These free photo editing apps will help make the photos you take on your mobile device or tablet even more amazing than they already are. In fact, you might love them so much that you won't find much of a need for free online photo editors or free photo editing software.
You'll find a ton of features in each of these free photo editing apps that include options to adjust colors, change orientation, crop, add effects, frame a photo, add stickers, remove red-eye, add fonts, and so much more.
If you have an iPhone or an Android phone, you'll be pleased to know that nearly every one of these apps is available on your phone and completely free to download and use.
GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the best free photo editor around. It's packed with the kind of image-enhancing tools you'd find in premium software, and more are being added every day. These free photo editing apps will help make the photos you take on your mobile device or tablet even more amazing than they already are. In fact, you might love them so much that you won't find much of a need for free online photo editors or free photo editing software.
Pixlr
What We Like
Robust, easy-to-use tools.
Offers more than 200 overlays for collages.
Workspace is customizable.
What We Don't Like
Lacks tutorials and instructions.
Doesn't work with TIFF or RAW images.
No phone or online live support. Only email and FAQs.
Pixlr is another free image editing app that lets you edit images from your camera roll as well as new ones you take from inside the app.
One of the first things that stand out to me is the fact that Pixlr can overlay multiple images on top of one another, and even adjust their opacity and size, a bit similar to a full-blown desktop image editing program that supports layers. Instead of placing your own images on top of each other, you can also use some of the partially-transparent overlays that are provided, such as a smoke, chemical burn, or outer space image.
Lots of adjustment tools are included with Pixlr. You can apply a pencil, silk, poster, watercolor, old, unicolor, vintage, or cross effect to an image, among others. Also supported is cropping and rotating the image, applying an auto fix to it, and adjusting contrast, blur, hue, sharpen, smooth, saturation, and lightness settings.
Tons of borders are available in categories like squared, nature, ripped paper, rounded corner, ink, grunge, and film. There are also plenty of text types you can choose from and dozens of stickers.
When you’re done using Pixlr, you can email and share your edited picture on social media sites. You can also resize it to any custom size before saving it back to your device.
Snapseed
What We Like
Loaded with professional-level effects.
Fun to experiment with nondestructive effects.
User-friendly interface.
What We Don't Like
Pro-level tools may require a learning curve for beginners.
The effects and styles you can add to an image with Google’s Snapseed app are very nice, and applying these changes is extremely easy with simple finger swipes.
All the tools are hidden away and only accessible if you swipe up and down while swiping left and right changes the intensity of the selected tool. For some tools, tapping the tool's button will show even more styles and effects you can apply in relation to that one tool.
You can edit an image with Snapseed by pasting one into the app, opening one from your photo library, or snapping a new one right through the app.
At the bottom of the app are around 15 different categories where all the tools are held. Some of Snapseed's categories include simple features like cropping and straitening tools while the others provide a way to make manual or automatic color adjustments, blur and focus parts of the image, add a frame to the picture, and, among other things, change brightness, ambiance, saturation, and warmth levels.
Snapseed also has cool effects like Vintage, Drama, HDR Scape, Grunge, and RETROLUX, each with their own set of color manipulation options and other customization opportunities.
A feature you may miss lets you compare your edited image with the one you originally imported. Just press and hold down on the image when you're not using any tools and you can instantly compare the two editions.
There are several options for saving and sharing your picture when you're finished. You can store it on your device, copy it, print it off, or share it over email, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
BeFunky
What We Like
Fun collage mode with dozens of collage layouts.
User-friendly and intuitive interface.
No account required.
What We Don't Like
Only the paid Pro version is ad-free.
Difficult to align text precisely.
BeFunky is an extremely easy app to use because you can simply slide your finger side to side to adjust the intensity of the tools.
There are lots of things you can do with BeFunky, such as crop, straighten, and rotate an image. You can also adjust brightness, fill light, contrast, hue, soften, exposure, temperature, saturation, and other settings.
BeFunky has a text tool and can apply a border as well as a number of effects to an image. A red-eye remover, eye color changer, lipstick applier, wrinkle remover, and, among others, a teeth whitener tool is also included.
Undoing changes are super simple with BeFunky because it shows a thumbnail history of the changes you've made so you can easily determine how far back you want to revert the image to.
After you're done using BeFunky, you can download the edited image to the camera roll, save it to your BeFunky account, or send it to social media websites.
piZap Photo Editor
What We Like
Free app contains filters, stickers, and stock images.
Well-suited for making memes.
What We Don't Like
Access to most features requires a monthly Pro subscription.
Background images and borders no longer included in free version.
PiZap lets you edit images you have on your device or one from your Facebook account. You can also open a free background image from a gallery preloaded with the app.
The very first step lets you crop the image, and then you can add an effect, text, stickers, and borders, as well as remove the background in images. There's also a brush tool so you can paint any color on your photo with one of four brush sizes.
Because piZap supports layers, you can import more than one photo on top of the original, as well as move stickers behind or in front of other pictures.
When finished editing, you can save the picture to your device or send it to Facebook, Twitter, or email.
