There are many image editing apps available on the Google Play Store. However, not all of them are worth your time and effort. Here are some of the best Android apps for image editing with their features:
With so many different image editing apps on the market, there’s seemingly no end to what you can enhance your images with. But I do aim to find the best Android apps for editing your pictures, and hope this list helps you decide which of these app are worth your time.
There are a lot of image editing and manipulation apps available on Android. Each one allows you to implement different effects, have different levels of complexity and allow you to work with multiple images at once. The question that remains is which one is the best. I’ll give you some examples of great options and show you how they compare to each other.
Best Android App For Image Editing
Photo editors are an exceptionally competitive space when it comes to mobile apps. There are simple editors that add filters and effects along with more complex editors that let you deal with RAW images. There are others that let you do wacky stuff like removing things from images without ruining the image. We will try our best to include a good selection of every type. Here are the best photo editor apps for Android.
Please note, none of these have the power that a serious desktop editor has. You’ll still need a PC if you want the very best photo in photo editing. We’d also like to give an honorable mention to Snapseed (Google Play). It’s good and reliable but doesn’t really get software updates anymore and that makes it hard to recommend. Also, many phones come with basic editors that can do stuff like cropping with no problem.
Got an iPhone? See the best photo editors for the iPhone.
The best photo editor apps for Android
Adobe apps
AirBrush
Bazaart
InShot Photo Editor Pro
LightX
Motionleap
PhotoDirector
Photo Editor
Photo Effects Pro
Photo Lab Picture Editor
PicsArt
Photo Mate R3
Pixlr
TouchRetouch
Vimage
Adobe apps
Price: Free / Up to $52.99 per month
Adobe has released a plethora of editing tools over the last couple of years. Included are some of the best photo editor apps available. Some of the options include Adobe Photoshop Express, Adobe Photoshop Mix, and Adobe Lightroom. Each one has a variety of features to help you do things. You’ll be able to do simple stuff like removing red eye to editing RAW files taken by your smartphone or DSLR camera. Adobe Lightroom especially gets updated rather frequently with new features. The only potential caveat is that some of them require an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription in order to use all of the features. Those who already use Adobe CC should definitely just get these since they’re included with a CC subscription anyway.
AirBrush
Price: Free / $3.99 per month / $19.99 per year
AirBrush screenshot 2022
AirBrush is an excellent option for editing photos of people. It features a lot of people-focused features such as pimple removal, skin smoothing, red-eye removal, and a teeth and eye brightener function. There is also a bokeh mode to turn any photo into one with a blurry background. In addition, the app comes with a separate camera function that lets you edit the photo before you take it. Thus, you can get your selfie framed up in the camera and then apply edits before taking the final product. There is a subscription for some of the more advanced features, but you do get a 7-day free trial to try it before you spend anything.
Bazaart
Price: Free trial / $5.99 per month
Bazaart is a fairly popular photo editor on iOS, and the Android version isn’t far behind. The app boasts a bunch of features, including a background eraser tool and a variety of adjustments like saturation, exposure, contrast, tint, and others. Additionally, you get the usual mobile photo editor stuff like filters, text, backgrounds, stickers, and other stuff. The big draw here is the background tool where you can add a different background to an existing photo. The app offers a free trial, but after that, it’s $5.99 per month, making it one of the most expensive options on the list.
InShot Photo Editor Pro
Price: Free / $7.99 per year
InShot Photo Editor screenshot 2022
InShot Photo Editor Pro is a fairly decent editor. This is a new style editor with tons of things like filters, stickers, and other such effects. The app houses all of these effects in a store-style layout, and you can pick and choose the ones you want to download. Of course, some of them are only available on the pro subscription so prepare for that. In any case, it does actually edit some photos. You can do things like retouch photos, cut things out of the image, and it covers the other basics like cropping and such. We think the $7.99 per year subscription is relatively reasonable as long as you use the app consistently. Plus, the developer has a bunch of other photo and video editor apps in the Play Store.
