To reduce the hassle of choosing the best, we have shared a list of the best photo editing software for Mac. 15 Best Image Editing Apps on Mac 1.TWEAK PHOTOS: Tweak Photos is the best photo editing App for Mac available on Mac store. It is a useful software that lets you brighten thousands of photos with a single click. Overall, this powerful and intuitive tool, has been designed with the modern-user needs in mind: great integration, easy editing, and professional photo management tools. Definitely, Photos must be included among the best photo editing software for Mac.
Today I want to share my personal rating of the best photo editing software for Mac OS X.
Many people continue using Adobe programs but as for me, their high subscription fees may be a problem. Photoshop, Lightroom and Camera RAW are great photo editing programs, however, there are awesome alternatives. Years pass, new companies arise and they develop revolutionary, full-functional and efficient photo editing software for Mac. Maybe they will win the 'challenge for the crown' in the nearest future. The most important advantage of all the software I am going to list below is that they cost less and can please you with the same benefits as expensive programs.
In this article, I have gathered the most interesting software for photo editing on Mac from image editors to image processors. All of them have great sets of qualities. So.. It's time to get to the action. Read and choose the one you like the most. Choose the photo editor for Mac you need!
1. Luminar - Best Photo Editing App on Mac
Luminar software created and developed by Skylum for simplifying photo-editing on Mac for both pros and amateurs. Making a photo amazing can take you just a couple of clicks. Luminar 2018 is something between so cool and easy as Instagram filters and complex as Adobe Photoshop. This software is somewhere between those two edges. Everybody will find something in it, from beginners to advanced photographers.
The developer says that the 2018 version of Luminar was enhanced to make the performance faster and more efficient. Great results become visible in less time. The set of functions remained the same as in the previous version.
The controls in this program are the same as it was before and is familiar for photographers who use photo editing platforms (Photoshop or Lightroom). It is handy, easy-to-use and user-friendly, everything can be found quickly.
Of course, Luminar 2018 has essential differences from Adobe programs. It is a powerful platform for processing RAW and ordinary photos and edit photos on Mac using layers and different effects. By the way, the Layers option will be familiar to users who work with Photoshop. You can bring new effects to life, experiment with masks, change layers opacity, and so on. The main advantage of working with layers is the fact that you won't damage your picture if you decide to delete one or two layers. So, if you want to be an expert, I recommend trying how in works in Luminar 2018. Personally, I really enjoy this thing.
The freshest version adds a series of new adjustments and filters. My favorite is the Sunrays filter that brings the additional pleasant glow to your images. Moreover, it looks realistic, unlike similar effects in other Mac photo editors.
Luminar 2018 editor for Mac has customizable workspaces. This gives you a chance to leave only those features that you usually use, and hide away functions you don't need.
For me, it is the best 2018 photo editor for Mac at the moment. You can try Luminar for free.
2. Try Affinity Photo Editing App on Mac
Affinity Photo is the next best software tool for photo editing on Mac OS. It is not connected to Photoshop and other Adobe products in any way, but it may look a bit similar. Maybe it is so, as such interface was developed throughout long years and is the reflection of usability itself. I don't find it bad, as the price for Affinity Photo is much lower comparing to Adobe Photoshop editor.
As Luminar, Affinity is somewhere between professional and amateur software. It supports CMYK and Lab color space, RAW images from all the modern cameras; it shows us that this photo editor for Mac is made for professionals. What's more, it supports .psd files. So, it would be the best choice for those who are used to working in Photoshop but don't want to spend a plenty of money for the subscription.
For comfortable working with Affinity Photo editor for Mac, you'll need to understand the 'Personas' concept. They switch between different modes, toolbars, menus, and panels. For example, you may use the Photo persona for accessing the main set of tools and Develop persona for editing RAW images. There are also other personas such as Liquify and Export, but it seems to me that it's not necessary to explain what are they for.
Similar to other popular photo editors for Mac (Photoshop, Lightroom, Luminar 2018) this software supports the layers feature. So, you can experiment with adding filters on separate layers and removing them without great losses, if something goes wrong.
In general, I like the simple interface of Affinity Photo editor for Mac and its variety of different tools.
3. Pixelmator PRO Another Great Photo Editing Software for Mac OS X
Pixelmator is popular photo editing app among Apple users due to its nice price and a long list of different interesting features.