PicsArt Photo Editor + Collage
What We Like
Superlative functionality includes time lapse, collage, effects, and stickers.
Robust social interaction possibilities with other artists.
Plenty of creative user controls.
What We Don't Like
Serves up excessive ads.
Not suitable for children under 13 due to some mature content.
PicsArt is a great photo editing app with ton of features, some completely unique to the other in this list. For starters, you're not limited to editing a picture from your device only; you can import an image from your Google Plus, Dropbox, Flickr, Facebook, or PicsArt account.
You're able to zoom up on the image regardless of what tool you're using, which is really helpful.
All the tools are listed at the bottom of the screen, such as a clone, curves, enhance, stretch, and crop tool. Along the menu bar are also effects, drawing tools, light/border/texture/artistic masks, and lens flare tools.
In addition to saving your image to any of the websites from above, you can also export it to Tumblr, Instagram, or DeviantArt.
PicLab Photo Editor
What We Like
A fun, easy-to-operate app.
Great for collages.
Shares to social media sites.
What We Don't Like
In-app purchases required for many features.
Free version lacks advance editing options.
PicLab is another free editor for pictures. While many of the features are free to use, a small watermark is displayed on the bottom of the image when you save it.
The first edit you can perform with PicLab is scaling and cropping the photo. You can zoom up to the picture to reveal no background, select a photo from your library as the background, or choose from over 40 background textures and colors that you can apply.
There's a text tool with PicLab so you can add one or more pieces of text, each with a custom color and shadow options.
One of over 20 instant effects can be applied to the picture as well as borders, light effects, textures, and patterns.
Adobe Photoshop Express
What We Like
Full-featured customizable app packed with goodies.
No Photoshop experience required.
Easy-to-use app that delivers top-notch results even for beginners.
What We Don't Like
Free Adobe account required to access many features.
No community features.
Lacks tutorials.
Adobe Photoshop Express is Adobe's mobile photo-editing app. There are several nice tools to use, zooming is allowed at any time, and you can easily compare your edited image to the original while editing.
One of several 'looks' can be applied to the image, which is simply color effects, such as Glow, B&W, Memory, and more. You can also adjust the shadows, temperature, highlights, tint, exposure, vibrancy, and other levels of the image. The intensity of the effect and colors are easily adjustable with a slide bar.
If you'd rather not adjust these levels manually, there's an auto-fix tool that can attempt to enhance colors automatically.
A neat feature in Adobe Photoshop Express removes red-eye automatically by detecting the eyes in the picture. However, you can also manually apply the fix if the auto tool doesn't work.
The crop tool lets you straighten the picture, apply a manual crop, flip or rotate the image, and apply a preset crop size, such as one that fits the device perfectly, among other sizes.
To finish up the edit, there are lots of frames, edges, and borders you can choose from. There's also a small tool that can remove unwanted spots or blemishes.
Photos you've edited with this app can be saved to your camera roll, sent over email/text, saved to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr, or opened in another app that accepts files.
VSCO
What We Like
Best for users who want a simple app with basic features.
Robust social community.
Lots of advanced presets.
What We Don't Like
No private setting for photos.
Not suitable for young teens.
Intrusive advertising.
VSCO is a much simpler app than most of the others on this list. There are several image effects, of which you can apply one, as well as all the basic color and size manipulation tools, such as a contrast and saturation adjuster.
You can also apply a colored tint to shadows and highlights.
VSCO keeps all your edited images together in the app so you can easily view them again without having to search through the other photos on your device.
When you're finished using VSCO, you can save your image to your camera roll, send it over email, or share it on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus.
Availability and affordability of the good quality Smartphone camera and digital camera enables the people to click pictures of every moment of their life. People now are very active in clicking pictures and uploading them on their social media accounts to update their friends about the happenings in their life. Uploading the original pictures can be less interesting and you may not get as many likes as you expect. Using the best quality of photo editing tools makes your photos attractive and grabs everyone’s attention on your posts and the profile pictures. These days, various types of photo editing softwares are available for desktop and mobile users.
Part 1. Top 15 Free Photo Editor Software in 2018
People are constantly sharing digital pictures and images for the personal and the professional reasons. They not only have to regularly update their social media profiles but also to keep their professional image high. Using the photo editing software empowers you to gain attention from others. There are so many types of free photo editor software so you are required to first make the comparison between the best ones. It helps you to choose the best one for transforming your pictures and images for the better.
It includes tutorials and templates for editing the pictures easily. The full gamut of this software makes your picture attractive. Along with this, 90 creative filters for images add impressive effects to your pictures. This program is little bit hard to use because it is developed for the professional photo editor only. Adobe Photoshop is not just a photos editor even you can prepare your own photos from scratch as well. It supports windows operating system.
2. Picasa
URL: https://picasa.google.co.in/
It is another free photo editor program which allows the desktop and laptop users to edit, share, print, find and organize the photos easily. It organizes all your pictures in a single album to make it easier for you to locate your photos for editing without any trouble. This photo editor supports PSD, GIF, JPEG, BMP and movie files. This program is now owned by Google and the system version is not available for the installation from the official site but still you can download and use the previous versions from software provider websites.
