There are billions of photos taken around the world every day, but let’s face it, most of them are rubbish. A bad photo with an Instagram filter is just a bad photo that’s trying too hard. If you want your snaps to stand out, they need a bit of tender loving care. Get them onto your computer screen, fire up some top-notch image-editing software and you’ll be able to unleash the full potential of your images. These editors put you in control of your photos, making corrective and creative effects work in sympathy with the image, rather than just being slapped over the top. If you have a camera that shoots RAW, it’s crucial to use the right software to make the most of those RAW files. Switching to RAW is like finding the fifth gear for your camera, pushing its performance in low light and teasing out magnificent colours that were previously hidden from view.
The best image editors can also turn their hand to graphic design projects – posters, flyers, invitations and newsletters. Read on to find out what to look for, and which package is right for you. How to choose the best photo- and image-editing software Image editors vary greatly in complexity and cost, and also in the tasks they cover.
Affinity Photo is a very popular image editing application that’s every bit as powerful as Photoshop is and is definitely one of the best paid Photoshop alternatives out there. The app brings a ton of cool and useful features including tools like the Pen tool, rulers, guides, and grids. We have previously mentioned about best photo editing application for Linux and now we are with Best free photo editing software for MAC Osx. For the working on paid & free photo editor software have tutorial class in PDF, Video tutorial or on websites.
We’ve picked out the best editors on the market, so choosing the right one for you boils down to what you want to do with it. Are Adobe Photoshop alternatives any good? Once upon a time, everyone would have agreed that Photoshop was the only photo editing software worth investing in, but since that time things have changed. While Photoshop is still the most powerful program there is at what it does, there are plenty of alternatives that offer more creative inspiration than what Adobe can offer. What features do I need?. Photo library management – You might have many thousands of photos on your computer, so it’s helpful to be able to browse them quickly.
Sorting by capture date or location (for GPS-enabled cameras) is more rewarding than rummaging through folders. You can also tag people and places to help you find them later, and face detection can tag faces automatically. For advanced users, being able to rate photos is crucial when picking the best shots from a photoshoot. Photo filters – Off-the-shelf filters give photos a stylised appearance such as vintage, grunge or pop art. These are widely available in free apps and web-based editors such as Google Photos, but they’re less common in the general-purpose editors listed below. These editors can all create similar results by combining individual effects – and this gives far greater control over the process – but if you want single-click filters for your photos, Photoshop Elements is the one to go for. RAW image processing – When a digital camera saves a photo as a JPEG, it makes lots of decisions about how to interpret the raw image data coming off the sensor.
Save as a RAW file instead and – with the right software – you gain meticulous control over this process. It means you can manipulate colours and details much more dramatically before image quality starts to fall apart. Layer-based editing – Layers let you combine multiple elements into a single image while still keeping them independently editable. They might be multiple photos, text, a logo or a colour gradient.
All the editors below, except for Lightroom, support layers. They also support masks that allow certain pixels in a layer to be hidden but not deleted. Adjustment layers apply effects as a discrete layer, which means they can be tweaked or removed later. CMYK support – If you’re making flyers, newsletters or other printed document and need more than 100 copies, it’s usually cheaper and much less hassle to get it printed professionally.
Commercial printing services require artwork to be submitted in CMYK format, where colour information is recorded as a mix of cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black). Digital cameras record red, green and blue (RGB), so you’ll need to be able to convert images before submitting them.
Some printing services will accept RGB artwork, but they can’t promise colour accuracy for the printed documents. How much do I need to spend? If you’re looking for professional features without a big price tag, Affinity Photo is the answer. It costs £49 and in some ways is more powerful than Photoshop CC. Photoshop Elements leads the way for home users with its friendly, results-oriented interface backed up by some seriously powerful editing tools. If you don’t want to compromise, the combination of Photoshop CC and Lightroom — in the form of the Creative Cloud Photography Plan — is well worth the £120 annual subscription fee. The best photo-editing software 1.
Serif Affinity Photo 1.6: The best editor for ambitious users on a budget Price: £49. Serif has a strong track record for creative software, but it started again from scratch for the new Affinity Photo. The result is an image editor that's uncluttered, extremely responsive and delivers exactly the right tools for advanced image-editing tasks.