As in all the previous points, I can't ignore the fact that its interface is influenced by Photoshop greatly. At the same time, it is done along with Mac OS aesthetics and looks pleasantly. If we look deeper at this software, we'll find out that it is integrated with Mac OS even more. It uses OpenGL and Corelmage technologies. They help it to cope with fast applying effects or heavy edits.
As for tools, you won't find here all you used in Photoshop. For instance, here are Heal and Clone brushes, but no History brush or Patch tool. This may be a bit annoying if you need them for your everyday work. However, it wasn't a problem for me when I was testing this software. It is easy-to-use, comfortable and fast.
It will come along with the interests of amateur and semi-pro photographers. You may be wondering why not for professionals, okay, here is the answer: it doesn't process RAW images.
So, it is just a handy Mac photo editor that can make images brighter, good-looking and accurate.
4. Capture One Pro
We've come to the last best photo editor for Mac on my list. This one may be a bit expensive for beginners, and as its name says, it's a pro software. It is made by Phase One, they specialize in high-end camera systems, though the program can process images created with the majority of professional cameras. It is an app between a RAW-converter and an asset manager.
Here you can create image libraries, catalogs. This will be a permanent home for them, though you may also edit pictures too. Now, let's get closer to the details of photo editing with Capture One Pro. The program is created especially for professional photographers, so you should just polish your diamond in it. It means that your compositions, lighting, and focusing are already perfect. Yeah, experts usually spend lots of time thinking of all these things just during the process of shooting. When it comes to editing photos on Mac with Capture One, you won't find healing brushes or clone tools. However, it will help you to remove chromatic aberration and other defective moments captured on photos.
For other purposes, you will need different software, for example, one of the described above apps.
Apple’s Photos for Mac app is amazing, but it can be limiting. For doing simple photo edits, the tool is perfect, it’s loaded with photo cropper, features for lightening adjustments, setting white balance & a few more things. But if you’re an aspiring photographer, you probably need a powerful Mac Photo Editing App with a wide array of editing tools and other features.
So, whether you want to brighten up your dark dull images, remove a distracting background or use your creativity to the fullest, there’s a dedicated Mac photo editing app to step up your game. Best of all, most of these image editing tools are extremely affordable (& even free), so dive in to find the best tool to fit your personal/professional needs.
Top 10 Best Mac Photo Editing Apps
There are several image editing software available in the market for MacBook, so it becomes really challenging to pick up the best one. To help our readers, we’ve curated the ten useful photo editors (some are paid while some are free) to enhance your photo collection.
1. Movavi Photo Editor
Movavi is a full-featured photo editing tool designed for both beginners and professional users. It offers some amazing features to improve image quality, do photo restoration (remove noise from old images), perform portrait retouching (remove imperfections), erasing unwanted objects from the picture and so on. Aside from these main features, it offers tools for White Balancing, Color Correction, Makeup, Crop/Rotate/Resize, Add Texts/Images, Replace Background, and much more.
| Rating’s Breakdown: | |
|---|---|
| Overall: | |
| Setup: | 3/5 |
| Photo Editing: | 3/5 |
| Features: | 3.5/5 |
| Ease-of-Use: | 4/5 |
| Organizing: | 3/5 |
| Help & Support: | 4.5/5 |
| Price: | $29.95 |
Movavi Photo Editor is available in more than 10 languages & requires merely 57.2 MB of space on your storage.
2. Lightroom
Next on our list of best photo editing software for Mac is Lightroom owned by Adobe Photoshop. Pretty much anything you want to do with your pictures can be accomplished through Lightroom. You can effortlessly blend, merge shadows, add highlights, make images sharper, crispier or even blur in a few clicks. The Mac editing app also allows users to add details & tint of colors to make the picture stand out. The MacBook photo editing tool is available in two versions: Classic (usually more preferred) & 2018 CC version.
| Rating’s Breakdown: | |
|---|---|
| Overall: | |
| Setup: | 3/5 |
| Photo Editing: | 4/5 |
| Features: | 3.5/5 |
| Ease-of-Use: | 4/5 |
| Organizing: | 3/5 |
| Help & Support: | 3/5 |
| Price: | Free (In-App Purchases) |
Lightroom is offered free for thirty days to let users decide whether their editing needs are fulfilled or not. After the trial period, users can add the CC subscription for using the complete toolkit.
