Decide Between Lightroom vs. It can be hard to decide between Lightroom vs. Really, the only right answer is to decide what you need the platform to do and how much time you want to spend learning the program. To start learning how to use these platforms, click here.
A free photo editor can transform your snaps from 'OK' to 'amazing', but there are so many programs around it can be hard to know which is the best for you. That's why we've spent hours putting a huge range of photo editors to the test, and picked out the best ones for any level of skill and experience.
From powerful software packed with features that give Photoshop a run for its money to simple tools that give your pictures a whole new look with a couple of clicks, there's something for everyone.
Many free photo editors only offer a very limited selection of tools unless you pay for a subscription, or place a watermark on exported images, but none of the tools here carry any such restrictions. Whichever one you choose, you can be sure that there are no hidden tricks to catch you out.
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1. GIMP
The best free photo editor for advanced image editing
Photoshop-like interface
Learning curve is a little steep
GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the best free photo editor around. It's packed with the kind of image-enhancing tools you'd find in premium software, and more are being added every day.
GIMP’s interface will be instantly familiar if you have ever used Photoshop or other premium photo editing software – especially if you select the single-window mode, which lays out all its toolbars and canvases in an Adobe-style layout.
The photo editing toolkit is breathtaking, and features layers, masks, curves, and levels. You can eliminate flaws easily with the excellent clone stamp and healing tools, create custom brushes, apply perspective changes, and apply changes to isolated areas with smart selection tools.
GIMP is an open source free photo editor, and its community of users and developers have created a huge collection of plugins to extend its utility even further. Many of these come pre-installed, and you can download more from the official glossary. If that's not enough, you can even install Photoshop plugins.
- Read our full review: GIMP
2. Paint.NET
The best free photo editor for less powerful hardware
Plugin support
More is not, believe it or not, always better. Paint.NET's simplicity is one of its main selling points; it's a quick, easy to operate free photo editor that's ideal for trivial tasks that don't necessarily justify the sheer power of GIMP.
Don't let the name fool you, though. This isn't just a cheap copy of Microsoft's ultra-basic Paint – even if it was originally meant to replace it. It's a proper photo editor, just one that lands on the basic side of the curve.
Paint.NET’s interface will remind you of its namesake, but over the years, they’ve added advanced editing tools like layers, an undo history, a ton of filters, myriad community-created plugins, and a brilliant 3D rotate/zoom function that's handy for recomposing images.
It might not have every feature you can dream of, but if your machine is a little underpowered we can't think of a better free photo editor.
- Read our full review: Paint.NET
3. Photo Pos Pro
The best free photo editor for beginners
Beginner and advanced modes
Photo Pos Pro isn't as well known as Paint.net and GIMP, but it's another top-quality free photo editor that's packed with advanced image-enhancing tools.
This free photo editor's interface is smarter and more accessible than GIMP's array of menus and toolbars, with everything arranged in a logical and consistent way. If it's still too intimidating, there's also an optional 'novice' layout that resembles Fotor's filter-based approach. The choice is yours.
The 'expert' layout offers both layers and layer masks for sophisticated editing, as well as tools for adjusting curves and levels manually. You can still access the one-click filters via the main menu, but the focus is much more on fine editing.
Photo Pos Pro also includes a clone brush for erasing unwanted blemishes, and there's extra support for batch-editing and scripts to help you save time when refining a whole folder of photos.
The free edition of Photo Pos Pro only has one drawback: files can only be saved at a maximum resolution of 1,024 x 2,014 pixels, which might be too small if you're planning to have them printed professionally. If you want to remove this restriction, Photo Pos Pro Premium is available for a license free of £24.50/US$24.90/AU$41.89.
- Read our full review: Photo Pos Pro
4. PhotoScape
The best free photo editor for users who want quick results
Great selection of filters
PhotoScape might look like a rather simple free photo editor, but take a look at its main menu and you'll find a wealth of features: raw conversion, photo splitting and merging, animated GIF creation, and even a rather odd (but useful) function with which you can print lined, graph or sheet music paper.
