Krita is the best application for editing images. It’s a feature-packed image editor with a comprehensive set of digital painting tools and an amazing brush engine, supporting all major painting workflows and file formats.
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BEST APPS FOR EDITING IMAGES
If you’ve got one of the best camera phones you’ll also want one of the best photo editing apps to go with it.
The best smartphones take incredible images these days, but great though they are you can still get more from them if you also use specialized software. Of course all phones will have built-in apps to crop and enhance your snaps, but that’s only a tiny part of what you might want to do.
For instance, some of the options below can handle RAW files, or remove unwanted elements from the background of an image, or change how they look with seriously clever AI-based filters. You’ll also find options like white balance, layers, exposure and more. And of course there are also fun features such as stickers, plus the ability to share images quickly to social media.
We’re tried every app in this list extensively, to ensure each one comes with the Tom’s Guide stamp of approval. So read on for our selection of the best photo editing apps.
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What are the best photo editing apps?
After testing more than a dozen popular apps, our pick of the best photo editing apps overall is PicsArt. It has a great set of tools, plus features such as AI photo effects, stickers, text overlays, and backgrounds to enhance your photos.
In addition, PicsArt has tutorials and a daily photo-editing challenge to help you brush up your skills, and a library of images you can edit yourself. Plus, the app has a social component, letting you chat with other users and share your photos with them.
If you’re looking for something more comprehensive, Snapseed offers features such as nondestructive editing, curves, RAW image editing, white balance exposure, and a double exposure filter. You can also create layered effects, which you can save and apply to multiple photos. However, it’s geared towards those with some knowledge of photo editing, so there’s a steeper learning curve than some other products here.
And, while Google Photos’ editing tools are on the skimpy side, it’s second to none when it comes to backing up not just your photos, but all your videos, too, and syncing them across whatever device you may have, be it a PC, Mac, tablet, or smartphone.
Be sure to check out all of our picks for the best photo editing apps.
- PicsArt (Android, iOS)
Screens from PicsArt, our choice as the best photo editing app
PicsArt (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
PicsArt is our top pick of the best photo editing apps, because it’s fun, easy to use, yet covers just about all the bases for consumer mobile photography. It provides lots of creative control, excellent image-editing tools and a large variety of attractive filters. In addition, you can quickly select or create fun stickers, combine your pictures into highly customizable collages, add artistic text and share. The full-featured camera module includes pre-capture effects and photo tools.
You can use Remix Chat to share and collaboratively edit photos with the 150 million monthly users of PicsArt, or only with your friends. In-app tutorials are easy to follow, and challenges prompt users to submit their creations based on a specific type of edit or a theme; winners are selected by community vote.
However, ads for PicsArt premium pop up frequently (and annoyingly) in the middle of editing processes. To turn them off — and to have the video editor, plus more tools, filters and content — you have to buy a premium subscription for $11.99 for a single month or $55.99/year. (There’s also a student discount).
PicsArt offers a rich and highly accessible collection of photo-editing and collaging tools for consumer photographers. And it provides lots of creative control while keeping everything fun and lively.
Download PicsArt: Android, iOS
- Snapseed (Android, iOS)
Screens of the Snapseed photo editing app
Snapseed (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
Snapseed isn’t for the casual user, but rather for serious photographers who want or need to spend time creating the best possible image while on the go. As such, it has a full array of top-notch editing tools, including selective edit brushes, plus a nice collection of film-related filters (such as Lens Blur, Retrolux and Double Exposure).
For detail-oriented photographers, Snapseed can be not only fun but also addictive. We enjoyed just wandering through its range of exposure, color, masking and reshaping tools, brushes, and filters as we experimented with different settings. Because the editing is nondestructive, you can always go into the Stack (the layers of edits) and adjust or eliminate any edit (including correcting misspelled text). Or you can use a Stacks brush to apply an effect to only a portion of your picture. In addition, you can save a Stack of edits you’ve applied to a picture as a “Look,” which can then be applied to other photos and shared with other users.
Snapseed’s excellent traditional tools and nondestructive editing make it one of the best photo editing apps for serious photographers who want or need to spend time fine-tuning their pictures. The app is free and there is no premium version.
Download Snapseed: Android, iOS
- Adobe Photoshop Camera (Android, iOS)
Screens of the Adobe Photoshop Camera photo editing app
Adobe Photoshop Camera (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
Adobe Photoshop Camera is one of the best photo editing apps due to its AI, which applies special effects and photo corrections before or after you shoot with your phone’s camera.
