Best Apps For Photo Editing On Pc

Photo editing programs are software platforms that allow users to edit, process, and make changes to existing images. These programs can be used on PCs, Macs, and other devices.

There are many photo editing apps available in the marketplace, but these ten are among the very best. They include a wide range of tools and options that are designed to meet the needs of both professional photographers and amateur image enthusiasts.

Best Apps For Photo Editing On Pc

Whether you make a living taking pictures or just do it for fun, the software you use to retouch, edit, and enhance images can have a more significant impact on how your photos look than your camera.

While some software provide users with a significant number of high-quality editing tools, they may lack sufficient organizational features. On the other hand, a free program may feature a clean, streamlined interface but limit your ability to use advanced features such as object removal, AI-powered sky replacement, and other professional-quality tools without a hefty subscription fee.

If you’ve found yourself wondering, “What is the best free photo editing software for Windows?” you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll outline the best features and surprising creative elements you can find in the top five choices of free photo editing software. Each pick will help streamline your editing process and enhance your workflow. So let’s dive right in!

Top 3 Free Photo Editors Snapshot
What is a Photo Editing Software?
5 Best Free Photo Editing Software
PhotoDirector Essential – Best Overall
GIMP Photo Editor – Best Open-Source Editor
Pixlr – Best Online Editor
Movavi Picverse – Best for Restoration
BeFunky – Best for Quick, Simple Edits
Best Free Photo Editing Software Comparison Chart
How to Edit a Photo
Download the Best Free Photo Editing Software
Free Photo Editing Software FAQ
Top 3 Free Photo Editors in 2022
PhotoDirector Logo

1. PhotoDirector Essential – Best Overall
   PhotoDirector Essential is an all-in-one free photo editor and organizer with an incredible mix of tools and unique features. There are hundreds of filters, stickers, frames, and overlays to make your photos look unique and professional. It includes powerful AI tools, photo effects, advanced color controls, intuitive layer editing, and templates; making it a great choice for anyone from novice to professional photographer. More Info >

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Free Download
Secure Download
Download from the App Store for iOS and Android.
GIMP Logo

2. GIMP Photo Editor – Best Open-Source Editor
   GIMP is a cross-platform, open-source free photo editor that includes advanced layer editing, adjustable brushes, custom color adjustment tools, and a customizable interface. More Info >

Pixlr Logo

3. Pixlr – Best Online Editor
   Pixlr is a web-based free photo editor and design tool with an easy-to-use desktop version. It comes with design templates and a collage maker, as well as photo filters and effects. It’s an easy-to-use free photo editor with some advanced features. More Info >

What is a Photo Editing Software?
Photo editing software is an application used to manipulate or enhance images, often on the pixel level. This can range from basic apps on phones to professional industry-standard programs on PCs. Desktop editing software is typically used on photos taken with a digital camera and then uploaded into the program.

Top 5 Free Photo Editing Software

1. PhotoDirector Essential – Best Overall
   PhotoDirector interface
   Compatibility: Windows, Mac

Overall Rating: 10/10

Advanced Features: 10/10

Key Features

AI-powered sky removal
Background and content-aware removal
Photo animations
Guided and layer editing
PhotoDirector Essential empowers creators of all experience levels to turn their photos into studio-quality masterpieces. It combines Lightroom’s photo processing and organization functions with Photoshop’s powerful editing, enhancement, and altering tools. Guided modules lower the learning curve which in turn will help you produce high-quality photo effects in just a few clicks.

The software allows you to batch sort and order tag names, locations, and other metadata. Its AI-powered facial recognition technology will also help streamline your organizational process, making it the best photo organizer for beginners. You can combine photos using the automatic slideshow creator and even add background music.

PhotoDirector also features an abundance of photo adjustment options and editing tools. Apply masks, layer filtering, experiment with blur effects, adjust alignment, or transform 360° photos into panorama shots. It is also a great choice for basic edits, such as adding text or cropping, rotating, or flipping photos.

