Introduction
Whether you’re an amateur or pro photographer, photo editing apps for mobile devices have become extremely popular and useful. With high-quality cameras on most smartphones and tablets these days, we all have the ability to take great photos in the palm of our hand. However, even the best photos can often benefit from some quick editing tweaks and enhancements.
The top photo editing apps provide easy-to-use tools and controls to crop, adjust, filter and touch up mobile photos. Key criteria used to evaluate the best apps include:
- Features – Editing tools, filters, effects, text/sticker overlays
- Ease of use – Intuitive interfaces for mobile
- Price – Free or paid options
- Platforms – iOS, Android, or both
This article will cover a curated selection of the top photo editing apps for both iPhone/iOS and Android devices. Whether you want to make basic enhancements or have advanced creative editing needs, there are great options for mobile photo editing on both platforms. Read on for the top picks!
Top iOS Photo Editing Apps
With the impressive cameras on the iPhone, it’s no wonder that iPhone photography has become so popular. Luckily, there are also some fantastic photo editing apps that allow you to take your iPhone photos to the next level. Here are some of the top photo editing apps available for iOS:
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom is one of the most powerful photo editing apps available for iOS. It offers advanced features like batch editing, preset filters, radial and gradient filters, and detailed curve adjustments. Lightroom makes it easy to achieve a polished, professional look for your photos. It also syncs with Lightroom on your desktop for seamless editing across devices.
Snapseed
Snapseed from Google offers intuitive touch-based editing tools and powerful filters. You can quickly enhance photos with adjustments like tuning image brightness, contrast, saturation and more. Snapseed also lets you apply filters similar to VSCO, focal blur effects, and fun frames/borders.
Darkroom
Darkroom is designed with a clean, minimalist interface for a distraction-free editing experience. It makes advanced adjustments easy, with pro tools like curves, color mixing, and split tone mapping. Darkroom also handles raw photo editing with ease.
VSCO
VSCO is a popular app made famous for its aesthetic filters and film-inspired presets. The simple editing tools make artistic edits a breeze. VSCO also features a creative community, letting you share and find inspiration for your photos.
Afterlight
For quick, quality edits, Afterlight is a great choice. It includes filters, adjustment tools, frames, and text overlays for simple mobile editing. The workflow is intuitive and streamlined. Afterlight also incorporates its own creative community component to showcase your best edits.
TouchRetouch
TouchRetouch makes it easy to perfect images by removing unwanted objects or blemishes. You simply mark the items you want to delete, and the app seamlessly erases them. TouchRetouch uses intelligent technology to reconstruct the background behind removed objects.
With this stellar selection of photo editing apps, iPhone photographers have everything they need to take their work to the next level. The best part is that they’re always right in your pocket!
Top Android Photo Editing Apps
Android users are spoiled for choice when it comes to photo editing apps. Many excellent options are available, both free and paid, to enhance photos through filters, adjustments, collages and more. Here are some of the top photo editing apps available for Android:
Snapseed
Snapseed is a feature-rich editor developed by Google. It’s completely free and provides tools like healing, brush, hdr, perspective, and tune image adjustments. The user interface is clean and intuitive. Overall, Snapseed is one of the best photo editors available for Android.
Adobe Photoshop Express
Adobe Photoshop Express offers automatic one-touch adjustments like crop, color, brightness, and contrast. It also provides more advanced features like filters, frames, text, and spot healing. As you’d expect from Adobe, this app offers polished, powerful editing tools.
PicsArt
PicsArt is packed with options like collages, overlays, filters, text, stickers, and drawing tools. It makes the process of editing photos on mobile fast and fun. The app is free to download with optional in-app purchases.
PhotoDirector
PhotoDirector lives up to its name with professional editing tools like a layered editor, lens effects, and curve adjustments. The UI is highly intuitive and it’s free to use with in-app purchases. PhotoDirector is great for quick fixes and detailed edits.
PixelLab
PixelLab’s claim to fame is its text overlay function with hundreds of fonts to choose from. It also offers coloring book filters, sketch effects, shape masks, and more unique photo editing options. PixelLab is free with in-app purchases.