3. Tweak Photos
As the name suggests, Tweak Photos is one of the best batch photo editing app for Macdesigned to tweak your images in a way to bring the best out of it. The image editing software can also be your best bet for ultimate batch editing, it can alter thousands of photos in just a matter of clicks. The interface is modern and easy-to-use, users can easily pick effects & apply to the entire batch of photos, rename them or convert file formats in just one go. Aside from performing basic editing, Tweak Photos offers features for Resizing, Auto-Correction, Rotate, Flip, De-noise images, Add Watermark, and other images, enhance & control Brightness, Sharpness & more. You can even add gorgeous frames & borders to make your image more aesthetic.
| Rating’s Breakdown: | |
|---|---|
| Overall: | |
| Setup: | 5/5 |
| Photo Editing: | 4/5 |
| Features: | 4/5 |
| Ease-of-Use: | 4.5/5 |
| Organizing: | 4/5 |
| Help & Support: | 4.5/5 |
| Price: | $4.99 |
Comprising all the essential editing tools & features, Tweak Photos is an ideal app to edit photos on mac. The tool automatically stamps the images with the original/modified Date/Time as per EXIF info & your choice of format.
4. Wondershare Fotophire
Fotophire by Wondershare is a popular photo editing toolkit designed for both beginners and professional users. The software is available on both the Windows and Mac platforms. The toolkit features more than 200+ effects and has strong capabilities to remove or replace the background or unwanted objects from any photo. The image editor brings a plethora of tools to create professional-looking blur & vignette effects, adjust white balance, saturation & other enhancements. Apart from it has wide file format support & bundle of filters, blend modes & textures to turn your photo into a piece of art.
| Rating’s Breakdown: | |
|---|---|
| Overall: | |
| Setup: | 4/5 |
| Photo Editing: | 4.5/5 |
| Features: | 4/5 |
| Ease-of-Use: | 3/5 |
| Organizing: | 3/5 |
| Help & Support: | 3/5 |
| Price: | $49.9 |
What we like the most about Fotophire is its Batch Processing feature that efficiently processes plenty of images in a determined style. Hence, a real-time saver to edit bulk photos.
5. Pixelmator
Known as one of the greatest alternatives to Photoshop, Pixelmator offers an ideal combination of a modern and simple interface with the ability to work on multiple layers for easy editing. The software has a bunch of editing tools, brushes, effects & other textures to enhance your photo collection. Depending upon users’ needs, Pixelmator offers two versions, Standard & Pro. As the name indicates, the Standard version allows users to perform basic photo editing, it proffers refined selection of tools and other filters. While the pro version is packed with extra brushes, photo effects and other editing features to push your creativity to the next level.
| Rating’s Breakdown: | |
|---|---|
| Overall: | |
| Setup: | 3/5 |
| Photo Editing: | 5/5 |
| Features: | 4/5 |
| Ease-of-Use: | 5/5 |
| Organizing: | 4/5 |
| Help & Support: | 3/5 |
| Price: | $29.99 |
Similar to other Mac photo editing apps, Pixelmator allows users to adjust contrast, saturation, color, definition and much more. The software allows you to save your images in different formats like PSD, JPG, PNG, TIFF, PDF and share them directly with your friends and family.
6. PhotoScape X
Amp up your photo editing skills in no time with a little help from PhotoScape X. It features an advanced range of image-related features including Photo Viewer, Batch editing, Collage, Cut Out, Combine, GIF, Color Picker, Screen Capture and more. PhotoScape has a variety of photo filters, effects & other adjustment settings to make your collection stand out. The tool is a popular choice for removing blemishes, moles, red-eye correction, creating fake HDR, liquify, creating a miniature effect, dehaze and more.
| Rating’s Breakdown: | |
|---|---|
| Overall: | |
| Setup: | 4/5 |
| Photo Editing: | 3.5/5 |
| Features: | 3/5 |
| Ease-of-Use: | 3/5 |
| Organizing: | 3/5 |
| Help & Support: | 4/5 |
| Price: | Price: Free (In-App Purchases) |
PhotoScape X is available for both Windows & Mac OS & is a very useful tool Batch Photo Editing as well. It proffers various tools to batch format change, batch resizing, batch rename and more.
