Overall, GIMP is the best free photo editing software for Mac, and presents a good alternative to those users looking for a sophisticated tool that is free, and are capable of overcoming its complications. Mac Photo Editor will automatically amp up the brightness and contrast in your image at the touch of the Magic Enhance button. You can also change the settings manually to achieve the desired effect. See how the image adjustment works by dragging the slider under the picture.
Not surprisingly, the editing tools in Photos for Mac are similar to what you get with the Photos app for iOS. If you look just below the surface, however, they are greater in number, giving you greater control over your photos on a Mac than you get on an iPhone or iPad.
As with the iOS app, Photos for Mac places the Edit button in the upper-right corner and lays out the editing tools along the right edge when you enter edit mode. From top to bottom, the six editing buttons in Photos for Mac are: Enhance, Rotate, Crop, Filters, Adjust and Retouch. There are more adjustment tools on the Mac app than there are on the iOS app, and the retouch tool isn't offered on iOS. Let's have a look at each.
Enhance
Just as with iOS (and iPhoto before with OS X), the Enhance button offers automatic one-click enhancements of your photos. I find auto-enhance generally does a good job of improving my photos, at least as a jumping off point for additional edits.
Rotate
The Rotate button rotates a photo 90 degrees to the left. Hold down the Option key and you can rotate to the right.
Crop
The Crop tool lets you crop your photo and change its aspect. You can also flip it horizontally to get a mirrored image of it or hold down the Option key to flip vertically. There is a dial to the right of your photo to straighten it.
You can manually crop a photo, and there is also an Auto button that auto-crops your image, but I found it often reverted to my original image. (Perhaps I'm such an ardent follower of photography's rule of thirds that I don't need any auto-cropping.) When manually cropping, you'll need to get used to dragging the photo underneath the fixed border; in iPhoto, your photo remained in place and you dragged the border around to crop it. Move your cursor off of the photo to see how the new cropped image looks.
Filters
It would seem that you can't have a photo app in this day and age without filters. Thus, you'll find the same eight filters from Photos for iOS on the Mac: Mono, Tonal, Noir, Fade, Chrome, Process, Transfer and Instant. Unlike with Instagram and other apps, you cannot adjust the intensity of a filter, though you can select a filter and then make other adjustments.
Adjust
Open the Adjust tool and you are greeted with the same three tools that you get with the Adjust tool for iOS: Light, Color and Black & White. There is a slider for each effect as well as an Auto button that lets the Photos app make its best guess. Above these three tools is an Add button, which lets you access seven additional tools that aren't offered on Photos for iOS. They are: Histogram, Sharpen, Definition, Noise Reduction, Vignette, White Balance and Levels.
Retouch
The Retouch tool isn't offered on iOS and lets you remove unwanted elements of your photo. You can adjust the size of the tool and then click-and-drag to blur out blemishes and other undesirable artifacts. Use the slider at the top to zoom in on your photo.
Photos makes non-destructive edits, which means you can always return to an edited photo and revert to its original. When in edit mode, there is a Revert to Original button next to the Done button in the upper-right corner. And while you are editing a photo, you can compare the edit version to the original by mousing over the photo and hitting the M key.
You can also undo your last edit by going to Edit > Undo or by hitting Command-Z. You can undo only your last edit. A more helpful and powerful undo tool would show you a list of your edits for a photo and let you undo anyone from the list instead of just the last edit you made.
For more, join us on our tour as we explore Photos for Mac.
Apple Macs are great devices for photo editing, especially for professionals. The Mac’s Retina display, coupled with powerful processors, make for a seamless image editing workflow.
No matter if you’re an amateur looking to enhance your family vacation photos or a professional photographer working under pressure, there are Mac image editors to suit your needs.
Here are the best free and paid image editors for Mac.
The Best Free Mac Image Editors
If you’re looking for a basic editor, you don’t need to buy a fully featured editing suite. A basic image editor is both easy to use and has all the features that you’d need to fix and enhance your personal photos.
1. Photoscape X
Photoscape X is a great basic image editor for Mac you’ve probably never heard of. It’s an all-in-one app that lets you edit RAW images, fix photos, add filters, and more. Using the brush tool you can quickly fix small issues with your photos. Photoscape has a batch mode that lets you resize and rename photos with just a click.
Download:Photoscape X (Free)
2. GIMP
GIMP is an open source project that’s been in active development for over twenty years. It’s often referred to as the best free photo editor. Thanks to its community-based development, it offers professional features that you only otherwise find in paid apps like Photoshop.
GIMP is laid out like a professional editing tool and has a steep learning curve. But it has all the basic and professional features you would expect from a graphic design suite. GIMP’s Layers feature is powerful and you can even use some Photoshop plugins with GIMP. If you’re new to GIMP, use our introductory guide to GIMPAn Introduction to GIMP Photo Editing: 9 Things You Need to KnowAn Introduction to GIMP Photo Editing: 9 Things You Need to KnowGIMP is the best free photo editing app available. Here's everything you need to know about editing photos in GIMP.Read More to learn the basics.
Download:GIMP (Free)
3. Photos
If all you’re looking for is a simple way to manage your photo library on Mac8 Starter Tips for Managing Your Photos Library on Mac8 Starter Tips for Managing Your Photos Library on MacAre your Mac photos a mess? Follow these beginner's tips to get them under control and improve your picture organization.Read More and perform some basics edits to fix or enhance your personal photos, the built-in Photos app will be more than enough.
The Photos app has a good auto-enhance tool, a crop tool, basic image editing, and filter support. Plus, it has a familiar user interface. If you feel comfortable editing photos in the iPhone Photos app, you’ll be right at home on the Mac version as well.