Photoshop Camera uses filters, called “lenses,” to apply special effects or make adjustments to color, lighting and clarity. But what makes Camera special is the use of Adobe Sensei which automatically identifies the type of photo (portrait or landscape) and creates masks for key aspects, such as a face or the sky. So, for instance, the sky lenses can change the color of the sky, add or remove clouds, and even add the appropriate reflections in a body of water, without affecting other portions of the picture. In addition, some lenses have “sprites” — smart objects that can be pinched, zoomed and moved within a Sensei-identified area of the picture. That makes it possible to position and resize lens-placed objects (such as planets or clouds). And some lenses have small animations, like shooting stars or a blasting-off rocket ship.
The iPad version of Adobe Photoshop has a few clever desktop features, such as the refine edge brush, which lets you better define an object you want to select, and rotate canvas. Both features are touch-enabled, too.
Adobe promises that it will add new lenses (all free) on a regular basis, some created by celebrity artists and influencers. Since each of the lenses has variations (accessed by swiping right or left), you can have hours of photo adventures. PS Camera is a delightful app that is essentially push-button photography, even though you can make some adjustments to the effects. As such it will appeal more to fun-loving photographers, rather than pros or serious amateurs. The app is free and there is no premium version.
Download Adobe Photoshop Camera: Android, iOS
- Pixlr (Android, iOS)
Screenshots of the Pixlr photo editing app
Pixlr (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
Pixlr is one of the best photo editing apps for the casual photographer who wants to do just a bit of fine-tuning, perhaps add some neat effects and then share on whatever social networks are on their phone. The intuitive interface is easy to master, so you can get right into the fun of playing with your pictures.
Pixlr has a nice variety of easy-to-use photo adjustment tools, without overwhelming you with choices. This includes brushes to apply selective edits (such as darken or undo). The libraries of special effect filters, overlays, and borders are fun and generally attractive. The cartoonish stickers are varied and fun. Quickly create collages, using preset layouts or designed templates that allow you to shuffle your photos, as well as zoom and move them within the placeholders.
The premium version ($1.99/month or $11.99/year) turns off the ads and provides lots more content (stickers, overlays, borders, and fonts). While serious photographers might find Pixlr’s library of editing tools too shallow, casual users will enjoy the app’s easy creativity.
Download Pixlr: Android, iOS
- Adobe Lightroom (Android, iOS)
Screenshots of the Adobe Lightroom photo editing app
Adobe Lightroom (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
The mobile version of Adobe Lightroom (iOS and Android) is part of a cloud-based workflow that includes storage of your entire photo library and access to the full-resolution files (original and edited) on all your devices (mobile, laptop and desktop). So, when purchased with the entire Lightroom system (starting at $9.99/month), you’re buying into a powerful photo-processing ecosystem that provides professional-level control and quality. However, if all you want is a top-notch photo app on your phone or tablet, the standalone Lightroom Mobile is free, or you can pay $4.99/month for a Premium subscription that gives you 100GB of storage space.
Lightroom Mobile is a great learning platform. Its ever-growing library of interactive tutorials will teach you to edit your images like a pro. And that’s good, because the feature set is quite deep, with dozens of tools to work with exposure, color, selective edit, filters and such. The vast majority of edits involve slider controls, with quick responsiveness so you know exactly how the adjustment affects your picture. What’s more, the edits are non-destructive, so you can always return to your original image. In addition to the intuitive social sharing, Lightroom has a Discover area, where you can see animations of the steps other photographers and artists used to create their best images. Plus, you can contribute your own edited pictures to Lightroom Discover.
Lightroom Mobile is a top-notch photo app for anyone serious about getting the very best out of their photographs. But it may be overkill for folks who don’t want to spend the time doing more than a quick brightening, crop or special effect before sharing their pictures.
Download Adobe Lightroom Mobile: Android, iOS
- Instagram (Android, iOS)
Screenshots of Instagram
Instagram (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
Instagram has more than 850 million users for good reason: its focus on the quick, uncomplicated sharing of photos and videos on social media is a winning formula. Its intuitive interface offers a fast path from taking a picture or video through simple edits to posting simultaneously on multiple social networks.
Liking and sharing posts, sending and receiving direct messages, and generally engaging with others are Instagram’s primary activities. In fact, the most important metric (which businesses and influencers use to monetize their Instagram accounts) is your engagement rate, or how many people view and like your posts. And many of the recently added features include tools for gauging and improving your engagement rate. This includes the ability to remove “ghost followers” (those who don’t engage with your posts) and tracking which individual hashtags attract more views and likes. A nice security feature now lists all emails that Instagram has sent you recently, so you can verify what’s really from Instagram and isn’t a phishing attack. And Instagram addicts have gotten a bit of help in breaking the habit — the app now tells you how much time per day you spend on it.
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