LightX Photo Editor
Price: Free / $2.99 per month / $14.99 per year / $40.00 once
LightX is one of the upcoming photo editor apps. It had rousing success on iOS. There are quite a few decent features as well. It has a background changer tool, color splash effects, and a range of slider tools like color balance, levels, and curves. You can even merge photos together. There are also blur features, photo collages, shape manipulation, and stickers. It’s still in beta. That means there are bugs. However, it should eventually be among the top five or so photo editors out there.
Motionleap
Price: Free / $3.99 per month / $59.99 once
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Motionleap (formerly Enlight Pixaloop) is a neat photography app with some pretty cool tricks. It turns static photos into GIF-style images with some simple swipes and taps. The effect works best with things like water or clouds, but there are plenty of other examples of use as well. Some other features include adding elements that weren’t there before and overlays that can add to the ambiance of a photo. This won’t get the red-eye out or crop your photo. However, the ability to add some extra effects is kind of neat. The only real downside is Motionleap goes for $3.99 per month, and many of its most desirable features require the premium version.
PhotoDirector Photo Editor
Price: Free / $2.99 per month / $17.99
PhotoDirector is a newer entrant (comparatively speaking) into the photo editing space on Android, and this one is pretty good. Like Fotor, this one focuses a lot more on manual enhancements rather than filters, and you have access to HSL sliders, RGB color channels, white balance, and more to properly edit your photos. There are also sliders for tone, brightness, darkness, exposure, and contrast for more in-depth editing. It’s more powerful than most and should be good for those who want something other than filters.
Photo Editor by dev.macgyver
Price: Free / $3.49
Photo Editor by dev.macgyver is a surprisingly decent photo editor. It has the usual simple stuff like crop, flip, etc. However, it also boasts fine color controls, including levels and curves. You also get gamma correction, auto contrast, auto tone, blur, sharpen, and other editing tools as well. It works with JPEG, PNG, GIF, Webp, and PDF. There are also batch options available. It doesn’t have the glitz and glam of some of the more expensive photo editors, but this is right up there with Snapseed in terms of simple, but powerful functionality. Plus, it’s only $3.49 for the pro version and it’s free on Google Play Pass.
Photo Effects Pro
Price: Free
Photo Effects Pro screenshot 2022
Photo Effects Pro is definitely an editor for those who like to play with filters, effects, stickers, and things like that. It boasts more than 40 filters and effects, as well as the ability to add text, stickers, and frames as well. The editing features are actually pretty basic. However, the developers recently redid the application, and with it came the removal of a few beloved filters and features. Hopefully, the developers add those back in soon.
Photo Lab Picture Editor
Price: Free / $9.99
Photo Lab isn’t among the most popular photo editor apps. The app manages to do quite well, though. It boasts over 640 filters, frames, and effects for you to play with, which makes it among the largest collections available to consumers. With this one, you can create montages, lightly edit photos, and stitch together effects to create some unique photos to share with friends. There is a free version with advertising and watermarks. You can try the free one first before purchasing the pro version.
Photo Mate R3
Price: Free trial / $7.49
Photo Mate R3 is the spiritual successor to Photo Mate R2, which was one of the best photo editors on the list. It’s still rather new, so do expect it to evolve and get better over time. For now, you’ll have access to a fairly strong suite of editing tools, including all of the basics. It also has native support for RAW files, which is great for photographers. The app also comes with a Lens Collection so you can fix lens issues, including vignetting, distortion, and chromatic aberration. This is about as pro as it gets on Android. The only downside is that other photo editors are getting similar features.
PicsArt
Price: Free / $5.99
Picsart screenshot 2022
PicsArt has been around for a very long time and has accumulated over 250 million downloads to date. Thankfully, the developers have done a decent job updating the app to keep it modern. You’ll find a lot of the usual stuff, including the light editing tools as well as filters, text, stickers, and collages. It boasts over 100 editing tools as well as a community of creative people to share stuff with. You can also use this app to generate animated gifs and even draw stuff on your photos. It’s a strong option with a lot of features. There are also plenty of other photo tools by PicsArt.