PhotoDirector Essential is the best overall free photo editor in this list. It is very beginner-friendly but also has all the advanced editing tools for more experienced editors. Not to mention, it’s always at the forefront of the latest photo trends and technology because of regular updates.

Pros
Multi-exposure creation from video
Lighting tricks, like light hits and light rays
Cons
Requires a large amount of hard drive space
Download PhotoDirector now and see why PCMag said it gives, “Adobe a run for its money…”

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Free Download
Secure Download
Download from the App Store for iOS and Android.

2. GIMP Photo Editor – Best Open-Source Editor
   GIMP interface
   Compatibility: Windows, Mac, Linux

Overall Rating: 8/10

Advanced Features: 9/10

Key Features

Comprehensive line-up of editing tools
Quick interface customization
Easy expansion using community-created plugins or written code
GIMP – also known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program – is a free photo editor that features a surprisingly well-rounded amassing of complex and basic photo editing tools that rival those of Photoshop and similar paid programs.

While the base software comes well-stocked with flexible features like layer editing functions, masking, color management features, and effects, you can also download free plugins created by other GIMP users. Further, the software’s customizable layout and ongoing developments ensure that it stays on pace with other free photo editors.

While you can access the platform’s wide array of tools, GIMP falls short in one significant area: user optimization. The loaded interface often feels overwhelming, while beginners and intermediate editors may struggle to find solutions for complicated editing techniques. Additionally, GIMP offers little help for its users outside of the community discussion panels.

Pros
Adjustable brushes
Custom color adjustment and gradient tools
Cons
Hard to learn
Clunky looking interface

3. Pixlr – Best Online Editor
   Pixlr interface
   Compatibility: Web browser, Windows

Overall Rating: 8/10

Advanced Features: 6/10

Key Features

Design templates
Picture collage maker
Filters and effects
Skin retouch tools
Pixlr’s free, lightweight editing software works well for beginners and more experienced editors in need of a quick solution for basic edits. Without a fully-loaded editing suite to search through, you can easily locate tools like spot-healing brushes and stamps, or make minor adjustments to the photo’s color and lighting. Pixlr’s streamlined layout and a minimalistic array of tools help simplify the editing process for beginners.

The software supports layers and masks and features several essential editing tools such as customizable brushes and visual effects. Advanced users familiar with Photoshop will find the software’s toolbars familiar, but beginners may struggle with the lack of guidance available.

Though the program rarely crashes, ad-heavy banners and poorly navigable pages reduce the functionality and aesthetic appeal of the platform. You may also notice that the program renders slowly, resulting in frustrating, inconsistent movements of your mouse or touchpad.

Casual users may enjoy making small tweaks to their pictures or creating collages within Pixlr’s software, but if you need a user-friendly free photo editor with a more comprehensive array of tools, Pixlr won’t make the cut.

Pros
No need to download software
Different level editor options
Cons
Lacks advanced features other software have

4. Movavi Picverse – Best for Restoration
   Movavi Picverse interface
   Compatibility: Windows, Mac

Overall Rating: 7/10

Advanced Features: 7/10

Key Features

AI auto-enhance
AI restoration
Effects and filters
Sharpness adjustment
Movavi Picverse has built its reputation on one key function: quickly and easily removing unwanted objects from your pictures. The minimalistic interface makes it easy to clear the background of your photos.

The software also offers a simplified alternative to AI-powered background removal: Users can upload images into the platform then clip and insert elements from one photo onto another.

With this free photo editor, you can adjust the size and orientation of your photo using the crop, rotate, level, and resize features or apply stylistic filters such as sepia, black and white, and oil painting.

Movavi also provides users with a few photo adjustment options. It allows you to manually tweak the color, brightness, contrast, and saturation of your photo, apply Magic Enhance for one-click edits, or add text, titles, and captions for fully customized photos.

