Gone are the days when taking photos and uploading them was simple. Nowadays, the work only starts with taking photos. You can use effects, correction tools, and filters to make your photos more creative and take them to the next level. Not even professional photographers but content creators; everyone looking to upload a photo or two needs good photo editing software.
In this article, we have shortlisted some of the best photo editing tools for your convenience. We have selected applications for everyone. For those looking for high-end professional photo editing tools and also those who are looking for a free version or an affordable subscription, everyone can find what they need. So before further ado, let’s discuss some of the best photo editing software.
9+ Best Photo Editing Software
10 Best Photo Editing Software? Let’s discuss them one by one.
1. ACDSee Best Photo Studio for Professionals
ACDSee has been around for thirty years, and its Photo Editing Studio is one of the best photo editing applications. It’s a photo editor, an image organizer, and a viewer. ACDSee comes with different packages to help you manage our online presence. Its Photo Studio Ultimate package satisfies all your photo editing needs. The program packs a powerful photo manager and editing tools.
Features
- ACDSee features some of the best facial recognition and face detection tools in its Photo Studio.
- Besides photo editing tools, ACDSee has a limitless stock of already saved keywords. These keywords help you add tags, categories, or metadata to your posts.
- The photo editor is equipped with various repair tools to improve picture quality or to remove the red eye. Its color correction and lighting tools help you adjust the photos. The software is easy to use for beginners as well to adjust lighting or levels automatically.
- The software offers great creative tools to help unleash your creativity and make your photos stand out. Features like the Grain tool or Add Vignetta allow you to create something different from your photos. It adds all sorts of special effects to create amazing posts.
- As AI rules the content industry, ACDSee comes with AI Technology that can redo facial features or use other tools and apply makeup.
- Panorama Stitching that opens into a managed module can import the image or use the existing image and edit it.
Pricing
ACDSee offers three packages that you can choose from. It offers monthly or subscription, one-time purchases with perpetual license or Unlimited package. Its Home Plan 365 costs $8.90 monthly. PhotoStudio Ultimate is available for a lifetime license at $149.99. They are about to launch their Unlimited Pack as well.
User Interface
The user interface is easy but needs to be more beginner-friendly. It offers five distinct modes that make it easy to work. Its modes like Manage, View, develop, edit, and 365 Ways cater to all photo editing needs.
Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| User-friendly interface | Slow import process |
| Wide variety of editing tools | Too many tools can confuse |
| Customizable User Interface | |
| It comes with a smart management system |
2. Skylum (Luminar Neo) Best Photo Editing Software with AI Tools
Luminar from Skylum is one of the top editing applications, and they have lately come up with the latest better AI-based tools that are intuitive and creative. Luminar Neo offers AI tools to help your work. Moreover, luminar 4 is not available independently but is a part of Luminar NEO.
Luminar Neo and Luminar AI help designers and photographers create their work to the next level. Luminar offers a collection of unique effects that help the designer take their career to the next level. It also offers an organized way to structure your gallery. Their AI touch enhances features; you can edit sky or skin tones and retouch portraits. It can be used as a plugin in Photoshop and Lightroom.
Features
- Luminar Looks Allow you to change the look of your image to be more dramatic. There are dozens of filters to choose from; some are AI features that analyze photos and offer editing suggestions.
- It also offers a before and after split view. You can view the changes and how they affect you and drag and slide left and right to evaluate them.
- YOu can use its AI Augmented Sky and Sky Searchment features to enhance or change the sky and background in pictures. With a lot of preloaded skies; you can add clouds, birds, fireworks, or planets to photos. There are multiple other AI creative tools.
- Besides these, Luminar 4 offers many AI creative tools, as in Adobe Lightroom, like AI Enhance, AI Structure, Landscape Enhancer, etc.
- Some edit mask buttons can apply changes to a part of your image using a brush, radial filter, or graduated filter.
- You can Subtract the edit from the photo as well. Their portrait tools have many creative effects and can edit the background, enhance the skin tone, remove blemishes, etc.
- Their AIPortrait Enhance is nothing like the Liquify tool in Photoshop. In short, Luminar Neo has many professional and advanced tools for professional photographers and content creators.
User Interface
The user interface of Luminar is different from other photo editors. It is better streamlined and easy to use. The blend of AI tools makes the life of designers easy. Compared to other advanced photo editing tools like Photoshop, Luminar Neo is beginner-friendly and easy to use. It is also easy to use, like a mobile app, and is customizable.
Price
Luminar 4 is not available on its own but is a part of Luminar NEO. Skylum offers different plans. It is available from the Skyllum website for $145. It also offers Luminar AI as a separate extension, but it lacks the complexity and clarity and is more of a one-click fix tool. They offer a monthly money-back guarantee.
Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Improved processing power for easy import and export | Luminar 4 is only available with Luminar Neo |
| AI helps make editing easy for beginners | Not too beginner beginner-friendly application |
| Advanced tools for professional photo editing | |
| Customizable interface |
3. CyberLink PhotoDirector 365: Photo Editing Software with AI Tools
CyberLink PhotoDirector is another photo editing application that is worth our attention. The editing software uses many AI-based editing tools and classic photo editing tools.
Features
Cyberlink PhotDirector 365 uses a layer-based editing approach like Photoshop that makes it easy to keep workflow smooth. With its standard editing tools, it offers a lot of AI tools to speed up the editing process. It has a sky replacement tool as well. You can use a layered template to add pre-design layers to your photos. It offers a special feature, People Beautifier, that can enhance photos by removing blemishes, pimples, or stray hair from the face.
User Interface
It is a beginner-friendly application that even has a guided mode. It has a clean interface that is easy to use. You can perform all basic image edits from the dashboard. There are two basic modes Organize and Adjust and an Editing mode. You can adjust photos’ basic light and color from here and then arrange and import all images. Edit is where you can use other editing options.
Price
Cyberlink PhotoDirector 365 is available at $14.99 per month. You can buy a lifetime license, or users can pay monthly for their subscription. However, the lifetime license option is only available for Windows.
Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Built-in library with license-free photos to use | Slow while processing large files. |
| Easy-to-use interface | |
| Layer based editing | |
| AI tools to enhance photos easily |
4. Fotor: Best Photo Editing Software for Graphic Designing
Fotor is a photo editing and graphic designer that can be used for basic photo editing and graphic designing. It lacks advanced tools and photo editing choices like some other applications, such as Photoshop or Luminar 4. Fotor supports Raw files. It’s a good tool for those who need some basic editing. It lacks the photo processing and advanced editing tools professional photographers need.
Features
Fotor offers some online Photo editing tools, photo retouching, stickers, texts, collage makers, and design sources to help the designers. It is suitable for quick and accessible designs.
User Interface
The user interface is very easy and clean. The application allows effortless photo editing to create beautiful images. The interface resembles much like Canva. There are a variety of templates to choose from.
Price
Fotor is available as a free online editing tool, but some of its advanced tools are only available in paid versions. The Foto Pro plan is available at $8.99 monthly or $39.99 annually.
Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy-to-use application for basic editing | Advance tools are only available in the paid version |
| Offers all basic tools for photo editing | Not for professional photographers. |
| Free online editing: you don’t need to download anything |
5. ON1 Photo Raw Best Photo Editing Plugin
Though known for its plugins for photo editing and digital enlargement, ON1’s Photo Raw is a standalone photo editing software. It can work as a plugin and combine it with some other photo editing software for a combined workflow.
User Interface
The user interface is packed with lots of tools. The dashboard is basic, with only browse and Edit modes. You can press long and opt for other options like AI tools, Effect, AI Sky, or Local. Switching modes are on the left-hand panel that shows the source of photos, galleries, or albums. The right panel contains metadata, information, or editing control. The Center area depicts the images or slides. You can choose a full view as well.
Features
- It contains all photo editing or lighting tools like Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, or Blacks, ON1 Photo Raw even provides midtones, which is not present with all other photo editing tools.
- The software provides AI Auto and AI match options to enable AI to adjust the photo and decrease or increase strength.
- Portrait AI option lets you give dramatic retouches to the photos. It can correct, tone down, or smooth the photos. You can adjust eye brightness, blemishes, teeth whitening, or lip vibrancy options. The Haze tool allows you to blue-cast outdoor scenes. Other options like Curve, lens Profile-based corrections, or noise reduction will enable you to enhance photos and make some adjustments.
Price
On1 Photo Raw is a one-time payment tool. You have to pay $99.99 for a lifetime license. For a monthly subscription, it will cost $7.99 per month.
Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| It does not require any subscription | Limited options for Professional Photography |
| AI tools to retouch and correct photos | |
| Simple and easy-to-use dashboard | |
| It can be used as a plugin with other tools | |
| AI sky option to change the sky |
6. DxO PhotoLab: Best Photo Editing Software for RAW Photos
DXO PhotoLab is also one of the advanced Raw photo editing tools. It’s an automatic lens and camera body-base image correction application that can enhance photos, reduce noise, correct, and add creativity to your photographs. Its advanced color science and creative tools allow you to enhance the photo colors and play with them for creative purposes.
With its advanced photo management system and intuitive local adjustment; it deserves a place among serious applications for digital photographers.