Pixlr
Price: Free / $1.99
Pixlr by AutoDesk, also known as Pixlr Express, is a powerful photo editor and one that our readers have recommended to us time and time again. It has one of the best one-touch enhancement tools that we’ve seen, and it also includes a ton of other features and tools that you can use. There are also filters, although it cleverly disguises them as “overlays” and also includes cosmetic editing tools like blemish removers and teeth whiteners. It is one of the better photo editor apps with a little something for everybody.
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TouchRetouch
Price: $1.99
TouchRetouch is one of the more unique photo editor apps. It doesn’t do the usual stuff like smooth your skin or remove redeye. Instead, it removes other stuff from the photo. You can do things like removing unsightly power lines from your shot, small objects that you don’t want there, and in some cases, you can even remove people. The app either works insanely well or not at all. We don’t recommend that you expect miracles, but it does do a fairly decent job most of the time. It runs for a single $1.99 purchase, so be sure to test it before the refund phase runs out. You can also use it for free with Google Play Pass if you have it.
Vimage
Price: Free / $1.99 per month / $11.99 per year / $24.99 once
Vimage is a newer photo editor app with some decent features. It’s very similar to the LG V40’s cinematography feature. You can take photos with no moving elements and add moving elements to them. You can do basic editing like brightness, blur, crop, rotate, saturation, and other stuff. Then, you can add any one of a number of pre-made animations to the photo to give it life. During our testing, I added steam to a food item and falling flower petals to a selfie (don’t judge). This creates some unique animated photos that you simply don’t see every day. The app has a couple of subscription options or a single purchase price if you don’t mind the cost.
Whether you’re a casual photographer, a pro or a social media influencer, the best photo editing apps can improve and enhance even your best photos.
It doesn’t matter if you’re taking selfies, snapping candid shots of your dog or crafting a tantalizing shot of the meal you’re about to eat, one of these apps can really make it pop. And that’s true even if you’re using one of the best camera phones.
So what qualifies something to be considered one of the best photo editing apps? Well, it has to be intuitive and easy to use — after all, nobody wants to spend hours digging through menus to find the right setting.
The best photo editing apps should also offer a comprehensive set of tools to make your photos really shine. And finally, these apps should make it super-simple to share your images with family and friends — because that’s why you took them in the first place, right?
PLAY SOUND
We’re tried every app in this list extensively, to ensure each one comes with the Tom’s Guide stamp of approval. So read on for our selection of the best photo editing apps.
What are the best photo editing apps?
After testing more than a dozen popular apps, our pick of the best photo editing apps overall is PicsArt. It has a great set of tools, plus features such as AI photo effects, stickers, text overlays, and backgrounds to enhance your photos.
In addition, PicsArt has tutorials and a daily photo-editing challenge to help you brush up your skills, and a library of images you can edit yourself. Plus, the app has a social component, letting you chat with other users and share your photos with them.
If you’re looking for something more comprehensive, Snapseed offers features such as nondestructive editing, curves, RAW image editing, white balance exposure, and a double exposure filter. You can also create layered effects, which you can save and apply to multiple photos. However, it’s geared towards those with some knowledge of photo editing, so there’s a steeper learning curve than some other products here.
And, while Google Photos’ editing tools are on the skimpy side, it’s second to none when it comes to backing up not just your photos, but all your videos, too, and syncing them across whatever device you may have, be it a PC, Mac, tablet, or smartphone.
Be sure to check out all of our picks for the best photo editing apps.
- PicsArt (Android, iOS)
Screens from PicsArt, our choice as the best photo editing app
PicsArt (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
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PicsArt is our top pick of the best photo editing apps, because it’s fun, easy to use, yet covers just about all the bases for consumer mobile photography. It provides lots of creative control, excellent image-editing tools and a large variety of attractive filters. In addition, you can quickly select or create fun stickers, combine your pictures into highly customizable collages, add artistic text and share. The full-featured camera module includes pre-capture effects and photo tools.
You can use Remix Chat to share and collaboratively edit photos with the 150 million monthly users of PicsArt, or only with your friends. In-app tutorials are easy to follow, and challenges prompt users to submit their creations based on a specific type of edit or a theme; winners are selected by community vote.