Now up to version 1.6 and with plenty of new features to like, Serif’s newcomer is fast becoming a viable Photoshop alternative. It includes sophisticated blemish removal, mesh warp for radically altering the shape of layers and adjustment layers for non-destructive colour correction. Its Live Filters go further than Photoshop CC, applying blur and distortion effects non-destructively so they can be tweaked or removed later. CMYK support is included for preparing files for professional printing. RAW support is excellent, with support for the latest cameras and elegant controls for enhancing colours and details, although it’s not quite up to Lightroom’s standards. There’s no library management, so consider buying Lightroom outright for £104 for RAW processing and Affinity Photo for editing.
That’s more expensive than the Creative Cloud Photography Plan in the short term, but they’re yours to keep without ongoing subscription costs. Key specs – Operating system support: Windows 7/8/10, macOS 10.9 and newer 2. Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan: The best bundle for creative professionals Price: £121 per year.
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Photoshop used to be too expensive for non-professionals, but the arrival of the Creative Cloud Photography Plan has put an end to that. Buying a year’s subscription from Amazon costs £100, saving £21 compared to buying directly from Adobe. That’s about twice the price of paying for yearly updates to the latest version of Photoshop Elements.
It offers a lot more than Elements, though. Features such as clipping paths, 16-bit colour and full CMYK support mean it’s able to slot into professional workflows. It includes advanced text formatting options normally reserved for DTP software. It can work with massive images beyond Elements’ 900-megapixel limit, all the way up to 90 gigapixels. Smart Objects allow image files to be combined in a project while maintaining a live link to the original file. It includes some additional effects, too, such as variable blur effects and the ability to send any image type through its superb RAW-processing module.
Photoshop CC requires a fast computer to run smoothly, though. The Photography Plan also includes Lightroom, which specialises in library management and RAW image processing. It has comprehensive support for cameras’ RAW files, comes with masses of profiles to correct for lens defects, has the best noise reduction in the business and powerful, precise tools to make colours look their best without looking overly processed. With Lightroom for everyday photo processing and Photoshop for more complex tasks, the Photography Plan is the obvious choice for serious hobbyists and professionals. Photoshop Elements is Adobe’s cut-down version of Photoshop for home users. Its Organizer module keeps track of all your photos and videos, sorting them by date, location, recognised faces and various other criteria. The main editor includes a Quick mode for applying off-the-shelf effects, plus a Guided mode that provides a bit more control and includes dozens of tutorials and templates such as cleaning up photos and panorama stitching.
In Expert mode, you’ll find the bulk of the tools that appear in the full version of Photoshop CC, including masks and adjustment layers, sophisticated selection tools and the Liquify warping effect, all wrapped up in an interface that looks more inviting and homely. It lacks CMYK support for professional printing, but there’s enough here to create sophisticated graphic design projects for home printing. Photoshop Elements uses the same core RAW processing engine as Lightroom, albeit without certain advanced features such as graduated filters for applying varying exposure settings to different parts of the frame. New to Elements 2019 is the ability to import HEIF images (that’s what your iPhone captures, Apple users), as well as a handful of guided edits. Our feeling on guided edits has always been that they tend to be a bit basic, but they can be useful in terms of figuring out roughly how to do something before going your own way with it. Advanced users can ignore the home-oriented features and stick to Expert mode, although they might be better served by Affinity Photo or Photoshop CC.
However, for home users, Photoshop Elements has lots of fun features plus plenty of power when they’re ready to use it. Once a niche piece of software for die-hard HDR enthusiasts – they of silly tone-maps and over-saturated colours – Aurora HDR has gradually become a powerful tool not just for lovers of HDR, but anyone with an interest in landscape or urban photography. The new version comes with features that should make Adobe’s Lightroom team sit up and listen: an improved per-pixel editing brush, including improved tools for dodging and burning. Feed in three bracketed exposures and it automatically blends them, bringing up the shadows while preserving highlights. It also automatically aligns images, allowing for movement between shots – or attempts at HDR photography on blowy days. In our tests, it handled both of these very comfortably, producing images with realistic, subtle tones and with no problems with alignment, even if the source images varied a lot compositionally.
