30-03-2021

Digital Photo Software For Mac

Photos in macOS Catalina has an immersive, dynamic look that showcases your best photos. Find the shots you’re looking for with powerful search options. Organize your collection into albums, or keep your photos organized automatically with smart albums. Perfect your images with intuitive built-in editing tools, or use your favorite photos apps. And with iCloud Photos, you can keep all your photos and videos stored in iCloud and up to date on your Mac, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, and even your PC.

A smarter way to find your favorites.

Photos in macOS Catalina intelligently declutters and curates your photos and videos — so you can easily see your best memories.

Verdict: DxO OpticsPro is the best photo editing software Mac if you are looking for a program that is simple to use. Because of its UI, some users compare it to Lightroom but this software is also quite similar to Adobe Premiere. A family of DxO products aimed at images editing. PhotoPad Free Photo Editor for Mac Free VIEW → Retouch, edit and apply effects to photos and other images. ON1 creates world-class photo editing software applications for photographers to save them time. ON1 – Photo Editing Software for Mac and PC Products Products.

Focus on your best shots.

Photos emphasizes the best shots in your library, hiding duplicates, receipts, and screenshots. Days, Months, and Years views organize your photos by when they were taken. Your best shots are highlighted with larger previews, and Live Photos and videos play automatically, bringing your library to life. Photos also highlights important moments like birthdays, anniversaries, and trips in the Months and Years views.

Your memories. Now playing.

Memories finds your best photos and videos and weaves them together into a memorable movie — complete with theme music, titles, and cinematic transitions — that you can personalize and share. So you can enjoy a curated collection of your trips, holidays, friends, family, pets, and more. And when you use iCloud Photos, all edits automatically sync to your other devices.

The moment you’re looking for, always at hand.

With Search, you can look for photos based on who’s in them or what’s in them — like strawberries or sunsets. Or combine search terms, like “beach 2017.” If you’re looking for photos you imported a couple of months ago, use the expanded import history to look back at each batch in chronological order. And in the My Albums tab, you’ll find your videos, selfies, panoramas, and other media types automatically organized into separate albums.

Fill your library, not your device.

iCloud Photos can help you make the most of the space on your Mac. When you choose “Optimize Mac Storage,” all your full‑resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud in their original formats, with storage-saving versions kept on your Mac as space is needed. You can also optimize storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, so you can access more photos and videos than ever before. You get 5GB of free storage in iCloud — and as your library grows, you have the option to choose a plan for up to 2TB.

Make an edit here, see it there. When you make changes on your Mac like editing a photo, marking a Favorite, or adding to an album, they’re kept up to date on your iPhone, your iPad, and iCloud.com. And vice versa — any changes made on your iOS or iPadOS devices are automatically reflected on your Mac.

All your photos on all your devices. iCloud Photos gives you access to your entire Mac photo and video library from all your devices. If you shoot a snapshot, slo-mo, or selfie on your iPhone, it’s automatically added to iCloud Photos — so it appears on your Mac, iOS and iPadOS devices, Apple TV, iCloud.com, and your PC. Even the photos and videos imported from your DSLR, GoPro, or drone to your Mac appear on all your iCloud Photos–enabled devices. And since your collection is organized the same way across your Apple devices, navigating your library always feels familiar.

Resize. Crop. Collage. Zoom. Warp. GIF. And more.

Create standout photos with a comprehensive set of powerful but easy-to-use editing tools. Instantly transform photos taken in Portrait mode with five different studio-quality lighting effects. Choose Enhance to improve your photo with just a click. Then use a filter to give it a new look. Or use Smart Sliders to quickly edit like a pro even if you’re a beginner. Markup lets you add text, shapes, sketches, or a signature to your images. And you can turn Live Photos into fun, short video loops to share. You can also make edits to photos using third-party app extensions like Pixelmator, or edit a photo in an app like Photoshop and save your changes to your Photos library.

  • Light
    Brilliance, a slider in Light, automatically brightens dark areas and pulls in highlights to reveal hidden details and make your photo look richer and more vibrant.
  • Color
    Make your photo stand out by adjusting saturation, color contrast, and color cast.
  • Black & White
    Add some drama by taking the color out. Fine-tune intensity and tone, or add grain for a film-quality black-and-white effect.
  • White Balance
    Choose between Neutral Gray, Skin Tone, and Temperature/Tint options to make colors in your photo warmer or cooler.
  • Curves
    Make fine-tuned contrast and color adjustments to your photos.
  • Levels
    Adjust midtones, highlights, and shadows to perfect the tonal balance in your photo.
  • Definition
    Increase image clarity by adjusting the definition slider.
  • Selective Color
    Want to make blues bluer or greens greener? Use Selective Color to bring out specific colors in your image.
  • Vignette
    Add shading to the edges of your photo to highlight a powerful moment.
  • Editing Extensions
    Download third-party editing extensions from the Mac App Store to add filters and texture effects, use retouching tools, reduce noise, and more.
  • Reset Adjustments
    When you’ve made an edit, you can judge it against the original by clicking Compare. If you don’t like how it looks, you can reset your adjustments or revert to your original shot.