However, ads for PicsArt premium pop up frequently (and annoyingly) in the middle of editing processes. To turn them off — and to have the video editor, plus more tools, filters and content — you have to buy a premium subscription for $11.99 for a single month or $55.99/year. (There’s also a student discount).
PicsArt offers a rich and highly accessible collection of photo-editing and collaging tools for consumer photographers. And it provides lots of creative control while keeping everything fun and lively.
Download PicsArt: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
- Snapseed (Android, iOS)
Screens of the Snapseed photo editing app
Snapseed (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
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Snapseed isn’t for the casual user, but rather for serious photographers who want or need to spend time creating the best possible image while on the go. As such, it has a full array of top-notch editing tools, including selective edit brushes, plus a nice collection of film-related filters (such as Lens Blur, Retrolux and Double Exposure).
For detail-oriented photographers, Snapseed can be not only fun but also addictive. We enjoyed just wandering through its range of exposure, color, masking and reshaping tools, brushes, and filters as we experimented with different settings. Because the editing is nondestructive, you can always go into the Stack (the layers of edits) and adjust or eliminate any edit (including correcting misspelled text). Or you can use a Stacks brush to apply an effect to only a portion of your picture. In addition, you can save a Stack of edits you’ve applied to a picture as a “Look,” which can then be applied to other photos and shared with other users.
Snapseed’s excellent traditional tools and nondestructive editing make it one of the best photo editing apps for serious photographers who want or need to spend time fine-tuning their pictures. The app is free and there is no premium version.
Download Snapseed: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
- Adobe Photoshop Camera (Android, iOS)
Screens of the Adobe Photoshop Camera photo editing app
Adobe Photoshop Camera (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
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Adobe Photoshop Camera is one of the best photo editing apps due to its AI, which applies special effects and photo corrections before or after you shoot with your phone’s camera.
Photoshop Camera uses filters, called “lenses,” to apply special effects or make adjustments to color, lighting and clarity. But what makes Camera special is the use of Adobe Sensei which automatically identifies the type of photo (portrait or landscape) and creates masks for key aspects, such as a face or the sky. So, for instance, the sky lenses can change the color of the sky, add or remove clouds, and even add the appropriate reflections in a body of water, without affecting other portions of the picture. In addition, some lenses have “sprites” — smart objects that can be pinched, zoomed and moved within a Sensei-identified area of the picture. That makes it possible to position and resize lens-placed objects (such as planets or clouds). And some lenses have small animations, like shooting stars or a blasting-off rocket ship.
The iPad version of Adobe Photoshop has a few clever desktop features, such as the refine edge brush, which lets you better define an object you want to select, and rotate canvas. Both features are touch-enabled, too.
Adobe promises that it will add new lenses (all free) on a regular basis, some created by celebrity artists and influencers. Since each of the lenses has variations (accessed by swiping right or left), you can have hours of photo adventures. PS Camera is a delightful app that is essentially push-button photography, even though you can make some adjustments to the effects. As such it will appeal more to fun-loving photographers, rather than pros or serious amateurs. The app is free and there is no premium version.
Download Adobe Photoshop Camera: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
- Pixlr (Android, iOS)
Screenshots of the Pixlr photo editing app
Pixlr (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
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Pixlr is one of the best photo editing apps for the casual photographer who wants to do just a bit of fine-tuning, perhaps add some neat effects and then share on whatever social networks are on their phone. The intuitive interface is easy to master, so you can get right into the fun of playing with your pictures.
Pixlr has a nice variety of easy-to-use photo adjustment tools, without overwhelming you with choices. This includes brushes to apply selective edits (such as darken or undo). The libraries of special effect filters, overlays, and borders are fun and generally attractive. The cartoonish stickers are varied and fun. Quickly create collages, using preset layouts or designed templates that allow you to shuffle your photos, as well as zoom and move them within the placeholders.
The premium version ($1.99/month or $11.99/year) turns off the ads and provides lots more content (stickers, overlays, borders, and fonts). While serious photographers might find Pixlr’s library of editing tools too shallow, casual users will enjoy the app’s easy creativity.
