Michael Muchmore The Best Photo Editing Software of 2018 Whether you shoot with a smartphone camera or a DSLR, you need software to get the most out of your images. Here's what you need to know to pick the best photo editing software. What Kind of Photo Editing Software Do You Need? Whether you merely shoot with your smartphone or you're a professional photographer with a studio, you need software to organize and edit your photos. We all know that 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. The same can be said for photo editing software. 'Photoshopping' pictures is no longer the province of art directors and professional photographers. Whether you're shooting from an or a, if you really care how your photos look, you'll want to import them 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, from the casual to the professional. Of course, novice shooters will want different software from those shooting with a $50,000 in a studio. Cadkey 98 keygen for mac free. We've included all levels of PC software here, however, and reading the linked reviews will make it clear which is for you.

Below is a cheat sheet of which category each product fits into. Note that some products are suitable for both enthusiast and pros, and most products included fit into the sweet spot of enthusiast/prosumer level. Entry Level: Apple Photos, Microsoft Photos Enthusiast/Prosumer Level: Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Corel PaintShop Pro X9, CyberLink PhotoDirector, DxO Optics Pro 11, ACDSee Ultimate Professional Level: ACDSee Ultimate, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, DxO Optics Pro 11, Phase One Capture One Pro 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 that are intended for them. Note that in the table above, it's not a case of 'more checks mean the program is better.'

Rather, it's designed to give you the 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—whether you even need the checked feature depends on your photo workflow. Free Photo Editing Options So you've graduated from smartphone photography tools like those offered by and Facebook. 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. Windows 10's Photos app may surprise some users with its capability. In a touch-friendly interface, it offers a good level of image correction, and it can automatically create editable albums based on photos' date and place groupings. Apple Photos does those things too, though its automatic albums aren't as editable. Both programs also sync with: iCloud for Apple and OneDrive for Microsoft.

With Apple Photos, you can search based on detected object types, like 'tree' or 'cat' in the application, while Microsoft Photos offers this feature only for photos stored online in OneDrive. Apple Photos also can integrate with plugins like the excellent, appeasing power users who lament the company's discontinuation of the prosumer-level Aperture program. 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 GIMP, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. It 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. How to Edit Your 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 often are tied to online photo storage and sharing services. (with its integrated Aviary editor) and are the biggest names here, and both can spiff up your uploaded pictures and do a lot to help you organize them.

They 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 CC includes a good deal of photo-editing capabilties in its included website, too. Image Editing for Enthusiasts and Prosumers Most of the products included 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 a few hundred megabytes of your disk space.

Several, such as Lightroom and CyberLink PhotoDirector, are strong when it comes to workflow—importing and organizing the photos from a DSLR. Such apps offer nondestructive editing, meaning the original photo files aren't touched. Instead, a database of edits you apply is maintained, and appears in photos that you export from the application. They also offer strong organization tools, including keyword tagging, color-coding, geo-tagging with maps, and in some cases face recognition to organize photos by what people appear in them. At the other 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 CC—non-Classic—offers no printing capability at all.) Even Lightroom Classic (which you might think is above the social fray) includes directly sharing photos to social networks like Facebook and online photo hosts like Flickr and SmugMug. In fact, all really good software at this level offers strong printing and sharing, and some, like ACDSee Ultimate and Lightroom, offer their own online photo hosting. The programs at this 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, so there's no reason to capitalize it.) 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 improperly rendered white balance.

If you set your camera to shoot with JPGs, you're losing those capabilities. In my testing, Phase One Capture One was tops at producing the most detailed images from raw files.

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. Content-aware tools in some of these products let you do things like move objects around while maintaining a consistent background, or 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. Note that 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.

These products can also 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. Capture One and Lightroom have recently added even more precise tools for local selections in recent versions, such as the ability to select everything in a photo within a precise color range and to refine selection of difficult content such as a model's hair or trees on the horizon. Professional Photo Editing Software At the very top end of image editing is Photoshop, which really has no real rival. Its layered editing, drawing, text, and 3D-imaging tools are the industry standard for a reason.

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 import and organization. In addition to its workflow prowess, Lightroom offers mobile apps so that photographers on the run can get some work done before they even get back to their PC. Those who need tethered shooting may want Capture One, which is offers lots of tools for that along with its top-notch raw-file conversion.

Photoshop offers all and more of the actual image editing capabilities in anything mentioned above, though it doesn't always make producing those effects as simple, and it doesn't offer nondestructive workflow, as Lightroom and some others do. Of course, some users with less-intensive needs can get all the Photoshop-type features they need from other products in this roundup, such as Corel PaintShop Pro. DxO OpticPro is another tool pros may want in their kit, because of its excellent lens-profile based corrections and unmatched DxO Prime noise reduction. Photoshop is also where you find Adobe's latest and greatest imaging technology, such as Content-Aware Crop, Camera Shake Reduction, and Perspective Warp. It includes the most tools for professionals in the imaging industry, such as Artboards, Design Spaces, and realistic brushes.

