Whether you are just shooting with a smartphone or a professional photographer working in a studio, you need software to organize, optimize and edit your digital photos. Camera technology is improving at an alarming rate: today’s smartphones are more powerful than point-and-shoot cameras from couple of years ago, and professional cameras have exceeded the 100 megapixel mark. Photo editing software keeps pace with the times and has more and more powerful functions. Anyone who uses a triple-camera iPhone 12 Pro or an advanced digital SLR camera cares about the appearance of the photo. For the best results, you need to import photos to your PC to organize them, pick the best photos, refine them and then print or share them online. Here, we show the best choice of photo editing software for every online store owner looking to make unique and beautiful photos.
Table of contents
Which Photo Software Should You Use?
Of course, the software that novice shooters want is different from the software used to shoot in the studio with the $52,000 Phase One IQ4. We have included all levels of PC software here, and reading the linked reviews will let you know which software is right for you. There is nothing saying that professionals cannot use entry-level applications occasionally, or that professional consumers will not run Photoshop, which is the most powerful image editor. The problem is that, generally speaking, users at each of these levels will feel most comfortable with products designed for them.
Having the most features does not mean that the program is advanced, The features table is designed to provide you with a quick overview of the products. A product that checks everything does not necessarily have the best implementation of these features, a product with less checks may still be very powerful, and whether you even need to check features depends on your photo workflow. For example, DxO Photolab may not have face recognition or keyword tagging, but it has the best noise reduction and some of the best corrections based on the camera and lens profile.
Are There Free Photo Editing Apps?
So you have graduated from the smartphone operating system and the smartphone photography tools provided by Instagram. Does this mean you have to pay a lot of money for high-end software? Absolutely not. The latest desktop operating system includes free photo software. The features of the Microsoft Photo application included with Windows 10 may surprise some users. In a touch-friendly interface, it provides good image correction, automatic marking, blemish removal, facial recognition, and even original camera file support. It can automatically create an editable album based on the date and location of the photo.
Apple Photos also does these things, even though its automatic photo albums are not editable. These two programs are also synchronized with online storage services: Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft’s OneDrive. Using both, you can search based on the type of object detected, such as “tree” or “cat” in the app.
Ubuntu Linux users can also use the free photo software that comes with it: they can use the powerful Shotwell application. Without mentioning the prestigious GNU Image Manipulation Program (better known as GIMP), any discussion of free photo editing software is incomplete. It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and provides a large number of Photoshop-style plug-ins and editing functions, but few in terms of biological comfort or usability. Other lightweight, low-cost options include Polarr and Pixlr.
How Can You Edit Photos Online?
In this review, we only include installable computer software, but online photo editing options may be sufficient to meet the needs of entry-level photo shooters. These are mostly free and are usually associated with online photo storage and sharing services. Flickr (with its integrated photo editor) and Google Photos are the biggest names here. They can both add color to your uploaded pictures and help you organize them.
These free options are even close to the two entry-level installers here, but they lack many of the tools in professional and enthusiast products. The latest version of Lightroom includes a lot of photo editing features in its web version. Other well-known names in web-based photo editing include BeFunky, Fotor, and PicMonkey.
Image Editing for Enthusiasts and Prosumers
Most of the products in this review fall into this category, including people who really like using digital photos. These are not free applications, they require at least a few hundred megabytes of disk space. Several such as Lightroom and CyberLink PhotoDirector are very powerful in terms of workflow-importing, organizing, editing and exporting photos from DSLR. Such applications provide non-destructive editing, which means that the original photo file will not be touched. Instead, your app’s editing database will be maintained and they will appear in the photos you export from the app. These applications also provide powerful organization tools, including keyword tagging, color coding, map geotagging, and in some cases, facial recognition to organize people appearing in photos.
At the back end of the workflow is the output. Powerful software such as Lightroom Classic provides powerful printing options, such as soft proofing, which will show you whether the printer you are using can produce the colors in the photo. (Oddly, the new version of Lightroom (non-classic) does not provide local printing at all, although the latest update allows you to send images to a photo printing service.) Lightroom Classic can publish photos directly on sites such as Flickr and SmugMug. In fact, all truly excellent software at this level provides powerful printing and sharing functions. Some software, such as ACDSee and Lightroom, provide their own online photo hosting to showcase your portfolio.
When correcting (often called adjusting) photos, using the original file provides some great advantages. Since the photos you see on the screen are just an interpretation of the original file content, the software can mine the data to restore more details in the bright sky, or it can completely repair improperly rendered white balance. If you set the camera to use JPG to shoot, you will lose these functions.
Hobbyists want to do more than import, organize and render their photos: they also want to do interesting things! Editor’s recommendation Adobe Photoshop Elements includes guided editing, which can be used to create special effects such as motion blur or color splash through a simple step-by-step process (in other cases, only one color is displayed on a black and white photo). Topaz Studio provides a lot of interesting photo effects, but it completely lacks workflow capabilities.
The content-aware tools in some of these products allow you to perform operations such as moving objects while maintaining a consistent background. You can also delete objects completely—for example, you want to delete a few strangers from a peaceful beach scene—and let the app fill in the background. These edits do not involve simple filters like Instagram. Instead, they generate highly customized one-off images. Another good example is the multiple exposure effect of CyberLink PhotoDirector. For example, it allows you to create an image containing ten versions of Johnny jumping on his skateboard.
Most of these products can produce HDR effects and panoramas after you provide them with multiple photos, and local editing brushes allow you to make adjustments only on specific areas of the image. Affinity Photo has these features, but its interface is not the most intuitive. Zoner Photo Studio X combines the features of Lightroom and Photoshop in a lower price subscription, but it just doesn’t reach the level of Adobe software.
Some products in this group have begun to add what is sometimes called AI style conversion-the style of applying Picasso, Japanese watercolor, or other artistic modes to photos. A few years ago, this effect sparked a craze in the Prisma app, and it is still impressive. Both PaintShop Pro and CyberLink PhotoDirector provide this feature. PaintShop has recently added other beautiful AI features, including impressive AI upsampling, AI noise reduction, and AI artifact removal tools.
Professional Plug-ins and Subscriptions
Another advantage of a professional photo editing software is that it supports third-party plug-ins, such as DxO’s excellent Nik Collection and Editor’s Choice Award winner RNI All Films 5 Professional (etc.) These can add more effects and adjustments than you find in the basic software. They usually include tools for film appearance, black and white options, sharpening and noise reduction. In fact, some of the programs included here, such as DxO and Topaz, can be added as plug-ins to the industry standard Ligthroom and Photshop software.
Some users are dissatisfied with Adobe’s switch to the subscription-only Photoshop option, but it’s $9.99 per month, which doesn’t seem to be expensive for any serious image professional, and it includes copies of Lightroom, Adobe Stock, etc. online Services, online portfolio sites and multiple mobile applications. When you consider that a full copy of the high-end version of Photoshop used to cost $999, it will certainly make the app more affordable for professional users.
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