Download Pixlr: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
- Adobe Lightroom (Android, iOS)
Screenshots of the Adobe Lightroom photo editing app
Adobe Lightroom (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
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The mobile version of Adobe Lightroom (iOS and Android) is part of a cloud-based workflow that includes storage of your entire photo library and access to the full-resolution files (original and edited) on all your devices (mobile, laptop and desktop). So, when purchased with the entire Lightroom system (starting at $9.99/month), you’re buying into a powerful photo-processing ecosystem that provides professional-level control and quality. However, if all you want is a top-notch photo app on your phone or tablet, the standalone Lightroom Mobile is free, or you can pay $4.99/month for a Premium subscription that gives you 100GB of storage space.
Lightroom Mobile is a great learning platform. Its ever-growing library of interactive tutorials will teach you to edit your images like a pro. And that’s good, because the feature set is quite deep, with dozens of tools to work with exposure, color, selective edit, filters and such. The vast majority of edits involve slider controls, with quick responsiveness so you know exactly how the adjustment affects your picture. What’s more, the edits are non-destructive, so you can always return to your original image. In addition to the intuitive social sharing, Lightroom has a Discover area, where you can see animations of the steps other photographers and artists used to create their best images. Plus, you can contribute your own edited pictures to Lightroom Discover.
Lightroom Mobile is a top-notch photo app for anyone serious about getting the very best out of their photographs. But it may be overkill for folks who don’t want to spend the time doing more than a quick brightening, crop or special effect before sharing their pictures.
Download Adobe Lightroom Mobile: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
- Instagram (Android, iOS)
Screenshots of Instagram
Instagram (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
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Instagram has more than 850 million users for good reason: its focus on the quick, uncomplicated sharing of photos and videos on social media is a winning formula. Its intuitive interface offers a fast path from taking a picture or video through simple edits to posting simultaneously on multiple social networks.
Liking and sharing posts, sending and receiving direct messages, and generally engaging with others are Instagram’s primary activities. In fact, the most important metric (which businesses and influencers use to monetize their Instagram accounts) is your engagement rate, or how many people view and like your posts. And many of the recently added features include tools for gauging and improving your engagement rate. This includes the ability to remove “ghost followers” (those who don’t engage with your posts) and tracking which individual hashtags attract more views and likes. A nice security feature now lists all emails that Instagram has sent you recently, so you can verify what’s really from Instagram and isn’t a phishing attack. And Instagram addicts have gotten a bit of help in breaking the habit — the app now tells you how much time per day you spend on it.
Instagram frequently adds and removes features and tools, which confounds some users and excites others. But the one constant is that it continues to grow in popularity.
Download Instagram: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
- Google Photos (Android, iOS)
Screenshots of Google Photos
Google Photos (Image credit: Future/Sally Grotta)
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Google Photos is the only photo app that we consider a necessity for any mobile device. If you’ve ever lost all your media files when your phone died or was misplaced, you’ll understand why. While it only has minimal editing tools, Google Photos organizes your photos and videos, offers easy sharing and — most importantly — automatically backs up your entire image library to the cloud. From there, it seamlessly syncs to all your devices where the app is installed. That includes Apple phones, laptops, tablets and desktop computers; Windows computers, and all Android devices.
Google’s photo-editing features are designed to require very little input from the user, and as such are quick and simple. For instance, the only user-controlled sliders you get are to adjust color, light and contrast (pop) on the overall image. It also has a handful of filters with a slider to control the strength of the effect. Google Photos has its fun side, too. For instance, it automatically generates animated GIFs from photos you take in batches.
Google Photos is also one of our top choices for the best photo storage and sharing sites. Just bear in mind that it no longer offers unlimited storage: any photos you upload will count against your free 15GB Google Drive limit. If you want more space, you’ll need to pay for it, with prices starting at $1.99 a month for 100GB.
That caveat aside, Google Photos is a must. Just download it, set it up and let it do its thing in the background.
Download Google Photos: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
- Pixtica (Android)
An image of Pixtica displayed on a smartphone
Pixtica doesn’t do much that you won’t find in the other best photo editing apps, but it’s rare to get all this in one place — and in such a gorgeous, user-friendly package too.