User Interface
PhotoLab has a dark and gray interface, which is clean and intuitive.As well as, it has two basic modes: PhotoLibrary and Customize. It lacks the flexibility of Lighthouse. It has a button and bar options. You can view the full image with a click. And side-by-side comparison views. As for image correction, you have standard, Optical correction, or No Correction. You can search for tools or add some to your favorite to save time. A history panel also allows you to keep track of changes, and you can go back to any edit point. The interface is customizable. You can use short keys as well. However, the interface lacks the image rotation buttons. You can rotate the image with right click. Another thing we miss here is the scrolling slides and mouse wheel functionality.
Features
- PhotoLab offers some great image correction. It starts with the guess corrections based on your lens, camera, or exposed setting. Its auto-correction is far more sophisticated than some other editing tools.
- It supports DCP color profiles that are used by other professional photo editing tools like Photoshop and Lightroom. It also features third-party utilities like X-Rite to create your own profile with a color target board.
- The customize mode allows you to change exposure compensation, contrast, color, and org details.
- Its Micro-contrast tools can add sharpness to the images without distortion. Its lens sharpness tools are also impressive.
- It offers intelligent Raw Processing. Its DeepPrime technology combines denoising and demosaicing technology to restore fine details. Some new features were added to DXOPhotolabare’s refined library system, powerful retouching tools, and advanced color management.
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Price
PhotoLab offers two pricing options, and neither requires any subscription. The essential package will cost you $139, and Elite will charge you $219. You can upgrade to a previous version for just $54.99 and $79.99 for Elite. Essential is a good package but lacks the coolest features like Prime de-noising and ClearView of the Elite version.
Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Good image correction tools | Expensive plans |
| Comes with denoising and demosaicing technology | |
| Customizable interface | |
| Good for professional photography editing |
7. Movavi
Movavi is a great option for those looking for a quick and free option to fix issues and enhance the photos. It’s a basic photo editor that is also very easy to use. It lacks the sophisticated tools of some other high-end photo editing applications. It can be used to enhance some recent clicks and restore some old pictures. You can edit pictures, remove backgrounds, and even add effects.
Features
Movavi offers almost all basic photo editing options to users. It has a decent file management system as well. We don’t see any AI tools here, but the tools are all very basic like blur, adjust lighting, enhance, Redye, etc. You can import or export files. You can remove unwanted objects, enhance the background, add text, change positions, and apply a filter. Basically, everything that you can do with a basic photo editor.
User Interface
Movavi comes with an easy-to-use interface that is beginner-friendly. Even people with some basic skills can use the platform. The dashboard has an easy-to-drag-and-drop system where you can choose any tool from the bars and use it. It’s a basic, paint-like user interface that even kids can use. All tools to edit photos are on the screen’s right side. You can adjust like crop, rotate, or adjust colors on the left side. In the middle, you can edit or work on the photos.
Price
Though Movavi offers a free version with limited options and only allows you to do a little, you can save and edit only ten pictures. Then, they will ask you to buy the subscription. A lifetime license of Movavi will cost $69.95, and you can also get a one-year subscription for $49.95.
Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Good for basic photo editing | The free version offers limited features. |
| Come with a complete file management system | |
| Offers a free version for online editing | |
| AI tools to make editing easy |
8. Snappa
Snappa is another photo editing tool for social media users. It is not a professional photo editor like Adobe Photoshop, but it allows you to create stunning graphics for social media posts. It’s a beginner-friendly platform that you can use to create menus, posts, pins, and so on with stunning imagery.
Features
- Snappa gives you all the photo effects and editing tools you need for graphic design. It provides image overlays and adds effects. Light adjustment and color contrasts allow you to adjust the picture’s colors.
- You can create different moods with its image darkening and lighting features. With just one click, you can remove the backgrounds as well. With its predefined sizes, you can create posts of optimal size on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. Snappa also offers over 5,000,000 pictures in stock imagery that are free to use. It offers all collaboration tools, integration tools, and content management systems. And design templates as well.
User Interface
Snappa is more suitable for social media content generation and is designed for beginners and non-professional content creators. The user interface is also designed to help you choose different options from the screen. The display of photos, editing tools, and adjustments is neat and clean.
Price
You can start using Snappa for free and can even use its template and designs. However, you can download only three images per day. Their starter plan is free of cost. You can access and use their over 500,000 pictures and 6,000 templates. The Pro Plan requires a subscription of $10 per month, but they allow yearly bills for a workplace with up to 5 users for $20 per month.
Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy-to-use platform | It is more suitable for content creation and not a great option for professional photographs |
| Offers free trial | |
| Library with stock photos | |
| Templates make designing easy | |
| Great for social media posts |
9. Canva: Best Photo Editor For Content Creation
Canva is an excellent photo editor and design app with valuable tools and is gaining popularity, especially among content creators. It is a versatile photo editing and graphic designing application that beginners can use to create stunning graphics and social media posts.