While beginners can cut distracting or disruptive elements from their photos, even the most inexperienced users may feel that Movavi’s actual editing features fall short of expectations. The software features limited sorting and organizational tools that don’t match free photo editors using AI-powered processing technology. You can upgrade to the Photo Studio package for more options, but that requires a monthly subscription.

Pros
Automatic photo organization
Light and color correction
Cons
Erase and stamp lacking in functionality
Only contains basic effects

5. BeFunky – Best for Quick, Simple Edits
   BeFunky interface
   Compatibility: Web browser

Overall Rating: 7/10

Advanced Features: 5/10

Key Features

Collage making
Graphic design workflow
When considering the best free photo editing software, Windows users can’t forget BeFunky. The free photo editor offers many of the tools, features, and functions beginners need to enhance photos, manually adjust color and lighting, and create customizable collages or graphics.

With ten photo editing modules, you can quickly browse through the software’s editing interface to alter template layouts, upload images, and make minor tweaks. While the free version will only allow you to access about one-third of the platform’s tools, novice users may enjoy the simplified functionality.

Proficient editors will likely wish for more options – and far fewer advertisements. Upgrading to BeFunky’s premium subscription will unlock features such as cutout tools, background replacement, color replacement, and other highly impactful editing functions.

Pros
Batch edit photos
Customizable design templates
Cons
Lacks many useful features and the functionality of a fully-loaded editing software

photo editing software for pc

Whether you merely shoot with your smartphone or you’re a professional photographer working in a studio, you need software to organize, optimize, and edit your digital photos. Camera technology is improving at a tremendous rate: Today’s smartphones are more powerful than the point-and-shoots of just a few years ago, and pro-level cameras have passed the 150-megapixel mark. Photo editing software is keeping up, with ever-more-powerful features. People who shoot with a four-camera Galaxy S21 Ultra or with an advanced digital SLR both care how their photos look. To get the best results, you need to import the shots into your PC to organize them, pick the best ones, perfect them, and print or share them online. Here we present the best choices in photo editing software to suit every photographer.

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Which Photo Software Should You Use?
Novice smartphone shooters want different software from those shooting with a $52,000 Phase One IQ4 in a studio. We’ve included all levels of PC software here, and reading the linked reviews will make it clear which is for you. Nothing says that pros can’t occasionally use an entry-level application or that a prosumer won’t be running Photoshop, the most powerful image editor around. The issue is that, in general, users at each of these levels will be most comfortable with the products intended for them.

Note that, in the spec table below, it’s not a case of “more checks mean the program is better.” Rather, the table is designed to give you a quick overview of the products. A product with everything checked doesn’t necessarily have the best implementation of those features, and one with fewer checks still may be very capable, and whether you even need the checked feature depends on your photo workflow. For example, DxO Photolab may not have face recognition or keyword tagging, but it has the finest noise reduction in the land and some of the best camera- and lens-profile-based corrections.

The Best Photo Editing Software Deals This Week*
*Deals are selected by our partner, TechBargains

Cyberlink PowerDirector 19 Ultra (PC Download) — $69.99 (List Price $99.99)
Corel PaintShop Pro 2022 (PC Download) — $79.99
Corel AfterShot Pro 3 (PC Download) — $54.99 (List Price $79.99)
Are There Free Photo Editing Apps?
So you’ve graduated from smartphone photography tools like those offered by the smartphone operating systems and maybe Instagram. Does that mean you have to pay a ton for high-end software? Absolutely not. Up-to-date desktop operating systems include photo software at no extra cost. The Microsoft Photos app included with Windows 10 (and updated for Windows 11) may surprise some users with its capabilities. In a touch-friendly interface, it offers a good level of image correction, auto-tagging, blemish removal, face recognition, and even raw camera file support. It can automatically create editable albums based on photos’ dates and locations.

Apple Photos does those things too, though its automatic albums aren’t as editable. Both programs also sync with online storage services: iCloud for Apple and OneDrive for Microsoft. With both, you can search based on detected object types, like “tree” or “cat” in the application. Apple Photos also can integrate with plugins like the excellent Perfectly Clear.