4. Pixlr X
Pixlr X runs smoothly on any modern web browser. If you only need to edit a couple of photos every now and then, it doesn’t make sense to download a feature-rich image editor. Instead, see if Pixlr’s web-based image editor is enough for you.
Pixlr X has all the basic image editing features you’d expect. You can crop, resize, add filters, and easily remove the background from any image. There are a couple of tools for adjusting the visual elements of the picture and you can add text and doodle over images. If you have a stock image, you can use Pixlr X to quickly create a poster or flyer as well.
Visit:Pixlr X (Free)
The Best Paid Mac Image Editors
If you’re serious about photo editing, you’ll need professional tools. A fully-featured photo editing suite will help improve the quality of your work. Because paid apps are designed for professionals from the ground up, you’ll end up saving a lot of time once you get used to the workflow.
1. Lightroom
Lightroom is the default photo editor for professional photographers. Lightroom’s workflow sets it apart. Other than the stellar photo editing features, it also has a simple yet robust image organization feature. And this is why a lot of professionals stick with Lightroom.
If you’re clicking thousands of photos for a project and you need to select a couple of dozen good ones, Lightroom makes the process easy for you. You can skim through thousands of RAW files, mark the important photos, move them to a different directory, edit them in a particular style, save that style as a preset, go back and apply it to other photos, and then finally export the images in multiple formats.
And once you’re done with the project, you can use Lightroom’s library to keep the important photos and back them up using your Adobe Cloud account. For professionals, this is what makes Lightroom’s $9.99/month starting price palatable.
Download:Adobe Lightroom ($9.99/month)
2. Photoshop
Photoshop is a different kind of photo editor. You can think of it as Lightroom’s bigger brother. Photoshop is designed specifically for image manipulation and enhancement. Photoshop is famous for its advanced selection tools, complex layer system, and infinitely customizable brushes.
You can use Lightroom to bring out all of the details from a RAW image file or to enhance an image aesthetically (to fix colors and saturation levels). Once you’re done with that, you can import the image in Photoshop to kick things up a notch. In fact, you can’t edit RAW images in Photoshop without the Camera RAW plugin.
Photoshop is a massive, complex application with over two decades of consistent updates. It has way too many features, but once you master the basics, Photoshop gives you the tools to turn your imagination into reality.
Using Photoshop, you can merge multiple images together, completely change the color palette of an image, and fix parts of an image to make them better (particularly portraits).
Download:Adobe Photoshop ($9.99/month)
3. Affinity Photo
You can think of Affinity Photo as a lightweight version of Photoshop. It has the most common features from Photoshop like the advanced selection tools, brushes, and layer support. Affinity Photos weighs in at 350 MB instead of the 2GB behemoth that is Photoshop. Affinity Photo is also much faster than Photoshop, especially on Macs without a dedicated graphics card.
Plus, unlike Photoshop, you can buy Affinity Photo outright for $49.99. If you don’t like Adobe’s shift towards subscription pricing and increasing dependence on cloud syncing, take a look at Affinity Photo. If you’ve already learned the basics of Photoshop (you can open PSD files in Affinity Photo), it will be much easier to pick up Affinity Photo.
Download:Affinity Photo ($49.99)
4. Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro is a powerful image editing app that’s designed to be easy to use. It’s an all-in-one tool for image manipulation. Pixelmator Pro is a mix of Lightroom, Photoshop, and Illustrator. It has basic features from all three apps.
You can use it to edit RAW images, enhance photos, fix parts of images, and create posters by adding beautiful text and other elements. Pixelmator Pro can stretch itself from being a basic photo editing app to a graphic design suite, depending on your needs and skillset.
Picasa
Download:Pixelmator Pro ($39.99)
Other Great Mac Apps Worth Using
Best Free Photo Editing Software For Mac
There’s something for everyone in the apps listed above. We recommend most people start with Pixlr X and see if that does the trick. However, if you’re looking for a fast, beautiful, and feature-rich photo editor that’s designed for the Mac, Affinity Photo is a great choice.
There are many more great Mac apps out there just waiting to be explored. Take a look at our list of the best macOS appsThe Best Mac Apps to Install on Your MacBook or iMacThe Best Mac Apps to Install on Your MacBook or iMacLooking for the best apps for your MacBook or iMac? Here's our comprehensive list of the best apps for macOS.Read More to discover some of the apps you should be installing on your Mac.
Explore more about: Adobe Photoshop, Batch Image Editing, Image Editor, Photography.
Picture Editing App For Macbook Pro
I would definitely add Luminar - https://macphun.com/luminar
It was initially developed for Mac, but they had announced the open Windows Beta just today.
For Mac, it has really useful and effective tools, even 'AI' enhancement filter, which is a prototype of the legendary 'Make it awesome' button everyone was looking for.
Take a look at it, you won't regret it!For RAW images editing i would like to recommend 'Raw Therapee', pretty full featured free software, very simular to Adobe Lightroom.
Affinity for the Mac is my choice, that is just my opinion. The one time cost
is well worth it. The app has the 'apple feel', almost intuitive. Apple-Mac
architecture is not for every one but this paring is a winner.
There is a tutorial, that is only basic or go to the Tube.
How about 'Affinity Movie'?I think PhotoScape X is more full-featured than Fotor.
Pinta is a worthy mention. I prefer it's UI over GIMP and GIMPShop. It's the cross platform version to Paint.NET. http://pinta-project.com
Adobe sales Photoshop CC plus Lightroom for $9.99 a month. Not $19.99.
Really! Agreed. Where does the author derive his opinions from?! Affinity is not only excellent as a standalone application, they also have extensions in support of Apple's Photos as well.
Agreed. Affinity is very powerful and one of the best looking app to work with :)
No Affinity Photo? Really? Where do you live?