With this stellar selection of Android photo editor apps, you can transform images into works of art right from your phone. Try out a few to see which interface and feature set suits your style best.
Best Apps for Basic Edits
Basic photo edits include simple adjustments like cropping, applying filters, and adjusting brightness, contrast, saturation and other settings to enhance your photos. These are entry-level edits that don’t require expert skills. Here are some top options:
Adobe Photoshop Express
One of the best apps for basic edits on both iOS and Android is Adobe Photoshop Express. It provides a streamlined editing experience with options to crop, apply filters, adjust lighting, colors and more. The easy slider controls help you quickly improve your photos. It also includes an auto-fix feature that uses AI to instantly adjust images with one tap.
Snapseed
Snapseed from Google is featured-packed for basic photo enhancements. You can tune image parameters like white balance and saturation. It also includes filters and the unique Tune Image feature that lets you selectively adjust areas of a photo. Available on both mobile platforms, Snapseed makes basic editing easy.
Afterlight
For a great set of custom filters and adjustment tools, Afterlight is a solid choice on iOS and Android. It contains all the fundamentals like crop, rotate and straighten. The selective color and dodge & burn tools are handy for targeted tweaks. Afterlight is free to download with in-app purchases.
Best Apps for Advanced Edits
Advanced photo editing typically refers to making complex adjustments and transformations beyond basic editing like filters, cropping, and exposure. Advanced edits involve working with layers, making localized adjustments, distorting perspective, and more precise retouching.
Some top advanced photo editing apps for iOS and Android include:
Adobe Photoshop Express
Adobe Photoshop Express provides robust advanced editing tools alongside an intuitive interface. You can seamlessly remove unwanted objects, make precise selections and masks, correct perspective, retouch skin and blemishes, apply targeted adjustments with healing and red-eye tools, and blend layers. The touch-optimized UI makes advanced techniques accessible on mobile.
Snapseed
Snapseed from Google offers selective edits, brush tools for localized adjustments, and the ability to stack edits non-destructively. You can make advanced enhancements like targeted brightness, contrast, saturation, and structure changes. Snapseed also lets you shift perspective and lens blur, perfect for creative edits.
PicsArt Photo Editor
PicsArt provides professional-grade editing tools like layers and curve adjustments tailored for mobile. You can apply advanced edits to specific areas with brush tools and masked adjustments. PicsArt also has tools to distort perspective and tweak images in granular detail through the layer-based workflow.
The best advanced photo editors for mobile combine desktop-caliber features with intuitive touch interfaces. Look for layer support, brush tools, perspective correction, heal/clone stamps, and other precise adjustments. The most capable apps can transform mobile photography through pro-level editing.
Best Free Apps
iOS
Snapseed: Snapseed is one of the most full-featured free photo editing apps available for iOS. It offers advanced tools like healing, brush, structure, HDR, and perspective that go far beyond typical mobile editing.
Darkroom: For quick yet professional photo edits on iPhone, Darkroom is an excellent choice. It has filters, curves, and color editing tools. The interface is intuitive and streamlined.
Android
Snapseed: As with iOS, Snapseed is a top pick for free photo editing on Android. The app is made by Google and provides professional-level control with an easy learning curve.
PhotoDirector: This app offers many of the same editing tools as premium mobile apps, including a layered editor, lens effects, and merge modes. The ads are unobtrusive.
Best Apps for Collages
Collages allow you to combine multiple photos into a single image, often with creative backgrounds, frames, textures, and arrangements. This makes collages a popular way to showcase memories, events, or themes in a visually compelling way.
On iOS, some of the best apps for collage creation include PicCollage, Moldiv, and PhotoGrid. PicCollage is full-featured with hundreds of layouts, backgrounds, overlays, and fonts to let your creativity shine. Moldiv takes a more artistic approach with painting, drawing, and text tools to hand-craft memorable collages. PhotoGrid offers customizable grids and adjustment tools for quick and easy collage making.
