Photo editing on the Mac puts your images on the big screen.
Photo editing has become a big deal on iPhone and even iPad, because that's where we tend to take and share our snapshots these days. But many of us still keep our main libraries on our Macs. There, we have access to everything OS X has to offer.
The Mac's Photos app, while still new, offers several useful photo editing tools. You can crop, adjust lighting and color, set the white balance, add filters, remove unwanted blemishes, and a few more things. It's really not meant to be a robust editing app, though. So, If you are looking for something to really finish your photos right, we've got a list of the best photo editors for Mac.
1. Fotor Photo Editor
Fotor is incredibly easy to use. The main editing features are all easy to find on the right side of the interface. You can quickly fix washed out photos with the scene selector, tweak highlights, white balance, and more with the adjusting tools, add effects overlays and borders, create tilt-shift images, add text, and more. You can also create collages and perform batch edits. For less than $3.00 per month, you can add hundreds more effects, frames, stickers, and templates.
If you are new to editing on a Mac and are intimidated by the complexities of most high-powered photo apps, Fotor will not only put your mind at ease — it'll make you feel like a pro.
- Free - Download now
2. Lightroom
Lightroom is part of Adobe's Creative Cloud Photography suite. With it, you can remove haze from photos you've taken on a gray winter day, merge the best shadows and highlights to create real dynamic range, sharpen blurry images, create panoramic shots, and a whole lot more. It's photo organization tools are based on the metadata for each image. So, you can search through thousands of pictures very easily. You can even create new folders within Lightroom to store your best pics.
You can download Lightroom free for 30 days as part of a trial period. After that, you can purchase it, along with Photoshop CC for $9.99 per month.
If your goal is to enhance a nearly perfect photo with highly detailed adjustment tools — especially if you use it on the desktop — Lightroom is for you.
- Free trial - Download now
3. Pixelmator
Pixelmator is a detailed photo editing app that has great layering tools and a lot more. You can combine two different photos, mask a foreground image and add a background layer with shapes, gradients, and all manner of objects. You can mask off unwanted parts of a photo, remove them, and clone stamp the area to make it look as though nothing was ever there. It also has a handful of effects layers that give you control over the intensity, so you can add subtle changes, or go wild with color, saturation, and contrast.
If you need Photoshop but don't want Photoshop, try Pixelmator instead. In a much more Mac-like package, and at a much lower price.
- $29.99 - Download now
4. Pixlr
Pixlr by Autodesk is the perfect filter and overlay app for creating unique and interesting pictures, especially for social networking. It features dozens of painterly effects, interesting lighting options, vector graphic shapes, stickers, and more.
If you don't want to waste time tweaking white balance, saturation, or hue, but want to make your pictures flashy, Pixlr will make you the talk of your social networking feed.
- Free - Download now
5. GIMP
GIMP is basically an open source version of Photoshop. It is an advanced image manipulation program with detailed customization for color reproduction. Like Photoshop, it is big on layering to allow you to mask out objects, add in colors, and a whole lot more. You can convert photos to black and white, adjust color tones of a photo, and more.
If you like the tools that Photoshop has to offer, but don't like paying the price, check out GIMP for free.
- Free - Download now
6. Snapheal
Snapheal from MacPhun does one thing, really, really well — removing unwanted objects from your photo. Did someone photo bomb your family portrait? Is there a guy sitting right in the way of your otherwise perfect sunset? Do you wish there wasn't a piece of trash next to that feeding a deer? Snapheal can fix all of that. The erase tools range in ability from "Global," which removes large objects, to "Dynamic" which is used for removing small imperfections. You can adjust the masking tool, use a magic rope instead. or simply clone stamp your way to a new photo.
If you want your picture to be perfect, and you need a giant eraser to do it. Snapheal erases those unwanted memories.
- $7.99 - Download now
7. Preview
Preview for Mac gets an honorable mention in this list. I use it every single day, multiple times per day. Most of the time, I'm simply viewing a photo. But, with Preview you can quickly crop a photo, adjust the color, rotate it, add shapes, texts, and a signature, export as a different format, and more.
It is far from being a full-featured photo editing app, but Preview has just enough tools to let you quickly make minor adjustments without having to get into it more. Plus, it's built in.
- It's already on your Mac.
Reader comments
Best photo editing apps for Mac
Don't forget Affinity Photo. This app has taken over from Photoshop completely. Combined with Macphun's Creative Kit, Photo will amaze you in many ways and leaves everything else behind. Relatively inexpensive too.
+1. Affinity Photo and Designer are really decent bits of kit. Great pricing as well.
I'm really glad someone mentioned Macphun's Creative Kit. It's one of the best alternatives for image retouching, especially with the release of Luminar.
For Mac users I would also recommend PhotoMarks. It's an app designed to watermark images in batch mode, quite useful if you're dealing with hundreds of them.
Acorn.
Fabulous program (I use it a lot with Lightroom AND photoshop)
Two accuracy issues. Adobe's Lightroom cannot be purchased as a part of the Creative Suite. It can only be rented. Like beer.
But you can buy it as a standalone application. You just don't get all the great new features, and you only get updates at major releases, except for new camera support, but that's a part of Adobe Camera RAW, not Lightroom itself. Unlike the rented version which gets updates throughout the year.
I have Affinity, an awesome and serious photo editor for the professionals and solely for Macs. Plus you don't have to subscribe to Adobe or anywhere.
A seriously useful replacement for Aperture.
No file management, but imports and exports to all usual destinations.
Available from App Store at a reasonable price. A trial version is great to try.
The only caveat is the time to learn all the controls.
The article would gain both credibility and currency by mentioning Affinity Photo. Moreover, Affinity Photo will likely go mainstream with its imminent release on the PC platform.
You mentioned Preview but not (Apple) Photos? Or Photoshop?
Both Apple Photos and Photoshop are mentioned in the article
Capture One, haven't used it yet, but a few people have recommended it to me lately.
It is not OK to write an article with the headline "The Best of..." and not include Affinity in the list. It makes all your future "The best of.." articles not credible. We need you to address and explain this error openly. Otherwise we must regard all your future articles as simple product placements.
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Bad research, you should really have put affinity on the top
No Affinity Photo? Ridiculous.
Which one is best for adding stickers, adding text, drawing smily faces, hearts, etc on the photos? I like to make my pictures fun. I guess I'm the opposite of most people who want to make a photographer quality photo. I want to make fun photos that make people laugh.