What Is The Best Image Editor For Mac

When you think of image editors on any platform, your mind goes straight to Photoshop. For most of us, paying Adobe’s high costs will get us an app that does more than we really need or care to do. As a result, we feel Pixelmator will win the hearts of most users on the Mac. It handles just about every image editing task you’d think to throw at it, and for less than the cost of two months of a Photoshop subscription.

Pixelmator

Platform: OS X
Price: $30
Download Page

New version of award-winning photo editor created by Skylum team for Mac & PC. Order Luminar today and get an exclusive price for the most advanced image editing software. Best for: Image and photo editing of any kind, if you can afford it. Photoshop is the best image editor of its kind, bar none. A few years ago we wouldn’t have even included it on such a list, because the hundreds of dollars required to purchase it outright put it out of reach of most users. The Best Image Editor for Mountain Lion. The word ‘best’, when it comes to image editors or any other computer program of the sort, has always been subjective. There are a number of image editing programs that you can use on your computers running Mac OS 10.8, and many of them are excellent at what they do.

Features

• Layer-based workflow allows for flexible adjustments
• Several image adjustment tools for a variety of options
• Layer styles save time when creating common effects
• Includes a robust set of filters for image alteration and manipulation
• Supports importing and exporting several popular image formats
• Several helpful retouching tools, including a healing brush helps you easily remove unwanted blemishes and even objects in photos
• Beautiful filters for quick image enhancements, color changes, and popular “retro” looks
• Support for OS X Mavericks features like tags, multiple displays, and App Napp
• Excellent brushes and painting tools
• Over 160 awesome effects
• Open and save in PSD, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, and many other popular formats
• Save images in iCloud for automatic syncing across all your Macs
• Share photos directly from Pixelmator via email and to popular social networks
• Works seamlessly with existing Photoshop documents

Note: This doesn’t even begin to dive into the features in Photoshop, which are too long to name here. You can visit Adobe’s official Photoshop page to learn more, but even they don’t detail every single feature. Your best bet is to make use of their 30-day trial and explore for yourself.

Advertisement

Where It Excels

Pixelmator does so much for such a low price. Thanks to Adobe, we’ve come to expect powerful image editing tools to cost at least a few hundred dollars. You can buy Pixelmator for only $30 and it’ll do most everything you need. Cost-efficiency doesn’t make an app worth buying, of course, but you can do so much with this one that it’s hard to believe the price is so low.

Advertisement

If you take a look at the feature set you’ll notice it looks a lot like Photoshop’s. You won’t find some things (more on that later), but it can do the tasks most of us care about. You can repair photos with the healing brush, manipulate the structure of an image with the liquify tool, make all sorts of color adjustments with common tools like curves and levels but also employ filters for quick edits, save to a variety of formats (including Photoshop), and a ton more. Pixelmator has shapes and drawing tools, too, in case you’re creating images that aren’t just photos. You can add styles to those shapes, photos, or other elements quickly. The same works for layers. Pixelmator works a lot like Photoshop but with a more user-friendly and attractive interface. If you don’t feel like paying for Adobe software anymore, a small learning curve will have casual Photoshop users working well in Pixelmator very quickly.

‎Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about Fotogenic: Photo Editor. Download Fotogenic: Photo Editor for macOS 10.10 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. Adobe photo editor for mac. Mar 28, 2013  ‎Read reviews, compare customer ratings, see screenshots, and learn more about Fotor Photo Editor. Download Fotor Photo Editor for macOS 10.9 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. Many of us still keep our main libraries on our Macs because of its faster processors, larger storage, and all-around bigger computing power. The Mac is still the best device for serious photo editing, so you need some serious photo editing apps to make an impact. The built-in Photos app on Mac offers several useful photo editing tools.

