Best Photo Editing Apps In 2024 (Free vs Paid)

Explore best photo editing apps for enhancing pictures on your Android or iPhone.

For anyone who enjoys taking pictures, whether casually, professionally, or as a social media influencer, top-notch photo editing apps can boost and refine your photos, making even your best shots even better.

No matter if you’re taking selfies, capturing moments with your dog, or creating a tempting photo of your meal, these apps can enhance your pictures. This holds true even if you have one of the top camera phones.

What makes a photo editing app one of the best? It should be easy to use and intuitive. Nobody likes spending a lot of time searching for settings in complicated menus.

Good photo apps need lots of tools to make your pictures look great. Plus, it should be easy to share them with friends and family. That’s why you took the photos, after all!

We’ve tested every app on this list thoroughly to make sure each one gets the Tom’s Guide approval. Keep reading for our picks of the top photo editing apps.

We tried many popular apps and chose the best photo editing one. The right one for you depends on your needs. Look at all our picks to make the best choice.

PicsArt stands out as the best photo editing app for us. It’s enjoyable, simple to navigate, and it pretty much has everything you need for mobile photography. You get a bunch of creative options, great editing tools, and a wide range of cool filters. Plus, you can easily choose or make playful stickers, put your pictures together in personalized collages, add artistic text, and share your creations. The camera part comes with effects and tools you can use before taking a photo.

Engage with Remix Chat to share and edit photos with PicsArt’s 150 million monthly users or just your pals. Simple tutorials guide you, and challenges encourage sharing creations based on a specific edit or theme. The community votes to pick the winners.

PicsArt premium ads often interrupt editing, which can be bothersome. If you want to get rid of them and access extra features like the video editor, more tools, filters, and content, you need to purchase a premium subscription. It costs $11.99 for one month or $55.99 per year. Students can also enjoy a discount.

PicsArt gives everyday photographers easy-to-use tools for editing photos and creating collages. You get a bunch of creative options, making it enjoyable and lively to use.

Snapseed caters more to dedicated photographers than casual users. It’s ideal for those who wish to invest time in enhancing their images on the fly. The app offers advanced editing tools like selective edit brushes and a variety of film-inspired filters such as Lens Blur, Retrolux, and Double Exposure.

For photographers who pay attention to details, Snapseed isn’t just enjoyable; it can become quite addictive. We had a great time exploring its various tools like exposure, color, masking, and reshaping. Playing around with brushes and filters while trying out different settings was a blast. The best part is that the editing doesn’t mess up your original photo. You can always go back to the Stack, where all your edits are, and tweak or remove any change, even fix typos. If you want to apply an effect to only part of your picture, there’s a Stacks brush for that. Plus, you can save a set of edits as a “Look” and use it on other photos or share it with fellow users.

Snapseed is a great app for serious photographers who like to edit their photos. It has cool tools and lets you edit without messing up your original photo. Plus, it’s free, and there’s no paid version.

Adobe Photoshop Camera stands out as a best photo editing apps. Its AI adds unique effects and corrects photos, whether you capture them before or after using your phone’s camera.

Photoshop Camera employs filters, known as “lenses,” to add special effects or tweak color, lighting, and clarity. What sets Camera apart is its use of Adobe Sensei, which automatically recognizes the photo type (portrait or landscape) and creates masks for crucial elements, like a face or the sky. For example, sky lenses can alter sky color, add or remove clouds, and even incorporate reflections in water without impacting other parts of the image. Certain lenses include “sprites” — smart objects that can be pinched, zoomed, and moved within a Sensei-identified area of the image. This allows for positioning and resizing of lens-placed objects (like planets or clouds). Additionally, some lenses feature small animations, such as shooting stars or a launching rocket.

The Adobe Photoshop on iPad has cool desktop features like the refine edge brush, helping you select objects more precisely, and canvas rotation. These features also work with touch controls.

Adobe assures regular additions of new lenses, all without charge. These include creations by famous artists and influencers. Each lens offers variations through right or left swipes, providing extended photo exploration. PS Camera, a delightful app, simplifies photography with its push-button approach, though some effect adjustments are possible. It caters more to casual photographers than professionals or serious enthusiasts. The app is free, with no premium version available.

Pixlr stands out as a great app for tweaking photos if you’re a casual photographer. It’s perfect for making small adjustments, adding cool effects, and easily sharing on your favorite social networks. The user-friendly interface makes it a breeze to explore and have fun enhancing your pictures.

Pixlr offers a range of simple photo tools that are easy to use. It provides brushes for making specific edits like darkening or undoing changes. The special effect filters, overlays, and borders add a fun and appealing touch. There are also diverse and enjoyable cartoonish stickers. You can swiftly make collages using preset layouts or templates, allowing you to rearrange, zoom, and move your photos within the designated spots.