Ubuntu Linux users are also covered when it comes to free included photo software: They can use the capable-enough Shotwell app. And no discussion of free photo editing software would be complete without mentioning the venerable GNU Image Manipulation Program, better known as GIMP. It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, offers a ton of Photoshop-style plugins and editing capabilities but very little in the way of creature comforts or usability. Other lightweight, low-cost options include Polarr and Pixlr.

How Can You Edit Photos Online?
In this roundup, we’ve only included installable computer software, but entry-level photo shooters may be adequately served by online photo-editing options. These are mostly free, and they’re often tied to online photo storage and sharing services. Flickr (with its integrated photo editor) and Google Photos are the biggest names here, and both can spiff up your uploaded pictures and do a lot to help you organize them.

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These free options even approach the two entry-level installed programs here, but they lack many tools found in the pro and enthusiast products. The latest version of Lightroom includes a good deal of photo-editing capabilities on its web version. And Adobe announced a basic web version of its flagship Photoshop app, currently in beta. Other notable names in web-based photo editing include BeFunky, Fotor, and Photofx, and PicMonkey.

Image Editing for Enthusiasts and Prosumers
Most of the products in this roundup fall into this category, which includes people who genuinely love working with digital photographs. These are not free applications, and they require at least a few hundred megabytes of your disk space. Several, such as Lightroom and CyberLink PhotoDirector, are strong when it comes to workflow—importing, organizing, editing, and outputting the photos from a DSLR. Such apps offer nondestructive editing, meaning the original photo files aren’t touched. Instead, they maintain a database of edits that you apply and that appear in photos you export from the application. These programs also offer strong organization tools, including keyword tagging, color-coding, geo-tagging with maps, and in some cases face recognition to organize photos by people that appear in them.

At the back end of workflow is output. Capable software like Lightroom Classic offers powerful printing options such as soft-proofing, which shows you whether the printer you use can produce the colors in your photo or not. (Strangely, the new version of Lightroom—non-Classic—still offers no built-in local printing capability, though the latest update lets you send image to a photo printing service.) Lightroom Classic can directly publish photos on sites like Flickr and SmugMug. In fact, all good software at this level offers strong printing and sharing, and some, like ACDSee and Lightroom, include their own online photo hosting to present a portfolio of your work.

The programs at the enthusiast level and the professional level can import and edit raw files from your digital camera. These are files that include every bit of data from the camera’s image sensor. Each camera manufacturer uses its own format and file extension for these. For example, Canon DSLRs use .CR2 files and Nikon uses NEF. (Raw here simply means what it sounds like, a file with the raw sensor data; it’s not an acronym or file extension.)

Working with raw files provides some big advantages when it comes to correcting (often termed adjusting) photos. Since the photo you see on screen is just one interpretation of what’s in the raw file, the software can dig into that data to recover more detail in a bright sky, or it can fully fix an improperly rendered white balance. If you set your camera to shoot with JPGs, you’re losing those capabilities.

Enthusiasts want to do more than just import, organize, and render their photos: They want to do fun stuff, too! Editors’ Choice Adobe Photoshop Elements includes Guided Edits, which make special effects like motion blur or color splash (where only one color shows on an otherwise black-and-white photo) a simple step-by-step process. Topaz Studio offers a slew of fun photo effects, but it’s completely lacking in workflow features.

Content-aware tools in some of these products let you do things like moving objects around while maintaining a consistent background. You can also remove objects entirely—say you want to remove a couple of strangers from a serene beach scene—and have the app fill in the background. These edits don’t involve simple filters like you get in Instagram. Rather, they produce highly customized, one-off images. Another good example is CyberLink PhotoDirector’s Multiple Exposure effect, which lets you create an image with ten versions of Johnny jumping that curb on his skateboard, for example.