Bring even more life to your Live Photos. When you edit a Live Photo, the Loop effect can turn it into a continuous looping video that you can experience again and again. Try Bounce to play the action forward and backward. Or choose Long Exposure for a beautiful DSLR‑like effect to blur water or extend light trails. You can also trim, mute, and select a key photo for each Live Photo.

Add some fun filters.

With just a click, you can apply one of nine photo filters inspired by classic photography styles to your photos.

Share here, there, and everywhere.

Use the Share menu to easily share photos via Shared Albums and AirDrop. Or send photos to your favorite photo sharing destinations, such as Facebook and Twitter. You can also customize the menu and share directly to other compatible sites that offer sharing extensions.

Turn your pictures into projects.

Making high-quality projects and special gifts for loved ones is easier than ever with Photos. Create everything from gorgeous photo books to professionally framed gallery prints to stunning websites using third-party project extensions like Motif, Mimeo Photos, Shutterfly, ifolor, WhiteWall, Mpix, Fujifilm, and Wix.

  • January 02, 2020
  • 18 min to read

Most free photo editors available on the App Store are quite basic, offering just a limited number of filters and allowing you to easily and quickly liven up your photos before posting them on social media.

But if you’re an aspiring or professional photographer, you probably need a more powerful app with a broader set of tools to use your creativity to the fullest. Besides, you probably use your Mac for photo editing because working on a large screen makes it possible to adjust the slightest details.

1. Apple’s Photos (Built-in app)

Apple’s Photos app is included for free on all recently released Macs. It does a good job at organizing your photos, but its collection of photo enhancement tools leaves much to be desired. Hopefully, our selection of the best free programs for photo editing on Mac will help you choose the right app to suit all your creative needs.

2. Luminar (7 days trial)

Digital Photo Software For Mac

Luminar is another full-featured photo editor that’s popular with both Mac and Windows users. It can work as a standalone app as well as a plugin for such popular programs as Apple Photos.

Luminar uses Artificial Intelligence to enable sophisticated yet quick photo enhancements. Among these AI features are Sky Enhancer, which adds more depth and detail to the sky in your photos while leaving other areas untouched; Accent AI, which analyzes a photo and automatically applies the best combination of different effects to enhance your image; and Sun Rays, which allows you to place an artificial sun and adjust the lighting to your liking or make the sun rays already in your photo look even more incredible.

Luminar has over 60 filters you can apply to your photos to enhance them in a moment. Luminar also provides a set of powerful tools for cropping, transforming, cloning, erasing, and stamping, along with layers, brushes, and many more incredible features. Luminar supports the Touch Bar on the latest MacBook Pro, making photo editing even more effortless and pleasing.

3. Photolemur 3 (Free Version with watermark)

Photolemur is a relative newcomer on the photo editing market but it has all the chances to win the favor of beginner photographers and hobbyists. Running on Artificial Intelligence, Photolemur is a completely automatic photo enhancer, meaning that it does all the editing for you in no time. It has the simplest interface, with only a few buttons and sliders to adjust the enhancement to your liking and view the before and after results.

All you need to do is choose a photo (or a few) that you want to improve, drag and drop or import them using the Import button, and let the program make enhancements. After it’s done, you can compare the edited version with the original image by using the before–after slider and, if you want, adjust the skin tone or even enlarge the eyes using additional sliders. Pretty easy, huh?

Digital Photo Album Software For Mac

Photolemur also offers a number of impressive styles to touch up your photos and give them a sophisticated and professional look. With this app, you don’t need to stuff your head with photo editing nuances and terms. Just run Photolemur and watch the magic happen!

4. Aurora HDR (14 days trial)

As you probably can tell from the name, Aurora HDR is designed to help photographers enhance their HDR photos, making them even more detailed and beautiful. It’s an ideal tool for editing your photos, with an extensive collection of more than 20 tools including details, tone, mapping, color, glow, and vignette. Each tool has its unique selection of controls to adjust its effects.

Digital Photo App For Mac

Aurora HDR enables you to work with brushes, layers, and masks, and provides a number of automatic AI tools for recognizing and removing noise, enhancing colors, lighting, and details, improving clarity, and adding contrast to dull areas while leaving other areas untouched.