Features
- Canva provides all photo editing and graphic designing tools. Not only is it a great photo editor, but it provides loads of free stock photos and design templates for designing social media posts and pamphlets. You can choose the type of post you want to create.
- They recently added AI technology and provided a Magic AI generator to generate prompts. Magic Design AI allows you to create AI Presentations and layouts. AI text-to-image generators, magic erase, and auto crop options are added to help designers and photographers perform quick and creative photos for social media and web designing. The bulk edit feature allows you to edit photos in bulk and save time. All these features, with advanced photo editing tools, make Canva a comprehensive solution for designers, content creators, and photographers.
User Interface
The user interface of Canva is beginner-friendly. The interface is pretty basic if you have used other graphic designing or photo editing tools. It’s a simple drag-and-drop system. You have to specify what type of post you want to create or if you wish to edit a picture. The dashboard offers all the basic tools for the task. You can access their templates and stock photos and perform the edition or graphic designing.
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Price
The Canava starter plan is free to use. You can edit some pictures, create some designs, and use templates. You won’t be able to use its stock photos, and functionality is also limited. Canva Pro is available for one user at $14.99 per month or $119.99 per year. Canva for a Team is $14.99, or an annual bill of $149.90 for the first five people. If you have more than five people on your team, it will cost you an additional $7 per person.
Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy to use | No stock photos and limited features in the free version |
| Caters to all content creation and designing needs | Not very creative options |
| Even a non-designer can use it | Export settings are limited |
| Rich template and free-to-use photo stock | |
| It is more affordable than other tools like Photoshop |
10. Adobe Photoshop: Best Photo Editing Software for Professionals
Adobe Photoshop is a professional software for editing photos. It is by far the best photo editing software in the industry. Designers and photographers both love Adobe Photoshop. However, it is not a very beginner-friendly platform. It is for designers who need innovative capabilities and Layered image editing, typography, and many effects.
Features
Adobe Photoshop comes rich with advanced tools and features. They keep updating the software. Their selection tools allow you to select objects and people in the photo. Besides Lasso, Magic Wand, and Marquee, they have included newer objects and Quick selection tools to select or mask objects. They can even select automatically with the help of AI technology. The Remove tools, Neural filters, Landscape mixer, and Colorize tools are examples of Photoshop’s innovative tools. They keep developing better technology, selection, and editing tools and improving their workspace.
Use Interface
Photoshop is an advanced software with specialized tools for professionals. It is not beginner-friendly, and we must admit that it takes a while to understand and perform well with this software. However, those who know how to use the tools won’t exchange them for anything. Still, it’s a customizable and intuitive interface. It offers targeted working layouts, including Graphics, Web, Motion, Photography, and portrait. The recent May update provides a contextual taskbar that offers only actions that make sense with the current image.
Price
The latest Photoshop subscription comes with only a Creative Cloud subscription. The Photoshop single-app plan costs 20.99 per month with a yearly commitment, but you can pay in monthly installments. Another photography Plan costs only $9.99 and includes Photoshop Lightroom.
Another plan costs $19.99 monthly, including Photoshop, Lightroom, and ITB cloud storage. The complete Creative Cloud subscription that includes not all but other design and Video applications will cost $54.99 monthly with an annual commitment. Monthly Photoshop plan is $31.49 with a yearly commitment. If you prepay for the whole year, you must pay only $239.88.
Pros And Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Advanced photo editing tools | Expensive tool |
| Tools for web designing and graphics | Takes time to learn all tools and how they function |
| Typography and drawing tools | |
| Heavy cloud storage and synchronized library | |
| Tools for image correction and manipulation |
Conclusion
A good photo editing application is essential in this digital age where pictures are necessary for almost all types of content creation. Advanced tools have revolutionized photography as pictures are more perfect and creative than they used to be. Tools not only allow photographers to be more creative, but they can enhance the picture and make them look more stunning.
Author Disclaimer
Greetings, readers! I am Danish Khan, the author behind DY Exotic. I want to take a moment to clarify the nature of the content you’ll find on this platform.
As the curator of DY Exotic, I am committed to delivering unique and meticulously researched content on various tech-related topics. Whether it’s delving into the latest technological innovations, sharing insights from personal experiences, or exploring the intricacies of the digital realm, my aim is to provide you with valuable and engaging information.
It’s important to note that while I strive for accuracy and thoroughness in my content, the dynamic nature of technology means that information may evolve over time. Therefore, I encourage you to cross-reference and verify details when necessary, especially if you encounter this content at a later date.
Additionally, opinions expressed on DY Exotic are my own and may not necessarily reflect the views of others. I appreciate constructive feedback and open dialogue, so feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.
Thank you for being a part of the DY Exotic community. I hope you find inspiration, knowledge, and enjoyment in the tech-centric journey we embark upon together.
Best regards,
Danish Khan
Author, DY Exotic