The meat, of course, is in the photo editing. PhotoScape's interface is among the most esoteric of all the apps we've looked at here, with tools grouped into pages in odd configurations. It certainly doesn't attempt to ape Photoshop, and includes fewer features.
We'd definitely point this towards the beginner, but that doesn't mean you can't get some solid results. PhotoScape's filters are pretty advanced, so it's if good choice if you need to quickly level, sharpen or add mild filtering to pictures in a snap.
- Read our full review: PhotoScape
5. Canva
The best free photo editor for cards, posters and invitations
Includes free cloud storage
Canva is a photo editor that runs in your web browser, and is ideal for turning your favorite snaps into cards, posters, invitations and social media posts. If you're interested in maintaining a polished online presence, it's the perfect tool for you.
Canva has two tiers, free and paid, but the free level is perfect for home users. Just sign up with your email address and you'll get 1GB free cloud storage for your snaps and designs, 8,000 templates to use and edit, and two folders to keep your work organized.
You won't find advanced tools like clone brushes and smart selectors here, but there's a set of handy sliders for applying tints, vignette effects, sharpening, adjusting brightness, saturation and contrast, and much more. The text editing tools are intuitive, and there's a great selection of backgrounds and other graphics to complete your designs.
If you need to make graphics, cards and flyers for a business, it's worth checking out Canva for Work, which costs $12.95 (about £10, AU$18) per person per month. For that, you get access to hundreds of thousands of stock images, the ability to export animated GIFs and unlimited storage.
6. Fotor
The best free photo editor for one-click enhancements
Batch image processing
Fotor is more a photo enhancer than a full-fat manual editing tool. If there's specific area of retouching you need doing with, say, the clone brush or healing tool, you're out of luck. However, if your needs are simple, its stack of high-end filters that really do shine.
There's a foolproof tilt-shift tool, for example, and a raft of vintage and vibrant colour tweaks, all easily accessed through Fotor's clever menu system. You can manually alter your own curves and levels, too, but without the complexity of high-end tools.
Fotor's most brilliant function, and one that's sorely lacking in many free photo editors, is its batch processing tool – feed it a pile of pics and it'll filter the lot of them in one go, perfect if you have a memory card full of holiday snaps and need to cover up the results of a dodgy camera or shaky hand.
- Read our full review: Fotor
- Download it here
7. Pixlr X
The best free photo editor for quick in-browser editing
Stylish design
Pixlr X is the successor to Pixlr Editor, which was one of our favorite free online photo editors for many years.
Pixlr X makes several improvements on its predecessor. For starters, it's based on HTML5 rather than Flash, which means it can run in any modern browser. It's also slick and well designed, with an interface that's reminiscent of Photoshop Express, and a choice of dark or light color schemes.
With Pixlr X, you can make fine changes to colors and saturation, sharpen and blur images, apply vignette effects and frames, and combine multiple images. There's also support for layers, which you won't find in many free online photo editors, and an array of tools for painting and drawing. A great choice for even advanced tasks.
8. Adobe Photoshop Express Editor
The best free photo editor for correcting lighting problems
Stylish design
As its name suggests, Adobe Photoshop Express Editor is a trimmed-down, browser-based version of the company's world-leading photo editing software. Perhaps surprisingly, it features a more extensive toolkit than the downloadable Photoshop Express app, but it only supports images in JPG format that are below 16MB.
Again, this is a Flash-based tool, but Adobe provides handy mobile apps for all platforms so you won’t miss out if you’re using a smartphone or tablet.
This free online photo editor has all the panache you’d expect from Adobe, and although it doesn’t boast quite as many tools as some of its rivals, everything that’s there is polished to perfection (with the exception of a couple of options that are currently in beta).
The Pop Color tool is particularly interesting, enabling you to quickly change the hue of a particular part of your image. Fill Light is a welcome addition too, helping compensate for photos taken in less than ideal lighting conditions. On top of those, theres a healing brush, automatic color correction, and manual adjustment of white balance and exposure – all very slick and simple to use.
Adobe Photoshop Express Editor is a pleasure to use. Its only drawbacks are the limits on uploaded file size and types, and lack of support for layers.
9. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2019
The best free photo editor for fuss-free image enhancing
One-click optimization
Auto optimization is hit-and-miss
If you've got a lot of photos that you need to edit in a hurry, Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2019 could be the tool for you. Its interface is clean and uncluttered, and utterly devoid of ads (although you'll need to submit an email address before you can start using it).
Importing pictures is a breeze, and once they've been added to the pool, you can select several at once to rotate or mirror, saving you valuable time. You can also choose individual photos to enhance with the software's one-click optimization tool. In our tests this worked particularly well on landscapes, but wasn't always great for other subjects.
If you want to make manual color and exposure corrections, there are half a dozen sliders to let you do exactly that. It's a shame you can't also apply the same color changes to a whole set of pictures at once, but this is otherwise a brilliant free photo editor for making quick corrections,
- Read full review: Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2019
10. Pizap
The best free photo editor for preparing pics for social media
Templates for social media
Free online photo editor piZap is available in both HTML5 and Flash editions, making it suitable for any device. You can choose to work with a photo from your hard drive, Facebook, Google Photos, Google Drive, Google Search, or a catalog of stock images. This is an impressive choice, though some of the stock images are only available to premium subscribers, and you'll need to watch out for copyright issues if you use a pic straight from Google Images.
piZap’s editing interface has a dark, modern design that makes heavy use of sliders for quick adjustments – a system that works much better than tricky icons and drop-down menus if you’re using a touchscreen device.
Like Fotor, piZap offers lots of stickers, with many more available to users with a paid account. All the options have a fun, cartoon aesthetic (though some of the clipart is a bit corny), and together with the meme tool that adds custom text to the top and bottom of images, prove that this is an online photo editor created with social media sharing in mind.
When you’re done, you can share your creation on all the biggest social media networks, as well as piZap’s own servers, Dropbox and Google Drive. Alternatively, you can save it to your hard drive, send it via email, or grab an embed code. You can only export your work in high quality if you’ve opened your wallet for the premium editor, but for silly social sharing that’s unlikely to be a problem.
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When you're ready to take your photo editing seriously, you're faced with the question that every photographer eventually must answer: Photoshop vs Lightroom?
I've answered this question hundreds of times before with those who take my online Photoshop and Lightroom classes for beginners, so I'll do my very best to explain it in a way that will be crystal clear.
In short, Photoshop is meant for making significant changes to a photo by using a vast array of tools. Lightroom is meant for very quickly organizing your entire library of photos and making the most common edits to them quickly. Most professional photographers use Lightroom for 90% of our photo editing, but occasionally take specific photos into Photoshop if a more complicated edit is needed.
The two programs approach image editing differently, but since they are both made by the same company (Adobe Systems), they mirror each other in terms of compatibility and have similar tools.
This is typical of what it looks like in Photoshop while you're working on a photo. The picture is in the middle with tools scattered all around the screen and hundreds more in sub-menus. Photoshop is incredibly powerful, but overwhelming at first.
![Lightroom Vs Photoshop Lightroom Vs Photoshop](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125882841/752844973.jpg)
What is Photoshop and who is it for?
Photoshop was created was created in 1988 when I was still sucking my thumb. It was originally a tool used primarily for graphic designers, but evolved into the de facto image editing tool for photographers, marketers, designers, and tabloid photo-fakers ?
That's only relevant because it means Photoshop is a gargantuan program that needs to please the needs of many types of media makers, and it shows up in a clunky and complicated interface. There are at least 3 or 4 ways to create just about any effect in Photoshop with different sets of tools.
Even though I'm one of the largest providers of Photoshop training online, I still find new tools and techniques in Photoshop all the time. It's a MASSIVE program. You can even edit video in Photoshop!
ANYTHING is possible in Photoshop. If you can imagine it, you can make it with enough skill. Want to put a duck's head on the body of a chihuahua? You want Photoshop. But it can also be used for simple things like removing a telephone pole from a landscape, doing advanced skin smoothing on a model, or resizing a photo.
This is what a photo looks like opened up in Lightroom's develop module. You see all your photos at the bottom to choose from, a large preview of the picture you're working on, and all your tools for making edits in one place.