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, and multiple mobile apps. It definitely makes the app more affordable for prosumer users, too, when you consider that a full copy of Photoshop used to cost a cool $999. 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 and the for equipment that can fit any budget. Once you've got your hardware sorted, make sure to educate yourself with our and our, too. That done, you'll be ready to shoot great pictures that you can make better with the software featured in this story. Click the links below for to read the full reviews. Pros: Multitude of photo correction and manipulation tools. Slick interface with lots of help.

Tools for mobile and web design. Rich set of drawing and typography tools. 3D design capability. Synced Libraries. Cons: No perpetual-license option.

Premium assets aren't cheap. Interface can be overwhelming at times. Lacks support for HEIC. Bottom Line: Adobe continues to improve the world's leading photo editing software.

The 2018 edition adds a new auto-select tool, raw camera profiles, loads of font and drawing capabilities, and support for the Microsoft Surface Dial. Pros: Excellent photo management and organization.

Camera and lens-based corrections. Brush and gradient adjustments with color and luminance masking. Face detection and tagging. Connected mobile apps. Cons: Although improved, import is still slow. Initial raw conversion is slightly more detailed in some competing products.

Mac Photo Software Free

Bottom Line: Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom remains the gold standard in pro photo workflow software. It's a complete package, with top-notch organization tools, state of-the-art adjustments, and all the output and printing options you'd want. Pros: Friendly yet powerful interface. Effective noise reduction.

Cool multiple-exposure and faux HDR effects. Body shaper and other powerful editing tools.

Layer support. Cool AI styles. Tethered shooting support.

Cons: Not enough lens-profile corrections. Inadequate chromatic aberration correction. No geotag maps. Bottom Line: Photo workflow and editing program CyberLink PhotoDirector offers a smooth interface and powerful capabilities. New in this version are multiple-exposure effects, more layer options, and a video-to-photo tool. Pros: Manage mode makes finding shots easy. Innovative Light EQ and Color EQ controls.

Lens-profile-based corrections. Very customizable interface.

Lots of adjustable effects. Good noise reduction. Good sharing and printing options.

Cons: No facial recognition. Cluttered, inconsistent interface. Modes often don't contain expected tools. Bottom Line: ACDSee Ultimate offers powerful image editing tools without requiring you to pay a subscription fee. But it lacks now-common features such as facial recognition, and it trails the competition in interface usability.

Becoming increasingly more important, photo editing or post-production is now an integral part of photo hobbyists’ and pros’ workflows, and is often the second most critical step to producing a photograph after taking the shot itself. With such importance, it is crucial for photographers to find editing software that can fulfill and support all of their needs, ranging from basic editing control to adjust brightness and contrast, to more complex solutions for performing non-destructive edits with layers and masks, as well as manage an entire library of images. Here’s a look at some of the most popular options out there for handling your photographs post-capture. Adobe Photoshop Beginning with the most recognizable photo editing software around, is a product so well-known that its name has been transmogrified into a verb. There is little to say that hasn’t already been said for years about the king of photo-editing software; Photoshop is an incredibly well-rounded application that covers anything from making slight brightness and contrast adjustments, processing raw files, or retouching images all the way up to producing multi-layered, stitched image composites rife with selections and masks. Photoshop is available as part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud; however, for photographers, the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan bundles Photoshop with its younger brother, and second most well-known photo-editing software. Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Introduced almost exactly 16 years after the birth of Photoshop, is a slightly scaled-down, more specialized image editing application.

Intended more for photographers than all creatives working with “imagery,” Lightroom is best-known for its non-destructive editing environment, raw file processing capabilities, and file organization and management capabilities. Lightroom is also better tailored to digital photographers in particular, due to the inclusion of several tools for performing batch, repetitive, and synchronized edits. In addition to being available within the Creative Cloud Photography Plan with Photoshop itself, Lightroom is also still available as stand-alone software under the name. Phase One Capture One Pro 9 onOne Photo RAW and Photo 10 A pair of complementary applications to suit an entire photo editing workflow, onOne’s Photo RAW and Photos 10 allow you to process raw files, make basic edits, apply creative effects, and manage a photo library. Is the newer of the two, and is meant as a single application for developing raw files and applying basic edits without the complexity of cataloging or importing.

Picks up where Photo RAW leaves off, and allows for more advanced editing controls using layers and various editing modules for producing creative results. Additionally, both of these can be used as a stand-alone application or as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom. OnOne Software Photo RAW Topaz Photography Collection A truly well-rounded suite of 16 different editing applications, as well as a stand-alone navigational program, the includes something to tackle just about every type of creative editing situation in which you could find yourself. Dedicated applications are available for converting images to black-and-white, improving detail and clarity, reducing noise, simulating lens effects, and even producing painterly, artistic results. Many of the programs can be used as stand-alone apps; however, all can be used as plug-ins with Photoshop or a handful other editing applications.