With the automatic bit done, Aurora HDR 2019 continues to offer a really useful range of tools. These are all skewed towards tone and colour editing, so there’s no healing brush, for example, but those who are concerned with colour above all else will enjoy Aurora’s specialisation. Batch processing allows those with big groups of images to convert to make light work of things, while the export options – JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PSD plus a few others, each one complete with several variables – will be everything enthusiasts need, as well as for more than a few professionals. Aurora HDR 2019 is fast, powerful, and there are enough one-click filters that beginners will be able to make a start. It’s pricey but well worth a look. Key specs – Operating system support: 2010 Mac or newer, Windows 7 or newer.
Video-editing basics Editing apps can be simple or complex, but all usually have four elements: cutting, color correction, effects and audio tools. How advanced they are depends a lot (but not completely) on the price of the software. Let's look at those tools separately.
Nowadays, all these apps allow you to do what's called nonlinear editing, where you can load material from bins, play through and select the parts you want in the viewer, place them anywhere in the timeline, and play the edit back instantly. Because this process can be time consuming, the best apps let you do that quickly using keyboard shortcuts.
They also let you load and mix video at multiple 1080p, 4K and even 8K, all on the same timeline. The speed and maximum resolution also depend a lot on your computer or mobile hardware. (More on that in a bit.) Color correction.
Once you've edited your clips, you'll want to color correct them to fix any problems or create a special look. Adobe has a standalone color-correction app, but Final Cut Pro X's and Premiere's built-in color tools are also deep. Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve 15 has a full version of its advanced, professional-grade color-correction app built in.
Visual effects (FX) can be as simple as speeding up or 'time-warping' footage or adding filters, or they can be as complicated as creating complex composites that use multiple clips and elements. Again, Adobe and Apple have their own apps for that ( and, respectively) but also let you do a lot within the editing app. And DaVinci's free Resolve 15 might be the most advanced of them all, as its standalone Fusion app - one of the most advanced professional FX apps out there - is built right in. Video editors often hate doing audio, but most projects need at least some tweaking.
For instance, you probably need to adjust levels, do cross-fades and possibly equalize sound on just about every edit. Luckily, all the video-editing apps on this list can handle those chores, and many can do more-granular stuff like noise reduction. Hardware Short of gaming or 3D content creation, nothing taxes your computer, tablet or smartphone more than video editing. All the products on this list can use your PC's GPU to speed things up.
For basic cutting and audio work, you can get by with a decently fast computer with integrated graphics. If you want to get into color correction or effects without constantly waiting for renders, however, you'll want something with discrete graphics from NVIDIA or AMD. The more powerful your setup, the faster you'll be able to work and render out your final program. Unless you're a gamer, you may not have thought much about the GPU on your tablet or smartphone. However, there are now a lot of decent mobile video-editing apps, and Adobe recently announced a major new video app, that will work across desktop and mobile devices while syncing your work in the cloud.
To best use that app or others, you'll likely want Apple's iPad Pro or Android smartphones or tablets with Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 845 chipset. Best paid desktop apps. If you're willing to pay for Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription plan ($21 per month for just the app or $53 per month for the all-app plan), you'll get your money's worth: It's the most capable editing system on the market. It runs on both Windows and Mac, and Adobe also has mobile apps that let you do some work even if you're not on your desktop.
Premiere can directly import projects and files from Photoshop and even render After Effects projects from directly within the app. It supports just about every file format (though you can't export Apple ProRes from a PC) as well as 4K and higher resolutions, provided you have the computing horsepower. It's worth noting that Premiere Pro CC is on Windows than macOS, especially when it comes to rendering effects. It also has an intuitive interface, easy-to-understand tools and keyboard shortcuts for every function. At the same time, Premiere Pro CC is tremendously deep, with tons of effects built right in.