CyberLink PhotoDirector’s multiple exposure effect
Most of these products can produce HDR effects and panoramas after you feed them multiple shots, and local edit brushes let you paint adjustments onto only specific areas of an image. Affinity Photo has those features, but its interface isn’t the most intuitive. Zoner Photo Studio X combines Lightroom and Photoshop features in a lower-priced subscription, but it’s just not up to the level of the Adobe software.

Some of the products in this group have started adding what’s sometimes termed AI style transfer—where the style of Picasso, Japanese watercolor, or another art mode is applied to the photo. The effect became a craze with the Prisma app several years ago, and it can still impress. PaintShop Pro and CyberLink PhotoDirector both offer this. PaintShop recently added other nifty AI features as well, including the impressive AI Upsampling, AI Denoise, and AI Artifact Removal tools.

Professional Photo Editing Software
At the very top end of image editing is Photoshop, which has no real rival. Its layered editing, drawing, text, and 3D-imaging tools are the industry standard for a reason. Note, however, that Adobe is in the process of removing the 3D tools because of the changing graphics hardware landscape. Of course, pros need more than this one application, and many use workflow programs like Lightroom, AfterShot Pro, or Photo Mechanic for workflow functions like importing and organization. In addition to its workflow prowess, Lightroom offers mobile photo apps so that photographers on the run can get some work done before they even get back to their PC. Photoshop recently got an iPad app, as well, but that’s not yet capable of raw file editing.

Those who need tethered shooting—controlling the camera in the software from the computer while it’s attached—may want Capture One, which is offers lots of tools for that along with its top-notch raw-file conversion.

Photoshop offers the most image editing capabilities, though it doesn’t always make producing those effects as simple, and it doesn’t offer a nondestructive workflow, as Lightroom and some of the other products do. Of course, users with less-intensive needs can get all the Photoshop-type features they need from other programs in this roundup, such as Corel PaintShop Pro. DxO PureRAW is another tool pros may want in their kit, because of its excellent lens-profile based corrections and unmatched DeepPrime noise reduction.

Capture One, DxO PhotoLab, PaintShop Pro, and Lightroom offer precise tools for local selections. For example, they let you select everything in a photo within a precise color range and refine the selection of difficult content such as a model’s hair or trees on the horizon. Of course, you find all this in Adobe Photoshop, too.

Photoshop (and its included companion, Adobe Camera Raw utility) is where you find Adobe’s latest and greatest imaging technology, such as AI-informed Neural Filters, Content-Aware Crop, Camera Shake Reduction, Perspective Warp, Subject Select, and Detail Enhancement. The program has the most tools for professionals in the imaging industry, including Artboards, Design Spaces, and realistic, customizable brushes.

Professional Plug-ins and Subscriptions
Another advantage of pro-level photo editing software is that it supports third-party plug-ins such as the excellent Nik Collection by DxO and Editors’ Choice winner RNI All Films 5 Professional (among many others). These can add more effects and adjustments than you find in the base software. They often include tools for film looks, black-and-white options, sharpening, and noise reduction. Indeed, some of the programs included here, like DxO and Topaz, can be added to the industry-standard Ligthroom and Photshop software as plug-ins.

Some users have taken umbrage at Adobe’s move to a subscription-only option for Photoshop, but at $9.99 per month, it hardly seems exorbitant for any serious image professional, and it includes a copy of Lightroom, online services like Adobe Stock, an online Portfolio site, and multiple mobile apps. It makes the app more affordable for prosumers, too, when you consider that a full copy of Photoshop’s top-end version used to cost a cool $999.

Great Photos Require Capable Cameras—and Skills
If you’re an absolute beginner in digital photography, your first step is to make sure you’ve got good hardware to shoot with, otherwise you’re sunk before you start. Consider our roundups of the Best Digital Cameras and the Best Camera Phones for equipment that can fit any budget. Once you’ve got your hardware sorted out, make sure to educate yourself with our Quick Photography Tips for Beginners and our Beyond-Basic Photography Tips. That done, you’ll be ready to shoot great pictures that you can make better with the software featured here.

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