This Android-only app offers complete control over every aspect of photography, from ISO to shutter speed to focus, while live filters, panorama, HDR, stickers and hyperlapse modes give you plenty of creative options.
A paid version adds more filters and higher resolutions, and unlocks various other options, but the free one will be plenty for most people.
Download Pixtica: Android (opens in new tab)
- Prisma (Android, iOS)
Screenshots of the Prisma photo editing app
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Prisma offers something a little different from most of the best photo editing apps, in that it’s built around stylistic filters inspired by real artists. While plenty of other apps use filters — not least Adobe Photoshop Camera slightly higher up in this list — Prisma goes all-in on the art side of things, enabling you to turn your photo into mini-Picassos or Van Goghs. And it really works, using clever AI to apply the effects with uncannily accurate results.
There are more than 300 filters to use in total, but lots of them are locked behind a paywall; you can pay $1.99/week, $7.99/month or $29.99/year to open them all up. A premium subscription also gets you access to HD processing of your images. Once a filter has been applied, you can easily add a custom background or make further tweaks to exposure, contrast and other settings, save them to your phone or share them with others. Plus, new filters are regularly added to keep the app feeling fresh.
Download Prisma: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
- Facetune 2 (Android, iOS)
Screenshots showing the Facetune 2 photo editing app in use
Facetune 2 (Image credit: Future)
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Facetune 2 remains the best photo editing app for retouching portraits. Using sophisticated intelligence, it goes beyond skin smoothing and toning and teeth whitening; for instance, its makeup tools, contours with subtle color, shadows and highlights. I particularly like the ability to turn a serious expression into a more appealing smiling portrait. The simple slider controls allow you to increase or decrease the intensity of the effects. You can even alter your portrait in the camera’s preview before you snap the picture.
Unfortunately, if you don’t buy the premium version of the app, you can’t use some of the more interesting tools. These include changing the background, sky or eye color, removing blemishes, or using the touch-up tools (such as removing eye bags, reshaping eyebrows and face structure, or adding skin glow).
The premium version costs $1.99/month, $35.99/year, or $69.99 for a one-time purchase, which is quite pricey. Still, the free version is a powerful tool. Download it to easily improve your portraits and selfies.
Download Facetune 2: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
- Afterlight (Android, iOS)
Screenshots of Afterlight
Afterlight (Image credit: Future)
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Afterlight 2 is designed for those who want to spend time editing individual photos. The tools for color, exposure, composition and structure are rather comprehensive, including layers, curves, and selective hue. The stickers are simple but varied, and text includes numerous fonts; both can be edited for color, opacity, placement, size and rotation. In addition to multiple levels of undo and redo, you can use the history screen to rollback your image to a specific stage. Or, you can use the layers screen to select, edit or delete a particular edit.
The interface is generally easy to use, after an initial confusion about a couple of non-standard icons on the home page. Unfortunately, a significant number of the tools and options, not to mention more than 130 filters, are available only if you buy a membership for $2.99/month, $17.99/year or $35.99/lifetime. Also, the Android version isn’t as advanced as the iOS version.
Download Afterlight: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
- VSCO (Android, iOS)
Screenshots of the VSCO photo editing app
VSCO (Image credit: Future)
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With its focus on traditional photography, VSCO has a good variety of photo corrections and adjustments that produce nice quality results, including film-emulsion-type filters. It can even import RAW files. However, its feature set isn’t as comprehensive as some of the other best photo editing apps. For instance, it doesn’t have selective edits, text or special effects, And while you can choose your border color from within your photo, the only type of border is a rather clunky one that will create a square photo format. Still, you can save up to only 10 “recipes” — lists of edits done to a photo — to use on other images. VSCO’s camera also offers a nice array of pre-capture controls (only in iOS, not Android), including selective focus point, and manual control over white balance, ISO and exposure.