7. Affinity Photo
Restyle images for a unique look and feel on your Mac with Affinity Photo Editing Software. Its dashboard might seem overwhelming at first, especially for beginner editors. However, once you get the grip, you’ll know that it’s just the application you’ve been looking for. The image editing software features a great bunch of professional editing tools, filters, and other effects to entice the inner artist in you. The best part? The tool features a Before & After view that lets you compare the original picture with the edited one.
| Rating’s Breakdown: | |
|---|---|
| Overall: | |
| Setup: | 4/5 |
| Photo Editing: | 3.5/5 |
| Features: | 3/5 |
| Ease-of-Use: | 3/5 |
| Organizing: | 3/5 |
| Help & Support: | 4/5 |
| Price: | Price: Free (In-App Purchases) |
The mac photo editing app supports more than fifteen file types and formats, including PDF, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, RAW and some other less popular ones as well.
Best Photo Editor For Macbook Pro
8. Photoshop Elements
With complete control over Image composition (from the contrast to brightness), Photoshop Elements is one of the Best Photo Editing Software for Mac. Its interface is intrusively designed while keeping users’ needs & requirements in mind. The large colorful icons with comprehensive texts and graphics tips help both novices and advanced users. All the features are organized in the same way as most other Adobe products are. Apart from providing basic features for editing and adjusting image orientations, Photoshop Elements features Intelligent Selection of areas, scaling, smart cropper, restoration of damaged parts and much more.
| Rating’s Breakdown: | |
|---|---|
| Overall: | |
| Setup: | 4/5 |
| Photo Editing: | 5/5 |
| Features: | 5/5 |
| Ease-of-Use: | 4.5/5 |
| Organizing: | 5/5 |
| Help & Support: | 4.5/5 |
| Price: | $99.99 |
Photoshop Elements is one of the most ideal apps to edit photos on mac, as it comes complemented by automatic tools for editing that are only available within itself & not other versions of Adobe Photoshop.
9. DxO OpticsPro for Photos
Let your photos shine with DxO OpticsPro for Photos tool. With a tagline ‘Reveal the RAW emotion’ Dxo offers a simple user-friendly interface with amazing photo retouching features & deep color correction tools. The application aims to analyze your images intelligently, correct orientations, adjust balance & exposure, alter the calibration levels to enhance your collection. It’s Magic photo retouching feature literary works like a charm; just select the photo(s) you want to improve in terms of color or quality & click ‘magic; button to intensify the image.
| Rating’s Breakdown: | |
|---|---|
| Overall: | |
| Setup: | 4/5 |
| Photo Editing: | 5/5 |
| Features: | 4/5 |
| Ease-of-Use: | 3.5/5 |
| Organizing: | 4/5 |
| Help & Support: | 5/5 |
| Price: | $9.99 |
In addition to basic editing features, DxO photo processing for compatible cameras can easily be managed within the editing mode. DxO OpticsPro acts as a third-party extension for the same. It is capable of applying White Balance Correction, Smart Lightning, applying Optical corrections and so on.
10. CameraBag Photo
An easy to use, lightweight photo editor tool, CaneraBag Photo is an amazing app that brings out the best of your photos. It features a clean and easy-to-use interface, on the right side of the dashboard, you’ll find the whole range of filters & customization tools. Unlike other best photo editing software for mac mentioned in the list, CameraBag Photo features 200+ Default Presets, which allows users to edit the photo(s) on the fly.
| Rating’s Breakdown: | |
|---|---|
| Overall: | |
| Setup: | 4/5 |
| Photo Editing: | 3.5/5 |
| Features: | 4/5 |
| Ease-of-Use: | 4/5 |
| Organizing: | 3/5 |
| Help & Support: | 4/5 |
| Price: | $20 |
In addition to photo editing basics: adjust exposure, saturation, contrast, fix the noise, add blur, vignette effect. CameraBag Photo boasts other photo editing utilities like Hue Masking, HSV Mask, adding borders, watermark, fixing dead pixels, color mixer, filtered B+W, split tone and more.
How Do You Edit Your Photographs?
Best Photo Editor For Mac To Whiten Teeth
All the aforementioned Photo Editing tools for Mac are well-designed and great looking pieces to easily edit images. However, if you ask us, we recommend using Wondershare Fotophire & Tweak Photos that works suitable for both amateur & pro photographers. Both the photo editing tools have enticing editing feature set to make your photo collection stand out & both have strong capabilities for Batch Editing & Processing!
Best Photo Editor For Mac
Do let us know your favorite editing tips, tricks, and hacks in the comment section below. And which Mac photo editing tool is your personal favorite?