Pressing the shutter button is only the first step in attempting to take a stunning shot. Following that is image editing, which can be easy or sophisticated depending on the photo editing tool you choose.
Photo editing software is used by both professional and amateur photographers to improve their photographs. As a result, thousands of picture editing programs are available: Whether you need to remove undesired elements from a professional shot or a basic, free photo editor for your social media postings, there's an app for that.
We've compiled a list of the top picture editing apps of 2023 to save you time navigating around the app store.
Best Overall: Picsart
Picsart, which was first published in 2011, features picture and video editing tools as well as a social community platform. The UI is simple to use and browse; there are also several choices for photo fine-tuning, editing, and correction.
Users may make collages, stickers, and use a variety of effects. The Remix Talk tool enhances the editing experience by making it more social and collaborative. To edit your images, you may collaborate with friends or any of the 150 million PicsArt members.
Picsart is available for free on all platforms. Users may gain access to more tools by purchasing a premium subscription for $11.99 per month or $55.99 per year. Student discounts are also available at PicsArt.
Best for Social Media: Canva
Canva is a visual design platform that debuted in 2012 and is widely regarded as one of the most user-friendly picture editing and graphic design programs available. You may automatically resize and style an image for use on social media networks such as Instagram and Facebook. You may also employ entertaining features like as text animation, captioning, and voice bubbles.
Canva is a fantastic choice for novices since it offers a basic range of picture editing tools in a simple drag-and-drop interface. Canva images may be downloaded as PDFs or integrated to one of the many available templates to create one-of-a-kind branding or marketing materials.
Canva provides three different sorts of plans.
Canva Free, the app's free version, has limited feature access.
Canva Premium costs $12.99 a month or $119.99 per year and gives you access to over 600,000 more templates, bespoke branding, and 100 gigabytes of cloud storage.
Canva for Teams provides a scalable pricing structure based on the number of users, as well as new capabilities such as workflows, team reports and analytics, and improved customer support.
It should be noted that many Canva templates are limited to free users. Users must purchase a premium subscription to have full access.
PROS
☑ Create great content, even with the free version
☑ User-friendly experience and intuitive interface
☑ Desktop, Android and iOS compatibility
CONS
❎ Hard to use on small screens
Best Tutorials: Adobe Lightwoom
Adobe Lightroom Mobile is part of a workflow solution that provides picture library storage and facilitates syncing and viewing original and altered photos from any device.
Lightroom includes outstanding capabilities and tools for adjusting exposure, saturation, and color using easy slider controls. It also employs nondestructive editing, so you can always recover your original photographs if you change your mind about the changes.
Lightroom's qualities as a learning platform are perhaps its most appealing feature. The program has a teaching library covering a wide range of picture editing topics. You may also go to the Explore section, which is a creative cloud environment where you can see the methods other artists followed to produce their works. Lightroom allows you to post your projects to Explore and teach others about your adjustments.
You can get the whole Lightroom system on desktop or the mobile app for around half the price. The former is available for $9.99 per month. If you simply want to use Lightroom Mobile, you may download the free basic edition or pay $1.99 per month for the premium membership, which includes 100 gigabytes of storage space.
PROS
☑ Excellent photo editing tools (exposure, saturation and color)
☑ Library of tutorials and creative cloud environment
☑ Android and iOS compatibility
CONS
❎ Features can be overwhelming for beginners
Best Free App: Snapseed
Snapseed was bought by Google shortly after its release by Nik Software in 2011 and soon became popular as picture editing shareware. Few free photo editing applications can compete with Snapseed's breadth of tools and capabilities, which quickly elevates it to the top of the best photo editing apps list.
Snapseed's nondestructive editing safeguards your original photographs, and the stacking brush allows you to apply an effect to only a portion of an image. You may also apply a preset style, known as a "look," to numerous photographs at once or share it with others.
Snapseed allows you to express your creativity while altering or modifying your photographs, making it one of the greatest photo editing tools available – assuming you can get over the steep learning curve.
PROS
☑ Completely free app
☑ Extensive catalog of advanced tools
☑ You can create double-exposure images
☑ Android and iOS compatibility
CONS
❎ Best suited for professional photographers
Best for Collages: PicCollage
PicCollage debuted on the App Store in 2011 and has since been one of the most popular collage-maker apps. The app's automatic collage arrangements make it incredibly simple to use. einsteinerupload of.
PicCollage may be the answer if you need to rapidly build a shared collage. Just add your favorite photographs, and the program will quickly organize them into an appealing pattern.
You may flip photographs and build your own free-form pattern if you want more control over your collage. After that, you may finalize your picture collage by adding filters, frames, cutouts, borders, text, and stickers.
PicCollage is a free app with limited functionality. At $4.99 per month or $35.99 per year, you may get the software to erase the watermarks from your collages.
PROS
☑ Create shareable collages and free-form designs
☑ Easy-to-use automated layouts
☑ Android and iOS compatibility
CONS
❎ Many in-app ads and watermarks in the free version
Best for Fun Photos: piZap
Since its inception in 2008, piZap has grown to become one of the top entertaining photo collage generators, with over 50 million monthly users. The piZap user interface is simple to use, and the app's functionalities are typically self-explanatory. PiZap is an excellent choice for social media users, since it allows you to create memes, emoticons, stickers, and app icons.
piZap is great for inexperienced photo editors who wish to add filter effects, text, stickers, borders, and even photographs inside photos to their images. The free app version is excellent for adding fanciful and amusing effects, but more expert editors may want to pay to the premium version for more extensive functionality.
PiZap's basic version is free, however PiZap Premium costs $5.99 per month or $35.99 per year. More themes, fonts, photos, effects, stickers, borders, and layouts are included in the Pro edition.
PROS
☑ Make memes and app icons
☑ Accessible interface
☑ Android and iOS compatibility
CONS
❎ Expensive premium account