Aurora HDR does a great job dealing with difficult lighting situations and creating full-of-life images while being easy to use.

5. Pixelmator (Trial 30 Days)

Pixelmator is a photo enhancer beloved by many Mac users, as it offers a good combination of a modern and simple interface, the ability to work on multiple layers, and powerful features that take photo editing to a whole new level. With so many editing tools, brushes, and effects, you can enhance your photos to your liking. You can choose between two versions of Pixelmator – standard and pro – depending on your needs. The standard version is great for basic photo editing with its selection of essential tools and filters, while the pro version is packed with extra brushes, tools, and effects that let you push your creativity to new boundaries. You can decide which version is suitable for you according to what features you’re looking for in a photo editing app.

6. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 (Trial link)

Photoshop Elements isn’t as affordable as other photo enhancers for beginner photographers. But luckily there’s a trial version available, so you can check it out before deciding whether this app is worthy of your money. Photoshop Elements acquired many powerful features from Photoshop, only Elements is simplified for amateur photographers and enthusiasts. It includes a good number of effects and filters, plus automated editing options for improving lighting, color balance, and exposure, and even opening closed eyes and reducing the effects of camera shake.

In addition to all of these awesome features, Photoshop also offers editing modes for beginners, intermediate users, and experts. Beginners will probably prefer Quick mode, as it focuses on essential tools to quickly enhance your photos by improving color, lighting, and other basic settings. Guided mode provides intermediate users with step-by-step guidance with more professional features like artistic effects, skin tone correction, and background replacement. Expert mode gives you full access to the app’s really powerful editing features and is ideal for creating stunning images.

7. Affinity Photo (Free Trial)

Canon Digital Photo Professional Software For Mac

Affinity Photo’s interface may seem overwhelming at first, especially for novices, but when you come to grips with it you’ll find that the app is just what you’ve been looking for. Its numerous professional tools, effects, and filters encourage you to get creative with your photos. Among the coolest features Affinity Photo has to offer is a before and after view to compare the original photo with its edited version.

Affinity Photo works with 15 file types, including common ones like PDF, PSD, JPG, and GIF as well as some less popular ones. The app amazes with its abundance of basic and top-notch editing tools, allowing you to tweak your photos using all possible kinds of instruments. Affinity Photo allows you to edit HDR photos, apply artistic filters and effects, play with masks and layers, and create breathtaking compositions by combining several images in one. If you find its interface a bit much and are afraid of getting lost in all those advanced tools, you should probably look for something more suitable for your level. But Affinity Photo is worth mastering.

8. Google Photos

Google Photos is a popular cloud storage service for photos and videos. It can’t boast countless masterly tools like other photo enhancers that we review in this article, but it includes some fundamental features like filters, color adjustment sliders, and transformation tools.

Although Google Photos may not be that helpful when it comes to editing photos, it does a pretty good job at storing high-resolution images and videos with 15GB of free online storage, compared to iCloud’s mere 5GB (which you can upgrade to 50GB for a monthly fee). If you’re planning to go on a trip and take plenty of photos, then it might be smart to sign up for Google Photos to use that extra storage space when you come back.

9. PhotoScape X (Free)

A relatively new photo editing app, PhotoScape X has been gaining popularity with many Mac and PC users since its release in 2008. Its interface is simple but unconventional, with a number of tabs running along the top of the window. Each is responsible for a specific stage of editing. The Viewer tab allows you to browse and organize your photos. After you pick a photo, you can switch to the Editor tab, which includes a broad set of instruments, filters, and effects and a useful feature that enables you to compare the adjusted photo with the original.

Digital Photo Album Software For Mac

The next tabs, including the Batch tab, mainly concentrate on editing and renaming multiple photos at once. The GIF tab allows you to easily create an animated GIF from a group of selected photos.

The downside of PhotoScape X is a lack of selection tools, so all changes are applied to the whole image rather than to a selected part.

Canon Digital Photo Professional Mac

10. Gimp (Free)

Digital Photo Software For Mac

Gimp is a free open-source photo editing app that has been on the market for over 22 years and is available for Windows, Mac, and even Linux. Unlike many free apps, Gimp doesn’t have any ads or in-app purchases. Its grey interface might seem a little old-fashioned and it may be a bit sluggish when it comes to complex effects, though.

Digital Photo Software For Macs

Gimp offers a vast collection of advanced tools that hardly any free photo editor can boast. It has numerous enhancement options such as clone and heal brushes, layers and channels, accurate selection tools, a number of transformation instruments, and, of course, color adjustment controls. Gimp is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing photos and is beloved by so many users for its price (free) and versatility. But if you can’t come to grips with Gimp’s interface, it may be worth paying some cash for a more user-friendly program.