While the stock Photos app on Mac packs a few photo editing tools, it is not meant to replace a robust and professional photo editing app. If you want your photos to look good, you need to start looking at third-party photo editors that offer more features and control. I understand that extensive photo editing is not for everyone as most of the people don’t want to spend hours editing their photos. But that’s the beauty of having options. You can choose as intensive or automatic photo editing app as you want. You can even get photo editing apps for Mac that can enhance your photos with a click. I have tested and collected a list of 8 best photo editing apps for mac, both free and paid to help you on your photo editing journey.

Seashore is a free, open-source paint application for Mac OS built entirely in Cocoa. While the UI might seem a little dated, the app has a lot of tricks up its sleeves which makes it an upgrade to Preview or Paint Brush. SeaShore introduces the concept of layers, just like you have in Photoshop. Originally developed for comic creators, MediBang Paint Pro got quickly adopted by everyone looking for a versatile drawing pad for Mac and is hailed by many as the best free drawing software around. However, since it was built for the purpose of creating comics, you might face a few problems adapting it to your needs — it’s definitely one. MediBang Paint is undoubtedly one of the best free drawing software for Mac you can find currently. The key advantage here, apart from simplicity, is the compatibility with all desktop and mobile platforms. For example, you might begin drawing on your iPhone and then finish up on Mac, thanks to the free cloud storage. After taking a look, it does seem like a great free software that you can use. It has Textured Brushes, a super clean UI, and you can draw with Stylus and Touch Input! Do check it out. Free Drawing Software for 2D Animation Pencil2D. A wonderful and simple to use animation tool, it supports both raster and vector drawing.

Best Photo Editing Software for Mac in 2021

Different people have different requirements when it comes to photo editing and not one app is the best for everyone. That’s why, to make things easier for my readers, I have divided the 8 photo editors into different sections. The sections are not totally exclusive because as these photo editing software come with a huge set of overlapping features. That being said, the sections will help you get a clear idea of what you are looking for.

• Affinity Photo
• Luminar 4
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC
• Pixelmator Pro
• GIMP
• Fotor Photo Editor
• Photolemur
• Aurora HDR
• darktable
• Photopea
• Bonus: Photoscape X

Best Pro Photo Editors for Mac

1. Affinity Photo

The first photo editing app on our list is something that I am using for the last two years and is one of the two photo editing apps that rely upon. The app features professional tools and supports almost all the know file formats including JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF,PDF, PSD, and RAW photos. It comes with all the basic photo editing tools that you can expect from a pro photo editing app such as red eye removal, cropping, selection, painting and drawing tools, color correction tools, masks, filters, layers, and more. It also features an uncluttered UI with clearly marked tools which are both easy to find and use. Affinity Photo also brings support for extensive keyboard shortcuts which makes the photo editing more enjoyable and fast once you put some time into learning the software.

While there is a bit of learning curve, which is understandable, the developers offer tons of written and video tutorials which is more than enough to get anyone started. I am also fond of its non-destructive photo editing approach which keeps the original photo intact until you manually override it with your edited photo. There’s also support for extensive history and users can easily undo/redo changes up to 8000 steps.

Finally, it also offers an Apple Photos plugin allowing you to do minor adjustments right inside the Photos app. The only missing feature here is a Digital Asset Management or DAM which means you can not use it as a photo repository, something Adobe Lightroom users will surely miss. If that’s not a concern for you, I can recommend this app without any hesitation.

Get Affinity Photo:Free trial, $49.99

2. Luminar 4

Luminar 4 is a full-fledged pro photo editing tool for Mac which is also the easiest to use. Since I switch from Affinity Photo to Luminar, I have more than halved the time I used to spend on photo editing without any drop in quality. That is a deal that I am going to take any day. The before and after photo that you can see in the Affinity Photo section took me around 5 minutes to edit, while the picture you are seeing below took me just one click. It is because Luminar 4 comes with a set of more than 60 filters, some of which even use artificial intelligence, to enhance your photos with just a click.

The filters use a set of pre-configured presets that change depending on the subject of the picture. In my experience Luminar 4 works best for portraits and scenic shots. Luminar 4 also lets you adjust the presets if you don’t like the results. You have access to all the photo editing tools such as masks, layers, gradients, color correction, and more. You can use them to make manual changes to your photo just as you do with any other pro photo editing app. The filters allows you to get quite near to your end result with just one click. From there, you can make the minute adjustments to get your perfect photo. One of my favorite features of Luminar 4 is its before and after slider. I can instantly visualize the changes that I have made and compare the edited image to the original image.