Another huge advantage? Pixelmator is very fast. You don’t have to wait for much of anything. It utilizes a lot of OS X core technologies to stay optimized, and in version 3.0 FX the developers rebuilt its engine with speed enhancements in mind. The software just runs very quickly. For those with older hardware who feel Photoshop chugs along at too leisurely of a pace, Pixelmator will operate with less lag.

Advertisement

Where It Falls Short

You’ll realize Pixelmator isn’t Photoshop in several areas if they pertain to you. It doesn’t have a Camera RAW plug-in, which is immensely useful for those who shoot in RAW. It’s practically an application in itself. Pixelmator also can’t handle HDR (only through artificial means) animation, 3D rendering, color management, fine-grained space-efficient web image export, and a variety of other specific tasks that you may or may not need. For most, these shortcomings will not matter. To photographers and designers, however, they might. Of course, if you focus on photography and require complex editing you may prefer using Photoshop Lightroom anyway, and can use Pixelmator for your other image editing needs. Regardless, if you don’t need anything mentioned here you won’t feel Pixelmator falls short at all.

Advertisement

The Competition

If you don’t want to pay the hefty cost of Photoshop, you’ve come to the right section. Here are a few options that can help you do some of what Photoshop can do for a much lower price.

Advertisement

Adobe Photoshop ($19 per month) still reigns king as the image editor of the “elite” but not of the people. If you need to handle more complex tasks or have every feature imaginable at your disposal, you want Photoshop. Of course, you’ll have to pay for that privilege. Photoshop, as many of us know, doesn’t come cheap.

GIMP (Free) has been the go-to open source image editor for awhile, and it can do many things Photoshop can do. If you prefer Photoshop’s interface, however, you might want to check out GIMPshop (Free) instead, as it is basically the same program made to emulate the style of Photoshop.

Best Image Editor For Mac

Advertisement

Top 10 Photoshop Tricks You Can Use Without Buying Photoshop

You can do just about anything to an image with Photoshop, but if you don't have the cash to…

Read moreRead

Seashore (Free) is another image editor based on the GIMP’s technology, but has an interface that fits more with Mac OS X. It also focuses on providing basic image editing tools for most users rather than acting as a full replacement for Photoshop (or other expensive image editing software). If you just need to make basic edits, it is worth a look.

Advertisement

THIS CODE AND INFORMATION IS PROVIDED 'AS IS' WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND/OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. All other rights reserved. Terraria player editor for mac.

Gimp

LiveQuartz ($2) is another simple image editor. It comes with layer support, brushes and other tools, plus a few basic filters. It’s another decent option for basic edits.

Pixen (Free) is a more specialized image editor for pixel artists. It’s worth mentioning here because Photoshop’s tools for low-resolution artwork are pretty bad and Pixen makes for a good supplement (if you need one).

Advertisement

Lifehacker’s App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.

Advertisement

It doesn’t matter what you do, but everyone out of three people has a desire to become a photographer. This desire comes from editing an image on mobile or seeing professional landscapes on Facebook and Twitter timeline. However, if you really want to be a photographer or you want to give your raw images a professional touch, do check out these best photo editor apps for Mac. As macOS is a very stable operating system, you would be able to use these tools without any problem. Some of them are free, but you may have to purchase some tools if you have a strong wish to be a professional photographer.

Best Photo Editor Apps for Mac

1] Photoshop CC

Free Image Editing Software Mac

It doesn’t matter what kind of editing you want to do or whether you are a professional photographer or a newbie who wants to start photo editing, you can certainly use Photoshop, which has proved to be the best photo editing software for Mac. Although this is a paid software, the vast majority of people use this tool because of available features, accessibility, ease of use, affordable price and so on. You just need to spend $9.99/month to get the best photo editing tool for Mac. Alongside the image editor, you will get 20GB free storage to store all your files. The best thing is you can create 3D images, which is almost unavailable in most of the tools available for Mac. From basic editing like color correction to advanced editing, you can perform everything in this tool. Landscape, portrait, everything can be edited with the help of Photoshop CC.