For Android users, top choices include Photo Collage Maker, Collage Maker, and Collageable. Photo Collage Maker has versatile templates and grids with scrapbook-style decorations. Collage Maker focuses on flexibility with drag-and-drop image placement and shape clipping. Collageable makes it simple to blend multiple photos together into a collage masterpiece with unique layouts and designs.
With these excellent apps, you can easily stitch photos together in new creative ways to remember special times and tell visual stories. The collage options let you showcase your favorite moments with a personalized artistic touch.
How to Choose the Right Photo Editing App
With so many photo editing apps available for iOS and Android, it can be tricky to decide which one is the best fit for your needs. Here are some tips on choosing the right app:
Consider Needed Features vs Complexity
Think about what types of edits and adjustments you need to make. Do you just need basic cropping and filter options? Or are you looking for more advanced features like layering, curves, and advanced selection tools? Don’t choose an app that’s too complex for your needs as you’ll end up paying for features you don’t use. But also make sure the app has the core features you’ll need.
Compare Availability and Price on iOS vs Android
The selection of apps can vary across iOS and Android. Make sure the app you want is available on your mobile platform. Also compare the prices – some apps are free on one platform but paid on the other.
Check Reviews and Ratings
Take a look at reviews and overall ratings in the App Store and Google Play Store. This will give you a good idea of the quality of the app, and how user-friendly the interface is. Pay attention to recent reviews too, as apps can change over time.
Consider Sharing and Exporting Options
If you’ll need to export edited photos for printing or sharing on social media, make sure the app has good output options. Many apps allow you to save back to your Camera Roll in high resolution. But some additional sharing features like built-in printing or social media integration can be useful.
Evaluating your needs and doing some comparison research will help you select the best photo editing app for your phone. The top options provide powerful features without a steep learning curve. With the right app, you’ll be able to take your mobile photos to the next level.
Pro Tips for Photo Editing Apps
Getting the most out of photo editing apps requires utilizing some key techniques and features. Here are a few pro tips to take your edits to the next level:
Learn keyboard shortcuts – Most photo editing apps have handy keyboard shortcuts for common tasks like saving, zooming, copying, pasting, etc. Learning these can speed up your workflow tremendously.
Use layers – Layers allow you to apply edits to specific parts of a photo without altering the entire image. Use layer masks, adjustment layers, and more for advanced, non-destructive editing.
Shoot in RAW – RAW photo formats retain more data and give you greater flexibility for exposure, color, and white balance adjustments compared to JPEGs. Editing RAW images in apps like Lightroom will provide superior results.
Utilize built-in tools – Don’t just stick to the filters. Dive into the specialized tools that apps provide like healing/clone brushes, curves, hue/saturation controls, and more to finesse your edits.
Export and save frequently – Export your edited photos at multiple sizes and save incremental versions as you work. This allows you to revert to earlier edits and preserves your changes between sessions.
Learn from tutorials – Watch video tutorials to pick up tips, tricks, and techniques from experts to bolster your skills. Many apps have built-in tutorials as well.
Leveraging these kinds of pro techniques will empower you to get the most out of your favorite photo editing apps. With practice, you’ll be able to efficiently edit photos like a pro.
Conclusion
Photography apps allow you to transform your phone photos into works of art, but you need to select the right app for your needs. The best apps for mobile provide high-quality filters and tools, speedy editing capabilities, and stand-out features like AI technology and preset packs.
In this guide, we covered the top photo editing apps available on iOS and Android. For iPhone, Luminar AI and Adobe Lightroom are hard to beat in terms of top-notch editing tools and professionally designed presets. Opponents on Android include Snapseed for intuitive yet advanced editing and PicsArt for its vast filters and toolkit.
When choosing a mobile photo app, make your selection based on factors like:
- Intended uses – choosing between casual everyday edits versus pro-grade manipulations
- Free vs paid features
- Availability of filters, tools, and other special effects
- Complexity of the interface and controls
Start with a free version of a top-rated app to test how well it works for you. The most feature-rich apps often have both free and paid versions to upgrade as your skills progress. With a carefully chosen photo app, you’ll be creating gallery-worthy imagery to share in no time!
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