Pixlr’s premium version, priced at $1.99 per month or $11.99 per year, removes ads and offers additional content like stickers, overlays, borders, and fonts. While professional photographers might feel the editing tools are limited, casual users will appreciate the app’s user-friendly creativity.

Adobe Lightroom’s mobile version, available on iOS and Android, is part of a cloud-based system. It lets you store all your photos and access high-quality files on all your devices. When you get the full Lightroom system, starting at $9.99/month, you join a robust photo-processing setup for professional-level control and quality. If you only need a great photo app on your mobile device, standalone Lightroom Mobile is free. Or, for 100GB of storage, you can opt for a Premium subscription at $4.99/month.

Lightroom Mobile helps you learn photo editing easily. It has lots of interactive lessons to make you a pro at editing your pictures. The app has many tools for adjusting things like brightness, color, and more. Most edits use sliders that quickly show how changes affect your photo. The best part is, you can undo changes and go back to your original photo. Lightroom also lets you share your pictures and has a Discover section where you can learn from others’ editing steps. You can even share your edited photos with the Lightroom community.

Lightroom Mobile stands out as an excellent photo app for those deeply committed to enhancing their pictures. However, it might be too much for people who prefer making simple adjustments like brightness, cropping, or adding effects before sharing photos.

Instagram’s popularity, with over 850 million users, stems from its simplicity. It excels in easy and speedy sharing of photos and videos on social media. The user-friendly interface allows swift photo or video capture, quick edits, and simultaneous posting on various social networks.

Engaging with others through liking, sharing, and messaging is what most people do on Instagram. The crucial factor for businesses and influencers is the engagement rate, indicating how many people see and like your posts. Instagram offers tools to measure and boost this rate. You can now remove “ghost followers” who don’t interact with your posts and track popular hashtags. A security feature shows recent emails from Instagram, preventing phishing attacks. For those addicted to the app, there’s a new feature revealing how much time you spend on Instagram each day.

Instagram often changes its features, leaving some users confused and others excited. However, one thing remains constant—its popularity keeps on growing.

Google Photos stands out as a must-have on any mobile device. If you’ve experienced losing all your photos when your phone was lost or died, you get it. Even though its editing tools are basic, Google Photos neatly organizes your pictures and videos. Plus, it makes sharing easy and, crucially, backs up everything to the cloud. It syncs smoothly across all your devices, be it Apple or Android, phones or computers.

Google’s photo editing is super easy – you don’t need to do much. You get sliders for color, light, and contrast to tweak the whole picture. There are also cool filters with a slider to control how strong they are. Google Photos can even make animated GIFs from your batch of pictures without you doing anything.

Google Photos stands out as a great place for storing and sharing photos. However, keep in mind that it doesn’t provide unlimited storage anymore. The photos you upload will use up your free 15GB Google Drive space. If you need more room, you’ll have to subscribe, starting at $1.99 monthly for 100GB. Despite this limitation, Google Photos is highly recommended. Simply download and set it up, and it will seamlessly handle your photos in the background.

Pixtica offers features commonly found in other top photo editing apps. However, it stands out by providing a comprehensive set of tools in a beautiful and user-friendly package.

In this app exclusive to Android, you get full control of your photos. You can adjust everything, like ISO, shutter speed, and focus. Plus, there are cool features like live filters, panorama, HDR, stickers, and hyperlapse for creative fun.

The free version has enough features for most people, but if you want more filters, higher resolutions, and additional options, you can go for the paid version.

Prisma is a unique photo editing app. Unlike many others, it focuses on artistic filters inspired by real artists. While other apps use filters too, Prisma fully embraces the art aspect. It lets you transform your photos into mini masterpieces, resembling the styles of famous artists like Picasso or Van Gogh. The app effectively applies these effects using smart AI for surprisingly accurate results.

Over 300 filters are available, but many are only accessible with a subscription priced at $1.99/week, $7.99/month, or $29.99/year. With a premium subscription, you can also enjoy HD image processing. After applying a filter, you can effortlessly add a personalized background, adjust exposure, contrast, and more. Save your edited photos to your phone or share them. The app stays updated with new filters for a continuously fresh experience.

Facetune 2 is a great app for improving your photos, especially portraits. It does more than just make your skin smooth or whiten your teeth – it has smart features like makeup tools, adding subtle colors, and playing with shadows and highlights. One cool thing is that you can change a serious face to a smiling one. You can easily adjust the effects using simple sliders. Plus, you can see the changes in your photo before taking the picture.

