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I have to admit, I’m a fan of having a big screen when it comes to using photo editing software. But there are times when you want to clean up a picture while you’re on the go, and there are people who simply can’t be bothered with powering up large hardware only to make a compelling Instagram post. You may be surprised at just how much you can do with photos on a mobile app. Even advanced functions, such as masking, tone curve adjustments, overlays, blemish fixing, HSL color correction, and gradients are no longer the sole province of desktop photo programs.
For this list of the best mobile photo editing apps, we’re sticking with Android apps and iPhone apps that do full standard photo editing. Some also add tools for organizing, cloud storage, and even social photo spaces of their own. We’re not including any gimmicky apps that only do one type of editing, like face beautifying or collage creation. Please feel free to weigh in on any app listed here you think we’re wrong about—or any you think we should add—in the comments at the bottom.
Lightroom Mobile is a great photo app even if you don’t use the desktop version of Lightroom, Adobe’s category-leading photo workflow software. The mobile app offers deep post-shot editing, as well as a camera feature that lets you shoot in raw format on the iPhone (Android can do so with its native camera) which gives you more leeway in correcting exposure, white balance, and other aspects of your images. You can even shoot with filters like black-and-white enabled. The June 2022 update added video trimming and effect options.
Free users get a decent selection of editing tools and even filters—now with an Amount slider to increase or decrease the effect’s strength—and paid users get cloud storage for photos and a lot more effects, such as masking, healing, and suggested presets. The app is full of help and tips for producing great photos. Lightroom Mobile even lets you submit your work to its Discover community of photographers who may try their hand at editing your shot. You can subscribe to the mobile-only apps for $4.99 per month, with just 100GB of cloud syncing storage. A standard Lightroom Creative Cloud Plan ($9.99 per month) gets you full use of the app and 1TB of storage.
Price: Free; $4.99 per month for full feature set and cloud storage
Platforms: Android, iOS, web
Adobe Lightroom Mobile (for iPhone) Review
Another winner from Adobe is this simplified version of the company’s flagship Photoshop application. Like Lightroom Mobile, Photoshop Express is a freemium deal, but its paid plan is less expensive than Lightroom’s, at $2.99 a month or $34.99 a year. As with the related desktop application, Photoshop Express is typically used more for collages, blemish removal, text overlays, masks, and compositing than photo correction and enhancement. You do get all those tools in the app, however, and, like Lightroom Mobile and Snapseed, Photoshop Express supports raw camera files. A plentiful selection of filters rounds out the feature set.
Price: Free; $2.99 per month or $34.99 per year for full feature set
Platforms: Android, iOS, web
Adobe Photoshop Express Review
This impressively powerful and tool-rich iPhone app is nevertheless easy to use. (Android users: While there is an Afterlight app on Google Play, it hasn’t been updated since 2014, so we don’t recommend it.) You can get a good number of basic editing features in Afterlight’s free version—exposure, contrast, cropping, saturation, and so on—but many of its best tools are only available in the paid version. It costs a reasonable $2.99 per month, $17.99 per year, or $35.99 for eternity. The paid perks include tone curve editing, gradients, material and text overlays, sharpness, and advanced filters for hue, saturation, and lightness (HSL).
Price: Free; subscription for full feature set: $2.99 per month, $17.99 per year, or $35.99 perpetual
Platforms: Android (not recommended), iOS
The Apple Photos app is only available on Apple devices. It comes preinstalled on iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers (the desktop version is slightly more advanced). The mobile version of Apple Photos lets you make especially cool edits with photos shot on iPhones and iPads, such as Long Exposure and balance effects for Live Photos. If you have a newer iPhone Pro, you can shoot in Apple’s ProRaw, a format that combines the advantages of raw camera formats with Apple’s computational photography wizardry. This gives you more editing possibilities, like lifting shadows and changing white balance. The apps’s interface is slick, as you expect from any Apple product, and you get all the standard exposure and color adjustments you could want.
