simular to Adobe Lightroom.
- Affinity for the Mac is my choice, that is just my opinion. The one time cost
is well worth it. The app has the 'apple feel', almost intuitive. Apple-Mac
architecture is not for every one but this paring is a winner.
There is a tutorial, that is only basic or go to the Tube.
How about 'Affinity Movie'? - I think PhotoScape X is more full-featured than Fotor.
- Pinta is a worthy mention. I prefer it's UI over GIMP and GIMPShop. It's the cross platform version to Paint.NET. http://pinta-project.com
- Adobe sales Photoshop CC plus Lightroom for $9.99 a month. Not $19.99.
- Really! Agreed. Where does the author derive his opinions from?! Affinity is not only excellent as a standalone application, they also have extensions in support of Apple's Photos as well.
- Agreed. Affinity is very powerful and one of the best looking app to work with :)
- No Affinity Photo? Really? Where do you live?