Regrettably, without getting the upgraded app, you can’t access some cool tools. These tools let you alter the background, sky or eye color, fix blemishes, and use touch-up features like removing eye bags, reshaping eyebrows and face, or adding a skin glow.

The fancy version is $1.99 per month, $35.99 each year, or $69.99 for a single buy, which is a bit expensive. However, the free one is a strong tool. Get it to quickly enhance your pictures and selfies.

Afterlight 2 is made for people who enjoy fixing up their photos. It has lots of tools for adjusting color, brightness, layout, and structure. You can do things like adding layers, curves, and changing specific colors. The stickers and text options are simple but offer plenty of choices. You can customize their color, see-through level, position, size, and rotation. If you make a mistake, you can undo it multiple times or check the history to go back to a certain point. Also, you can manage your edits using the layers screen.

The layout is quite user-friendly, though I got a bit confused by a couple of unusual icons at first. But, many features, along with over 130 filters, are only accessible with a membership, costing $2.99 per month, $17.99 per year, or $35.99 for a lifetime. Additionally, the Android version isn’t as advanced as the iOS one.

VSCO is good for basic photo editing with traditional styles. It has various corrections and cool filters, like film effects. It can handle RAW files too. But, compared to other top photo apps, it lacks some features. You can’t do selective edits, add text, or use special effects. The border options are limited, and you can only save 10 sets of edits for other photos. The camera controls are better on iOS than Android, with features like selective focus and manual settings for white balance, ISO, and exposure.

VSCO has a bunch of users and influencers, and there’s this meme about “VSCO girl.” But, it’s not as chatty as Instagram. You can share VSCO pics to any social network on your phone, but just one at a time. Your VSCO profile pics are public, even for people without VSCO. Privacy settings only cover sharing photo locations.

The free app gives you simple editing tools for pictures and ten filters. If you pay $19.99 per year, you get a video editor, over 200 filters, advanced editing options like HSL and borders, tools for both still and animated collages (with layering), weekly photo challenges, and better learning support with tips, tricks, and tutorials. VSCO is a useful tool for photographers, providing quality results with its features.

Various apps covered a broad range of purposes. When creating our test scripts, we ensured to evaluate each app’s strengths and weaknesses based on its intended functions.

We assessed all apps for:

1. Interface quality and accessibility.
2. User-friendliness.
3. Quantity and quality of features.
4. Ease and flexibility of sharing.
5. Effectiveness in fulfilling its intended purpose (e.g., photo editing or backup).

Additional aspects selectively tested, depending on the app, included:

1. Photo import versatility.
2. Camera module flexibility.
3. Photo-editing capabilities, versatility, and ease of use.
4. User-friendliness, power, flexibility, and enjoyment of collage tools and other features.

Google’s latest Magic Eraser tool on Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro phones has gained a lot of attention. However, it’s not the first app to erase things from photos. TouchRetouch has been around for a long time, quietly helping you get rid of unwanted objects or background features in your pictures. It’s super easy to use: just paint over the thing you want to remove and hit the “Go” button, and poof, it disappears.

It’s not perfect all the time, especially if the background is busy, but it usually works well, especially with simple backgrounds. It does the job most of the time, and it’s only $2, so it’s affordable. There’s also a tool to erase straight lines like wires.

In the world of photo apps, there’s a lot of competition. When one app has a cool feature, others follow suit. For instance, after Snapchat became popular with messages that vanish fast, other apps started doing the same.

Typically, photo editing apps can be divided into two groups: ones for regular users and others for pro photographers. This list has both types, so think about what you need before picking an app.

In many apps, including most photo editors, you get some features for free. However, to access all the features, you need to pay a monthly or yearly subscription.

Top-notch mobile photo apps excel in swift edits, yet what added features accompany utilizing premier desktop or laptop photo editing software?

The differences between photo editing on various devices can be broken down into four main areas:

1. Display Size: Phones and tablets have smaller screens (around 10 inches or less), while laptops typically range from 10 to 15 inches, and desktops can be even larger. Bigger screens are better for detailed edits.
2. Control Methods: Phones and tablets use touch controls, like fingers or a stylus. Desktops and laptops typically use a mouse or trackpad, along with a keyboard. Your preference may depend on the task or what you’re used to.
3. Feature Complexity: Desktop software, like Photoshop, provides a more advanced editing experience with features like layers and complex cutouts. Apps are good for basic edits, but if you’re into creative work, full desktop software is the way to go.
4. Price: Photo editing apps are often free or cost a few dollars, while desktop software, listed among the best, can be more expensive.

The choice depends on your needs, whether it’s a quick edit for WhatsApp or a more intricate creative project.