Luminar 4 also has a built-in DAM. You can organize, rate, browse, and sort photos just like you can do on Adobe Lightroom. Like Affinity Photo and other pro photo editing apps mentioned in this section, Luminar 4 is a beast when it comes to photo editing. However, it’s a beast that can be easily tamed and used to perfection without creating any problem for us. Mkvtools serial box. Whether you are a professional photo editor who needs to save time or an amateur who wants to learn professional photo editing, Luminar 4 is a great photo editing tool for either use-cases.

Get Luminar 4:$89.99

3. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC

No photo editing app list can be complete with mentioning Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC as it is one of the most powerful photo editing app that you can get on your Mac. Apart from the obvious photo editing features, the biggest benefit of using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC is that it comes with a fully functional Digital Asset Management or DAM which allows users to not only manage their entire photo catalogue but also upload it to cloud so they can access it from anywhere. That is one of the biggest strength of Adobe Lightroom and if that is something you want, currently, there’s no better app out there.

Coming back to the photo editing tools, the Adobe Lightroom CC is packed with them. It might not be as easy as Luminar but it doesn’t lag behind when it comes to power. You get access to all the usual tools including blend, blur, layers, color correction, color matching, and more.

I love its easy-to-use sliders that give users complete control over the light and color properties of their photos. It also lets you shift focus and sharpen your photos to highlight your subject or reduce distraction in the image. My biggest problem with Adobe Lightroom CC is its subscription-based pricing system which makes this only viable for people who are using this to earn money. If you are just using the app for yourself, both Affinity Photo and Luminar will serve you better as far as return of investment is concerned.

Get Adobe Photoshop Lightroom: $9.9/month

4. Pixelmator Pro

Pixelmator Pro is another pro photo editing tool for Mac which you should try. The app not only brings an extensive collection of tools for editing and retouching photos but it also allows you to paint, create graphics design, add effects, and do so much more. However, since we are focusing only on photo editing software for Mac here, we will keep our interested limited to those features only.

I used Pixelmator Pro for about a month and I found that it has everything that you might need from a photo editing software. In fact, the new 2.0 update of Pixelmator Pro also brings a ton of other features that you won’t find on most of the photo editing tools on this list. For example, it now supports Apple M1 Macs, multi GPUs (looking at you Mac Pro), and RAW editing workflows with the new Pro Display XDR.

Pixelmator Pro comes with a new ML-Enhance mode which uses artificial intelligence trained on a catalog of 20 million professional photos, to automatically fine-tune 37 individual color adjustments. Just like Luminar, this feature gives you a great starting point for making fine-tuned adjustments to your photos.

That said, the ML-Enhance, only has one pre-set and I like Luminar’s approach far better. I do like the new ML De-noise feature which removes noise and image compression artifacts from photos. Not many photo editing apps for Mac can boast of this feature. I quite enjoyed using Pixelmator Pro and if you don’t like any of the above-mentioned software, you should give a chance to Pixelmator Pro.

Free Paint App For Mac

Get Pixelmator Pro:Free trial, $39.99

Best Free Open Source Photo Editing Apps for Mac

5. GIMP

GIMP is Adobe Photoshop for people who like open-source software. GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program is packed with features and allows you to make pro-level editing of your photos. Since it is an open-source app, it is completely free of charge. That said, GIMP also comes with the problems that most open-source app suffer from which is to say that it’s UI looks old and is not at all user friendly. In fact, GIMP is one of the hardest image editing apps you will find on this list. You will need to spend quite a bit of time in learning its ins and outs and only then will you be able to take full advantage of its potential.

I found GIMP to be too hard for my taste. I remember one time I mistakenly made a change to its workspace and it took me almost 15-20 minutes to get it back to the version I was familiar with. That being said, thousands and thousands of Mac owners are using GIMP everyday for their photo editing needs, so, I might be an anomaly here. Once you put in enough time to learn GIMP, you will find that it has all the features that you need now and might need in the future.

Get Gimp:Free

6. Fotor Photo Editor

If you are looking for a free yet accessible photo editing software, take a look at the Fotor Photo Editor. What is the latest microsoft office for mac version. It might not be as powerful as GIMP but it is fairly easy to learn which makes this a great image editing app for beginners. The app supports importing and exporting of a wide range of image formats including TIFF, JPEG, and PNG, and even RAW files. Excel para. When it comes to features, Fotor brings enough tools that you won’t find it dragging you down unless you are a pro user.