The Lumetri color corrector works much like Lightroom, so many folks will grasp the logic. Adobe recently introduced the AI-powered Color Match, which automatically matches shots, potentially saving you a lot of time. Finally, Adobe's audio tools are good enough to let you finish most jobs, with more than 50 effects and tools that make it easy to set levels clip by clip or for an entire sequence at once. The main downside is the price and subscription-only pricing, which is a turnoff for anyone but serious or pro editors. All told, however, Premiere Pro CC is a complete and powerful piece of software that is easy to recommend.
For Mac users, and Mac users only, Apple's $300 Final Cut Pro X app (FCPX) is the best choice. It's hard to be believe it was in 2011, and since that original, version, Apple has made numerous improvements and added numerous new features. FCPX has always had a clever editing interface, thanks to the so-called and numerous cutting tools.
It's easy to organize your material, thanks to the libraries, face analysis, tagging and color coding, though Apple's bin system takes time to get used to. Editing audio is easy and intuitive, as are effects and color correction, though the number of tools is limited compared to Adobe Premiere Pro CC. For professionals, the latest version of Final Cut Pro X (10.4.1) supports, a powerful, more-color-rich format that's ideal for HDR mastering. FCPX has a slightly weaker feature set than Premiere (the built-in color corrector is lacking compared to Lumetri, for instance). It only runs on a Mac, and you can get a lot more performance for your money with Windows PCs.
There's also an issue right now with external GPUs, as FCPX doesn't support them at all unless you use a special script. Overall, though, for serious amateurs, vloggers and even some pro users, Final Cut Pro X is a great choice. For YouTubers and prosumer editors, Corel's VideoStudio Ultimate offers a lot of features for the price. It's easy and even fun to use, thanks to the clean, well-designed user interface.
For instance, you can easily group and subgroup clips on a timeline when piecing a project together. The app supports most formats, including 4K, 360-degree VR and 3D media, just like Premiere Pro and other high-end packages. It also supports time-warping, stabilization and a huge number of customizable effects. Other features including motion tracking, chroma key (green screen) tools, lens correction and multicamera editing. It will automatically 'duck' background music during dialogue segments, and it comes with a royalty-free music library.
The weak points are slow rendering, Windows-only support, a lack of search for clips and effects, and a weak color-correction tool compared to rivals. Still, at $100, it's a powerful tool.
If speed is what you're looking for, CyberLink PowerDirector has that in spades. It takes a while to master, but once you do, you can turn projects around and export them faster than with most other programs. There are 99 tracks available for editing, in case you do a lot of multicamera editing or multilayer effects. The software supports 4K and 360-degree editing, and you can even design 360-degree titles.
The color corrector supports look-up tables to help you match up footage among sources, and there's an intelligent color corrector to help you get a consistent look. Other features include built-in stabilization, motion tracking and customizable AI effects. Finally, you can render and export your work quickly, and with great quality. The app doesn't support macOS, however, and you can't export QuickTime files in the MOV format, which could be a big problem for many editors. As mentioned, it's a pretty complicated app that takes a while to master. With a list price of $100, however, the strong points outweigh the weak.
Best free video-editing apps. Blackmagic Design completely remade Resolve for version 15, transforming it into one of the most powerful editing tools you can get at any price.
It also runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, so it's a true multiplatform editing system. Compared to the $299 Studio version, the free DaVinci Resolve 15 app lacks some collaboration features that individual editors won't need, along with some features like face-tracking.
You get nearly full versions of Fusion, one of the most powerful effects packages in the world, and Fairlight, an equally feature-rich audio tool. DaVinci's color corrector is also second to none, as it has been used by professional colorists in the post-production industry since the mid-1980s. You could use it to edit a feature film and then do all of your own special effects, color timing and even the post audio mix, if you want to wear all those hats. Just a few of the many features include facial recognition; true 3D compositing; tracking and stabilization; 3D particle systems; 2D and 3D titles; spline-based animation; primary, secondary and curve-based color correction; HDR and RAW video support; audio mixing; ADR; and 5.1, 7.1 and 22.2 audio mastering. It can also input and output just about any format up to 8K, and it works quickly, thanks to Cuda and Metal support on Windows and Mac. As you can imagine, it takes a lot of time to learn all these tools, so it's an intimidating package for newbies. If you're willing to go through the process, though, it's a deep, powerful app - so it's pretty amazing you can get it for nothing.