Forensic hex editor for mac osx. Additionally Synalyze It! Is a full-featured Hex Editor for Mac OS X allowing you to edit files of unlimited size and interpret the bytes with dozens of text encodings. Essentially it ’ s a modeling tool for arbitrary file formats that is being used by software developers and data stream experts as well as in computer forensics.

2] Adobe Photoshop Elements

Photoshop Elements is another product by Adobe, which is one of the best alternatives to Adobe Photoshop CC. This particular tool would be useful when you have a lot of landscapes, and you need to edit them quickly. Instead of using Photoshop, you can try this Photoshop Elements tool, which is easier to use and it performs tasks quicker. From adding a special effect to change the color adjustment, you can do almost everything with the help of Photo Elements. Talking about price, it costs around $99.99. It has mainly four tabs called eLive, Quick, Guided, and Expert. The eLive tab will show various news related to Adobe. On the other hand, the Expert tab will let you edit the image within moments.

3] Pixelmator Pro

What Is The Best Image Editor For Mac

As the name suggests, Pixelmator Pro is a paid image editing software for Mac, which costs around $59.99. This is probably the most good looking and comes with the top-notch user interface with loads of functionalities to give your raw image a professional touch. All the options are just basic things, but they can do magic within moments. However, you may have to spend some time to understand all the features of this tool. Talking about features, you will get touch bar support, auto color adjustment, SVG support, color range selection tool, live previews and so on. You can share an adjustment after saving it in this tool, which is unavailable in other tools. As machine learning is integrated into this tool, you will definitely get a better and quicker result out of this software.

4] Corel AfterShot Pro

Corel AfterShot Pro is yet another awesome photo editor for Mac, which is available for macOS 10.9 or later version. It does support most of the RAW formats such as ARW, CR2, CRW, DCR, DNG, MRW, NEF, NRW, ORF, PEF, RAW, RW2, RWL, SR2, etc. Therefore, if you have a DSLR camera and you capture a RAW image, you can use this tool to enhance your photographs. Regarding other functionalities, you will get comprehensive watermarking, highlight recovery, blemish remover, image preset library, lens correction development kit, modular camera profiles, powerful adjustments, multi-version editing, precise control with selective editing, local contrast, high dynamic range tools (HDR), noise reduction, red-eye removal and more other options. You can customize the workspace according to your needs and hence, you can increase your productivity while using this tool. This awesome tools costs around $79.99.

Best gif editor for mac. 5] GIMP

GIMP is available for various platforms including Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. If you do not want to spend money on paid tools, and you just need basic editing with some professional –looking options, you can try GIMP, which is a free image editing software for Mac. According to some professionals, GIMP is a mini-Photoshop since it has a lot of similarities with that tool. From options to the user interface, you might find them similar right after opening this tool. On your right-hand side, you can find all the layers and adjustments. On your left-hand side, you would get all the options, tools, and more. Like Photoshop, it has a top navigation panel, where you can find all the options like File, Edit, View, Select, Image, Layer, Tools, Filters, Windows, and more. From color correction to make an adjustment layer, you can do everything with the help of this free tool.

Best Free Image Editor For Mac

6] Krita

Again, if you do not want to spend money on a basic touch, you can opt for Krita that is a free and open-source image editing tool for Mac. More specifically, Krita is a painting tool more and less image editing tool. Being said that, if you want to draw a comic or comic character or something like that, you should install Krita, which will make it easier to do things. It offers some useful options like drawing assistant, mirroring tools, layer management, selections, layer masks, full-color management, HDR support, transform tools, color palette and more. The best thing is it has PSD support. That means if you have created a file in Photoshop and wanted to do rest of the editing in Krita, you can do so without any problem. Talking about compatibility, you should have macOS 10.11 or later version to install this free tool.

There are more other tools available in this category. However, these aforementioned apps are probably the best since they come with a wide range of support, they are feature-rich, and you can use them even when you do not have much knowledge.