One of my favorite tool of Fotor is batch processing.It allows me to apply preset conditions to images in batches thereby saving me a lot of time. Other features of Fotor include effects, borders, the ability to create collages, tilt-shift, and more. To explain simply, Fotor is basically an easier and watered-down version of Lightroom, Luminar, or other pro image editing apps for Mac on this list. While the app is free, recently it has also released a Fotor Pro version which brings more features and costs $39.99/year. You can compare the free and paid version of Fotor by clicking on this link.

Get Fotor: Free

Best One-Click Photo Editing App for Mac

7. Photolemur 3

I thought long and hard whether I should include this app on the list or not as the app technically doesn’t allow you to edit photos. Still, I know that there are users who don’t want to spend time on editing photos but also want their photos to look decent. Well, if you are one of those people then this is the app for you. To use, Photolemur, all you need to do is drag and drop pictures on it. You can do it in batches or one by one. Once you drop images on it, it will apply AI to identify scenes, colors, and faces and enhance them automatically.

Remember, you will not have any control over the retouching what-so-ever. However, in my testing, the app produced respectable images in 90% of the cases, hence, it made the list. The one place it fails 100% of the times is when you already have high-contrast images with popping colors. Apart from that, it works fairly well. I will say it again, it’s not a photo editing app which you should use if you want total control. However, If you really don’t want to spend even a minute on learning to edit and editing your photos, this is your best option.

Get Photolemur 3:$35

Best HDR Photo Editors for Mac

8. Aurora HDR

If you work with HDR or High Dynamic Range photography, Aurora HDR is the best app you can get. For those who are not familiar, HDR combines multiple images (low exposure, medium exposure, and high exposure) to create an image with a better dynamic range. What it means is that your photos will have a better ratio of light and dark. Your iPhone already does this if you have this setting turned on while you are taking pictures. However, In a more traditional sense, a photographer takes three photos in different exposures and combines them in an HDR photo editing app to get the best results.

For that work, Aurora HDR is the best tool out there. Aurora HDR is made by the same developers who make Luminar and hence I found that both apps had more or less the same user interface with a focus on different photo editing styles. Remember, if you don’t work with HDR photos manually, you really don’t need to get this app. That being said, I used it with same photos that I use on other photo editing apps and the results were quite impressive. This app is definitely not for everyone, but some of you might enjoy using this.

Get AuroraHDR 2019:$99

Best Free Raw Photo Editing Apps for Mac

9. darktable

If you read the article thoroughly, which I hope that you did, you will know that all the pro photo editing apps that I mentioned above, including Lightroom, Luminar, Affinity Photo, and Pixelmator Pro support RAW files so it wasn’t really necessary to create this section. Especially because if you are a professional who works only with RAW photos, you must be already using quite pricey RAW photo editor. Still, I was so impressed with this app that I didn’t, not want to include this on my list, especially when it’s completely free to use.

In fact, the description on its website articulate things about this app far better than I could so I will just post it here, “darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer. A virtual light-table and darkroom for photographers. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable light-table, and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them.” If this is something you need, you should click on the link to download it right now.

Get darktable: Free

Best Online Photo Editor for Mac (Free Photoshop Alternative)

9. Photopea

Photopea is an excellent photo editor for Mac if you don’t want to use a native app. Photopea is a web app that brings almost all the features that Adobe Photoshop has for free. Standout features include content-aware fill, filters support, layers support, a huge selection for brushes, and more.

The app also supports all popular image formats along with app-specific formats, including PSD, XD, Sketch, XCF, RAW, and more. If you have used Adobe Photoshop in the past but want to move on due to its high-cost, this is the perfect solution for you. It even supports most keyboard shortcuts that Photoshop uses.

It also has dozens of PSD templates that you can use to create thumbnails for videos, profile avatars, cards, and more. The only major drawback of this app is that the UI looks a bit dated. But for a free online photo editor, this rocks. If you are looking for a free Photoshop alternative, I urge you to give this app a try. If you find the app interesting, you can get started by visiting its learn page.

Bonus: Photoscape X

Photoscape X is another excellent free app for editing photos on the Mac. While the app does have a pro version that costs money, the free version is more than enough for most users. Apart from the usual tools like resize, crop, rotate, merge, and more, you also get access to pro tools such as color adjustments, filters, de-noising, batch editing, and more.

The interface of the app is functional. So, while it won’t win any design awards, you will find it easier to use. You get the main panels at the top. Here, you can choose between collage, edit, view, GIF, and more. I like that panels are separated depending on tasks. This helps in keeping the side panel, which hosts all your editing tools, clean.

The app supports most of the popular image formats, including RAW. I did find that the app took a bit more time to process large files, but overall, my experience was good enough to include this on the list.