Additionally, this suite also includes the stand-alone photoFXlab for navigating all of the plug-ins, as well as managing an image library. Topaz Labs LLC Topaz Photography Collection DxO OpticsPro 11 Elite Edition Offering a similar set of post-production capabilities, DxO’s also offers a range of photo-editing controls, as well as file management and exporting functions to suit a variety of applications. Differing from many other applications, though, OpticsPro benefits from DxO’s extensive testing and research on various cameras and lenses to generate specific profiles for more accurate optical corrections, as well as enhanced de-noising for improved clarity. Smart Lighting, Spot Weighted, and ClearView are a trio of additional modes that also help to improve brightness and contrast for more accurate image rendition and greater detail. Beyond DxO’s flagship software, they also offer the unique app, which serves a specific purpose to simulate the look of numerous black-and-white and color film types, as well as, which is used to correct perspective distortions and other deformed proportions in images often taken with wide-angle lenses.

DxO FilmPack 5 Elite Edition Perfectly Clear 2.0 A dedicated plug-in for Photoshop, Lightroom, and Corel’s PaintShop Pro, is an ideal tool for enhancing the look of portraits through the use of its Beautify set of features. This series of tools utilizes facial detection to identify age, gender, and key facial features to allow 10 unique retouching tools to smooth wrinkles, remove blemishes and shininess, adjust skin tone, improve the look of eyes, whiten teeth, and more. Additionally, the plug-in can also be used to perform automatic global adjustments to imagery to affect brightness, contrast, and color. Perfectly Clear 2.0 Plug-In Bundle for Photoshop and Lightroom Corel PaintShop Pro X9 Last in our look at editing tools for photographers is a bundle from Corel:. The base of this suite, PaintShop Pro X9, is a non-destructive editing application fitted with raw file editing capabilities, a layers-based workflow, and numerous templates and other creative assets to kick-start your creative process. A range of text tools allows you to introduce elements of graphic design to imagery, and photographers also benefit from HDR tools and content-aware fill technology. In addition to PaintShop Pro, this bundle also includes Perfectly Clear 2.0 SE, Corel AfterShot 3, and Live Screen Capture.

Thanks for taking the time to put the above article together; I ask that you clarify some of the content though. As mentioned by Two rails above, the entry regarding the On1 software packages is incorrect. The current software, On1 Photo 10 will be upgraded with the release of On1 Photo RAW, so I'd like to sugest it would be worthwhile clarifying with On1 whether they intend to run Photo 10 alongside Photo RAW or whehter it will be a replacement program.

If Photo RAW replaces Photo 10 then the above article will be completely incorrect in 2 days time when Photo RAW is released. Regards, Grant. Hi Bjorn, I own and use several of the product above and feel they are all great products. My overall favorite is ON1’s Photo 10. I love that program and have been using it since version 3 when it was known as the Perfect Photo Suite by OnOne.

Perfect Photo Suite became Photo 10 after Perfect Photo Suite 9. Photo 10 is getting a new name, too, and will be called Photo RAW with the next release.

The name change is appropriate as while Photo 10 can ‘work with’ RAW images, it is not a RAW editor/converter. Photo RAW will have all the power and functionality of Photo 10, and a lot more. As the new name suggests, Photo RAW will be a RAW editor/converter. I say ‘will have’ as Photo RAW has not been released yet and I’m assisting with BETA testing at the moment.

The public release of Photo RAW is scheduled for December 19th. Sincerely, TwoRails.

When discussing all the various options, at least some mention should be made (for the cheapskates among us:-) of the freeware available. GIMP is certainly worth a look as are the freeware programs put out by the camera companies. Concerning the latter, this Nikon shooter only has experience with Nikon's Capture NX-D. For casual editing like a bit of cropping or exposure correction or occasional dust-spot removal, it is all that's needed, is easy to use, and the price ($ zero) is certainly right. I ended up with Corel Paintshop Pro/Aftershot Pro almost as a default.

An early version of Paintshop Pro came bundled with Wordperfect Office when I updated my word processing and spreadsheet program at work a number of years ago. Now I have expanded it to include Paintshop Pro, Aftershot Pro and Video Studio. The programs work efficiently and turn our great images and videos. They are also less expensive than the Adobe programs. The only problem with the Corel programs (and all non Adobe programs) is the lack of training opportunities.

For example, B&H has a ton of videos on Photshop/Lightroom, but I have never seen one on any other program. There are some training videos for Corel out there, but you have to look for them. Also, some of the Lightroom videos help with Paintshop and Aftershot, you just have to convert some of the language.