VSCO has a community of users and influencers (“VSCO girl” is an actual meme), but don’t expect the kind of interaction you have on Instagram or other social networks. On the other hand, it’s easy to post photos from VSCO to any network that’s on your phone, though only one at a time. Any photos you post to your VSCO profile are public even to those who don’t have a VSCO account, and the only privacy settings relate to sharing your photos’ location settings.
The free app is limited to basic edit tools (still images only) and ten presets (filters). For $19.99/year, you’ll have access to a video editor, more than 200 presets, advanced editing tools (such as HSL and borders), still and animated montage tools (including layering), weekly photo challenges, and more robust learning support (tips, tricks and tutorials). VSCO is a photographer’s tool that creates quality results, with the tools that it offers.
Download VSCO: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
- TouchRetouch (iOS, Android)
Screenshots showing the Touch Retouch app in use
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Google’s new Magic Eraser tool has got plenty of attention since it arrived on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro
phones, but it’s hardly the first app to remove unwanted objects from photos. In fact, TouchRetouch has been around for years, quietly ridding your images of photobombers or unsightly background features. It’s incredibly easy to use: you simply paint over the object you want to remove and click the friendly “Go” button — and just like that, it’s gone.
Admittedly, it’s not always 100% successful, and definitely works better on shots where the unwanted object is on a relatively plain background, but for the most part it does the job, and at just $2 it’s hardly going to break the bank. There’s also a tool for removing straight lines such as wires.
Download TouchRetouch: Android (opens in new tab), iOS (opens in new tab)
How to choose the best photo editing app
The field of photo-related apps is very crowded and competitive. So when one app comes up with a popular feature, others quickly jump on the bandwagon. For example, Snapchat’s success with its photo and video messages that quickly disappear has generated copycats.
In general, though, the best photo editing apps tend to fall into two categories: Those intended for everyday consumers, and those geared more towards professional photographers or prosumers. We’ve included both types of apps on this list, but it’s worth assessing your needs before choosing an app.
As is the case with most apps, the majority of the best photo editing apps give you a certain number of features for free, but you have to pay a monthly or annual subscription for the full suite of features.
How do photo editing apps compare to desktop alternatives?
The best photo editing apps are ideal for quick edits on a phone, but what extra functionality do you get if you use the best photo editing software on a desktop or laptop?
Well obviously that depends on the specific apps and programs. But in general, you can break down the differences into four key areas:
Size of display
If you’re editing a photo on a phone using an app, you’re necessarily going to be viewing it on fairly small screen. Even on a tablet, you’re not likely to be above about 10 inches — whereas most laptops tend to start at 10in and go up to 15 inches or more. And with desktops, you can obviously go far bigger still. When making detailed edits, a bigger screen is always going to be preferable.
Control methods
On a phone or tablet you’re generally going to be using your finger, or possibly a stylus or Apple Pencil. On a desktop or laptop it’s more likely to be a trackpad or mouse, plus keyboard. Both have their advantages and which you prefer may depend on what you’re trying to do or what you’re most used to.
Complexity of features
Desktop photo-editing software will usually offer a richer photo-editing experience than an app option. To take Photoshop as an example, the app version gives you an excellent array of photo-editing options, but you’re not going to be using layers and doing complex cutouts with it. For most people, an app will include the main editing tools you need, and desktop software may well be overkill — particularly if all you want to do is brighten up a photo and share it on WhatsApp. But if you intend to do something a little more creative, full-fat desktop software will win out every time.
Price
Most of the best photo editing apps cost are either free or cost no more than a few dollars. Many of the entries in our list of the best photo editing software cost a lot more!
How we test the best photo editing apps
The apps represented a wide range of focus and purpose. So, when we developed our test scripts, we made sure that we judged and rated each app based on its own strengths and weaknesses, as they relate to what the app is meant to do.
All apps were tested for:
Quality and accessibility of the interface.
Ease of use.
Number and quality of features.
Ease and versatility of sharing.
How well it achieves its stated purpose (such as photo editing or backing up).
Other aspects that we selectively tested, depending on the app, are:
Versatility of photo import.
Versatility of camera module.
Photo-editing capabilities, versatility and ease of use.
Ease of use, power, flexibility and fun of collaging tools and other projects.