Get Photoscape X:Free, in-app purchases

Best Image Editing Apps for Mac: Final Thoughts

While all these photo editing apps are good, you will find that some of them suit you better than the others. For me, Luminar and Affinity Photo work the best and hence I am still sticking to those two. But you should choose the one that fits your editing style and needs. If you find this article informative, comment below to tell us which photo editing app you found to be the best for you.

In Windows-based computers, there is the program called MS Paint in which users can express their creativity in coming up with a nice artwork. Of course, there are also paint applications for Mac users having similar features with the Window-based program. Apple’s Macintosh computers targets artists and this is one of the many reasons why Mac devices feature intuitive interface, which is as the early adoption by Adobe as well as other companies that are artist-oriented. The first of the paint applications for Mac is called the MacPaint. This app was part of the very first edition of the Macintosh and since then, paint applications has been a major and built in application in every Mac being developed and created. Aside from the staple Mac program, there are other applications having the similar basic functions than that of MacPaint and may come for free or paid version.

Best Free Paint Program Download

10. KidPix.

The KidPix is a respected paint application started in 1989. It began like a “rubber stamp” paint program in which you can click a stamp and you can click it on your document and the image of that stamp will appear on that document. Innovative changes in KidPix make it possible for users to work in 2D and 3D version plus the features of animation and voice recording. This program costs about $40 for 2D version and $50 for the 3D version.

9. Tux Paint

Tux Paint is another application designed for the children. The interface of this application is simple and easy to handle and understand. If you will use the basic operation, you will easily find it very useful. You will see different features about its fun graphic such as “Confetti”, “Distortion” and “Flower”. You can use your creative imagination in order to create a nice image. This application is free and you can try it.

8. Paintbrush

The Paintbrush is a program working to mimic the early design and capabilities of MacPaint as well as those of MS Paint. Generally speaking, this application is very basic, very easy and very simple to learn and work with. This is a free application that you can try.

7. Seashore

The Seashore app has similarities with that of Paintbrush especially in simplicity and ease of use. This app is very useful and functional as long as you grasp its features. If you have tried Paintbrush, you will find Seashore is more advance because it has features like gradient fillings in which you can blend color to another. You can configure the brushes and you will more drawing and coloring tools than Paintbrush.

6. Artrage

The Artrage is an app that bridges the hole between the simple applications for painting to the more advanced and fully featured tools like that from Photoshop or the Painter. This app offers scalable pressure for users in the graphics tablet. It has one of a kind, neat and well thought-out interface to go along with several functional tools. It has a “starter edition” providing only the basic function. The full version of this app will cost you about $30, whilst the Pro version will cost about $60. This app is only available to the latest version of Mac OS and it is not available to iPad and iPhone.

5. Beautiful Dorena

The Beautiful Dorena app is interesting for most users than being useful. This app features wonderful graphic options and amazing sound effects embedded in this app. This feature will make you to be entertained in using it for hours. This Beautiful Dorena app is not available or is not made to run to the Mac OS versions of 10.7 or later.

4. GIMP

The GIMP app is an open source program that is Free. Anyone or any platform can use this program. The GIMP has features that are similar to some of the buttons in the Photoshop program; although the interface is not as streamlined as you may think, using this to enhance your digital painting skills is better especially this GIMP being a free app. The features and editing power of GIMP is suitable for those who do not have to money to pay for Photoshop or do not want to buy it as well as to those wanting to use something new.

3. Painter

The Painter is an application having the tools mimicking the physical counterparts of a painter. You have here the canvas and paper, the different brushes, pencils, palettes, oils, chalks, acrylics and many more. If you are an artist who likes and loves to work with the digital counterparts of the traditional art media, this should be one of the applications that you should consider. This program retails for about $289. Knowing that, this is not a cheap app, but if you are really serious artists, every penny you will spend is worth it.

2. Photoshop

Photoshop is a very popular paint application for Mac as well as for the Windows-based platform. If you are in the know about the graphics, you will surely want to have Photoshop. Some says that this app is the father of all the paint applications available today in any platform. It started as photo editing tool and then evolved into powerful digital editing. It has all the tools you need, it has neat interface and many more. In line with this great features and capabilities, you have to pay hefty sum of $699 in order to use this program.

1. Photoshop Elements

Another Adobe product that has less yet important features for painting is the Photoshop Elements. This paid version works mainly as photo editor in which you can use to clean up photos that you capture from your digital camera. This app is available in the market for $99. This tool is powerful enough to give you the features you need in editing your images.