What is Lightroom and who is it for?
Lightroom is designed with only one audience in mind: photographers!
The interface of Lightroom is much more intuitive for new users, and faster for advanced users. The newer interface is largely a product of the release of the software (Photoshop was first released in 1988 and Lightroom was released in 2007).
Lightroom's goal is not to give photographers every imaginable tool for doing deep surgery on a photo, but instead to take most popular tools and effects that photographers want to accomplish and make them fast and easy to apply to a shoot's worth of pictures.
Lightroom is a powerful image management tool. If you're trying to find a picture of your trip to Disneyland from 10 years ago, you could search by date, the keyword “Disneyland”, the faces of the people in the photo that Lightroom magically finds, or a dozen other ways. That means that your entire photo library is neatly organized–finally!
The other cool thing about Lightroom is that all edits are non-destructive. That may be a little hard to understand now, but you'll eventually see what a big difference it makes. I'll discuss this in detail in the “What can you do in Lightroom that you can't do in Photoshop” section, but this basically means that you can always go back and tweak or undo changes you make to a photo–even if you wait years to change your mind.
Photoshop's sharpening tools are extremely robust, but also very confusing.
What You Can Do In Photoshop that You Can't Do In Lightroom
When it comes to making changes to a photo, there is nothing you can do in Lightroom that you can't do in Photoshop.
“Layers” is the most significant thing that Photoshop does that Lightroom cannot. A layer means stacking different pictures or parts of pictures on top of a different picture to create a certain effect. Remember the duck and the chihuahua example? The chihuahua picture is on a layer, and then I cut out the duck head and put it on a layer on top of the duck.
Since Lightroom has no “layers” functionality, it's impossible to composite multiple photos together in that program. That's where Photoshop shines.
You can also use layers to take parts of a photo, select it, and put it on a new layer so that you can change the object's placement in the frame.
Photoshop also has a vastly larger set of tools for photographers to choose from. I'll give you an example of what that's like with sharpening. Lightroom has a basic image sharpening panel in the develop module and a simple output sharpening function. That's it. Photoshop has six different global sharpening methods (each complete with a panel full of potential settings) as well as tools for localized sharpening.
One key tool that Photoshop has and Lightroom does not (at least not nearly as powerful) is content-aware fill. This allows you to select any area of the photo, and have Photoshop not only erase what is in that area, but to guess what would be there if the object were not in the way and fill it in with the background. It's absolutely incredible, and it's the tool I use most often in Photoshop.
Lightroom has a watered-down version of content-aware fill in one of the brushes, but it's so watered down that it'd be hard to call it the same tool. I'd love to see Adobe release content-aware fill in a future release of Lightroom. (Pretty please, Adobe?)
Lightroom's organization features are incredible! The library module allows you to organize by keywords, camera used, facial recognition of those in the photo, star rating, color rating, etc, etc.
What You Can Do In Lightroom that You Can't Do in Photoshop
It's true that there are no edits you can make in Lightroom that you can't also do in Photoshop, but that ignores the fact that if you can make an edit in both places, the tools in Lightroom are almost always easier to use, faster to use, and can be tweaked at any point in the future.
Non-destructive editing is the coolest thing in Lightroom, but it can be hard to wrap your head around until you've used it yourself. EVERY edit in Lightroom is non-destructive. Non-destructive editing means that the program remembers your change and shows you a preview of that change without changing the actual file you're working on until you export the photo.
Here's an example of how non-destructive editing works. Let's say you take nice photos of your daughter on her sixth birthday. You apply a matte finish to the photo, which is a really trendy look right now (popularized by Instagram). 10 years later, for your daughter's sweet sixteen party (or 14 years later for a quinceanera), you want to print the photo, but you see it and say, “UGH! I can't believe I put that nasty matte finish on a photo! That's soooooo 2015!” With one click, you can reset the photo in Lightroom and you have the exact same photo that came out of your camera the day you shot it. The matte finish is gone.