Price: Included with Apple devices
Platforms: iOS
Apple Photos Review
Google Photos is a service that’s mostly advertised as letting you store your photos in the cloud, but the mobile app also offers a good helping of both traditional and innovative photo editing tools. Those who sign up to the company’s Google One subscription storage pricing get more features in Google Photos than free users, including several particularly effective filters such as Dynamic, HDR, Luminous, Radiant, and Airy. Free users still get a full set of editing tools for adjusting the exposure, contrast, cropping, as well as adding text and drawing overlays. If that’s not enough, one menu lets you send an image to another photo app like PicsArt, if you have it installed. Note that the Google Photos mobile apps don’t support editing raw camera files, however.
Price: Included with free Google account; enhanced tools added with storage upgrade
Platforms: Android, iOS, web
Google Photos Review
Coming from the maker of the excellent InShot video mobile editor, is the InShot mobile app, a freemium app with impressive photo editing chops. It has Photoshop-like editing tools such as masking, as well as Prisma-type options, such as the ability to transform your photo with AI-powered art style transfers. You can do plenty for free, but the most dazzling effects and tools cost a reasonable $14.99 per year for continuous feature updates. The Pro version removes the plentiful ads and give you the current crop of features.
Price: Free; Pro version $14.99 per year
Platforms: Android, iOS
Piscsart has long taken positioned itself as the do-everything photo app. It has a seemingly endless assortment of editing and enhancement tools, but on top of that it also includes a social element of photo sharing. Members can participate in challenges and follow hashtags and creators. You can instantly remove backgrounds from portraits and replace them with textures and whatever you like. Unfortunately, to do most of the fun editing you need a paid account, which costs a lot at $11.99 per month.
Price: Free; $11.99 per month for full feature set
Platforms: Android, iOS, web
PicsArt Photo Studio (for Android) Review
Pixlr has been in the free photo app game for many years, having started in 2008. It’s also well known as a free web-based photo editor. Strong points include Canva-style templates, colorful overlays, and a good selection of collage layouts. You get all the standard photo adjustment tools as well. A reasonable annual fee of $23.88 (often discounted) removes the ads and lets you access even more effects and templates.
Price: Free; $1.99 per month or $23.88 per year for full feature set and no ads
Platforms: Android, iOS, web
Like Lightroom and PicsArt, Polarr provides a community for photo editors as well as tools for editing and embellishing photos. It’s available on all the major desktop and mobile platforms, as well as via the web. In addition to the standard brightness, contrast, shadows, and so on, it offers a wealth of gradients, overlays, and retouching and transformation tools. You even get tone curve editing, as well as LUT and raw camera file support. The cropping tool is strong, but there’s no auto-leveling. One noteworthy innovation is the app’s ability to share or consume presets via QR codes. A paid subscription gets you new content and styles weekly as well as the company’s video-filter app, 24FPS.
Price: Free; $3.99 per month or $19.99 per year for full feature set
Platforms: Android, iOS, web
One of the original innovators among mobile photo editing apps, Snapseed became part of Google’s portfolio in 2012. The app uses a unique interface in which you swipe your finger left or right to make an adjustment, or up and down to choose which adjustment you’re making. It lets you edit raw camera files (but only in DNG format) as well as JPGs. Editing tools include Healing Brush, Structure (sharpness), HDR, and Perspective. One big plus is that the app is completely free with no upsells.
Price: Free
Platforms: Android, iOS
VSCO is a longtime maker of professional filters for professional photographers. Its app offers the filtering you would expect for a mobile app as well as all the standard correction and editing functions. Like some other apps in this list, it offers a community for photographers. The app experienced a moment of notoriety several years back with what was known as the VSCO girl(Opens in a new window) movement. The interface is modern and clear, but editing in it seems to take a backseat to the sharing social aspect. That said, it does support raw camera files and offers advanced tools such as Split tone and HSL editing. A good number of the tools are behind the premium paywall, however.
Price: Free; premium for $7.99 per month or $29.99 per year
Platforms: Android, iOS
VSCO Review
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