And if you decide to upgrade to the Studio version, it's just $300 - no subscription needed. Avid is the most popular professional-editing app in the film and TV industry, but as with Adobe's Premiere Pro CC, the pricey subscription model isn't for everyone.
Luckily, Avid recently Media Composer First, a free app for Mac and PC with most of the power of the big apps. Avid's biggest selling point has always been its powerful media-organization tools, designed for feature films and series with tons of footage.
You can even sync up scenes with lines from a script. The editing interface lets you cut very quickly and leans more on keyboard shortcuts than other packages.
Effects-wise, you get the excellent Finesse color corrector, a stabilizer, time-warp slow motion, multicam editing, plugins and more. It is missing some features from the standard app like color-correction curves and fluid speed changes. It's also limited to four channels and can only output up to 1080p 60 fps video - not 4K. The main target audience for Avid's Media Composer First is young editors hoping to get a job in the TV or movie-production industry, as you could quickly transition to the pro version. For beginners and casual users, you still can't beat Apple's iMovie. It has a simple, beautiful interface; nice themes; a great green-screen tool; and tons of audio tools.
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It comes with video stabilization, some nice effects and a pretty decent color corrector. You also get respectable speeds for both editing and exports. For a free tool, it's also surprisingly easy to organize and view clips up to 4K shot with an iPhone, GoPro camera or DSLR/mirrorless camera. Unfortunately, iMovie lacks motion tracking, multicam and 360-degree VR support. And while it's easy to learn and simple to use, the editing interface is too simplistic for any serious editing. It's also limited to two video tracks.
Still, if you do a lot of editing for fun and mostly shoot on an iPhone, iMovie should be able to do everything you need. Much like Avid and DaVinci Resolve, Lightworks is a well-known name in the professional postproduction industry. The free version of the app has most of the features of the paid one, with one big exception: You can only output web files at 720p. However, you can purchase a one-month license for $20 if you need to output the odd project at a higher resolution. Lightworks has fantastic editing tools, including one of the best timelines in the business, as you'd expect from a product used to edit The Wolf of Wall Street, Shutter Island and other major motion pictures. It has a decent color corrector, supports multicam editing and gives you the unique ability to access and purchase stock footage directly from the timeline. The lack of export beyond 720p is a downside, and audio and effects tools are far more limited than on Blackmagic Design's DaVinci resolve.
If you're looking for a fast, powerful cutting tool for YouTube videos, however, Lightworks is a good choice. Mobile video-editing apps. This is a great free option for smartphone editing on iOS or Android. KineMaster has a surprisingly deep feature set considering the tiny user interface, letting you edit multiple layers, fine-tune up to four audio tracks, adjust colors, change clip speeds and even do green-screen chroma keying. It's powerful enough for fairly serious editing but also simple to use. And best of all? If you do most of your editing on a smartphone, take a look at Adobe's Premiere Clip for Android and iPhone.
It supports 4K video, which most decent smartphones shoot nowadays, and the clear interface lets you easily piece together clips using automatic or free-form editing modes. It includes some filters and lets you save your edit to Adobe's Creative Cloud (without needing a subscription) and even load your edit up in Premiere Pro CC. The cons are that it doesn't let you rotate video, and transitions are limited.
Overall, it's a decent option for simple smartphone edits, particularly if you use Adobe's Premiere Pro CC desktop-editing program. Wrap-up We're in a golden age of video editing with powerful programs like Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Apple's Final Cut Pro X as well as free apps that are much better than they have a right to be. And if you're torn between paid apps, most - including Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Final Cut Pro X - let you try them for free for a month.There are plenty of other decent apps out there that are not even mentioned here, including,. Which one to pick depends on whether you do serious or casual editing, how much time you want to spend learning, and how much power you need. It's worth doing some research before buying: There's definitely an app out there that will fit your needs, but editing can be a laborious chore, so it's best to choose wisely in the first place.