While Lightroom's edits are ALL non-destructive, most all of Photoshop's edits ARE destructive (though there are ways you can get back to the original if you worked on the photo the proper way and saved the photo to the correct format). Non-destructive editing also means you can go back and simply tweak what you did to a photo two days or two months ago. See a photo that you applied a little TOO much skin smoothing on? Just slide the setting back down and it's fixed. Your edits are never baked in to the original photo.
Lightroom has a powerful set of photo organization and management tools that Photoshop does not have. When you import your photos into Lightroom, it neatly organizes them so you can find any photo you've ever taken within seconds. It's really nice to have everything organized so you never lose your precious photos. This is in stark contrast to Photoshop, which contains no photo organization tool.
On the left, you see photoshop's raw editor (called Camera Raw). On the right, you see Lightroom's raw editor (called the Develop Module). They are practically identical.
Similarities Between Photoshop and Lightroom
There is a part of Photoshop called “Adobe Camera Raw.” It's basically one of the panels within the program, and it was created long before Lightroom. In fact, the inspiration for Lightroom was to take this one part of Photoshop, and to put it on steroids.
Camera Raw is where you make the basic edits to exposure, saturation of colors, brightness of the highlights or shadows, add input sharpening, etc.
So when you look at the Camera Raw portion of Photoshop side-by-side with Lightroom, you see that the two programs are twins.
Since both programs are both owned by the same company, features that appear in one program are likely to be brought over to the other program soon. For example, Lightroom first introduced the non-destructive crop tool, and then it was later introduced into Photoshop in the next version.
Using Photoshop and Lightroom Together
Since Adobe released the Creative Cloud Photographer's Bundle that allows you to get BOTH the full version of Photoshop and the full version of Lightroom for just $9.99 per month, more and more photographers are using both programs together.
This is a HIGHLY recommended setup. I would be lost if I only had one of the programs to edit photos with. They work together beautifully. Let me walk you through what your workflow might be like if you do this.
- Put your memory card in the computer after your shoot
- Import the photos into Lightroom so they are neatly organized in one place
- Use Lightroom to quickly cull (look through) your photos and choose your favorites by using the star ratings in Lightroom
- Make 90% or more of your edits right inside Lightroom so your edits are non-destructive and fast
- If there is a specific photo that needs a tool in Photoshop, right click on it and choose Edit in > Photoshop
- Make your edits in Photoshop and click save
- Go back to Lightroom and everything you did in Photoshop is saved for you. You can even work on that same photo with Lightroom's tools as well
Conclusion: Which One to Buy
When it comes right down to it, most photographers should choose Lightroom as your first editing program. It's the one that I use for 95% of my photography post-processing (that's jargon for digital photo editing).
The reason I recommend Lightroom for most users is that it organizes your photos, is fast and easy to use, and allows you to make all of your edits non-destructively which is really helpful as you learn especially.
However, some photographers will want Photoshop first, and just about ALL photographers eventually buy both of them to use together. The only real reason to choose Photoshop first is if you know for sure that you want to composite photos together and need layers. Also, if you're a photographer but also want to a program that will allow you to do graphic design, then Photoshop would be the clear choice.
The good news is that you probably don't need to decide between the programs. You probably want both! If you buy the full version of Photoshop (About $500) and Lightroom ($150), you'd be spending WAY WAY more than Adobe's new Creative Cloud Photography Bundle. That gives you the FULL version of Photoshop AND Lightroom for just $9.99. It's what I use, and I love it. I normally hate monthly expenses, but this is a STEAL of a deal! Buy it on Amazon here.
In fact, Adobe has made the decision easier when it announced that it will no longer even sell Photoshop as a standalone product. Now, the only way to get Photoshop is if you get the Creative Cloud and pay monthly. Again, I normally hate monthly expenses, but this one actually saves you a significant amount of money over the old boxed version.
If you want to learn how to use Photoshop and/or Lightroom, you REALLY should sign up for my weekly newsletter (it's totally free). I email out one of my pictures, and ALSO the original unedited photo, and explain exactly the steps I used in Photoshop and Lightroom to get to the finished result. It's pretty helpful for learning the programs. Sign up for the newsletter here.