3. Photoscape
URL: http://x.photoscape.org/
This photo editing software is available for download for Windows 7, 8 and 10 and Mac. It offers multiple photo editing tools that make your picture interesting. One addition feature which it offers is creating your own animated GIFs which can be shared online. In this program you easily find whatever you need to edit the photos. You can edit using the available tools such as batch editing, crop, create gif, make college, RAW images editing, screen capturing etc.
4. GIMP
URL: https://www.gimp.org/downloads/
If you are looking for the professional photo editing software for free then GIMP is the best one. You should try this software as a retouching program, image renderer, Paint software and image format converter. It allows the users to make use of extensions and plugins to make your photos more impressive. This is a cross platform program and available for mostly all types of operating system. This is open source as well so you can get the source of the program directly from the website and edit it as per your need.
5. Paint.net
URL: https://www.getpaint.net/features.html
Users who want to get the simple user interface in their free photo editing software should get this photo editor. It offers plugin support as well for recomposing the photos. It supports many file formats. Blurring, red-eye removal, sharpening, noise, distortion, and embossing tools are there to make your photos attractive. This program is also a fully featured open source available for the windows OS. The interface of this image editor program is same as the Microsoft paint.
6. Photo! Editor
URL: http://pho.to/editor/features/
If you want to optimize and fix your digital images then this software is the best to use. Cropping feature and light adjustment facility, caricature tool and color adjustment features are also available. You can turn your photo, add or remove objects and make complex adjustments to get the professional looking photos. This program can help you to fixing the Red eye, enhance photos color, makeup, Crop or give brightness to your photos. This is a free program can be used without any charge.
7. Raw Therapee
URL: http://rawtherapee.com/#
It supports raw files and allows the editing with the attractive user interface. White balance, color panel and many other editing features are available. Advanced color handling with non-destructive editing can be done with this software. Batch editing and parallel editing facility is also provided by this software. In this software you can get mostly all advanced photo editing features for editing photos on the system right away.
8. Photo Pos Pro
URL: http://www.photopos.com/PPP3_BS/Default.aspx
This smart photo editing software offers an array of editing tools with novice layouts. The basic editing tools are color enhancing, erasing, history, layers and filters. Add the stunning text effects, frames and collages can be created. Poor photos can be fixed by easily with the powerful user interface. This program offers different types of tools to edit the photos so you can’t get everything in a single software.
9. Luminar
URL: https://skylum.com/luminar
It is the trendy image editing tool for windows in 2018. The intuitive interface makes it easier for the users to edit single photo, batch editing, splitting tool and similar face search tool as well. It is compatible with Windows and Mac. It is the high performance photo editing software that completes the editing work faster. Luminar is developed by skylum officially which is known as the best photo editing software maker company just like Adobe.
Standard red eye removal, color enhancing and customization tools are available on this software. It also offers geo-tagging support and dual monitor mode which is helpful in graphic designing as well. Automatic image correct feature and dozens of brushes, textures and backgrounds are available. This program is developed for the most professional photo editor people and mostly it is used by the people who do work like making flex boards and designing logos.
11. On1 Perfect Effects
URL: https://www.on1.com/products/photo-raw/
With the 170 filter effects and multiple photo editing tools, this is one of the popular software among the professional photographers. If you want to try it for free, download Perfect Effect 9 version. various stackable filters, presets and textures are there to make your photos better. This perfect photo editor software helps you to edit the photos very easily as compared to the other software. You can use this program on Mac and windows. There is no need to pay monthly subscription.
12. PortraitPro
URL: http://www.portraitprofessional.com/
This software is free for editing the portrait pictures. Skin tones, blemishes and wrinkles from the face can be edited with its advanced editing tools. Various makeup tools are also there which make your photos look the best. This software also has the face detection technology. This program enables you do makeup control, enhance the mouth very easily to give professional look to the photos. There is free program testing is available for this program so you can use it before buying the premium version.
13. Inkscape
URL: https://inkscape.org/en/
It is the photo editing program that is loaded with the advanced features of photo editing. It offers cloning, copy/paste styles and multiple text along with basic editing tools. Images can be created with the help of pencil tool and several manipulation tools are there to modify the photos. Fillers and strokes can also be used with multi-line text support. There is broad file format compatibility and powerful text tools available for the people who like to edit the photos.
14. Image Tuner
URL: http://www.glorylogic.com/image-tuner.html
It is the free image editor for Windows PC. It offers watermarking and changing over, batch resizing and other editing features within few clicks. Social media profiles can also be resized and edited with the help of this tool. Photos from one file format can be converted to any other. You can easily colorize, rotate, and flip the photos using this software. There are lot of effects available to apply on the images and it works perfectly on windows 10.
15. Pixia
URL: https://pixia.en.lo4d.com/
This is the best free photo editing software for Windows PC which is helpful in saving images in various formats other than GIF. Overlays, layers, concealing, features are available with this software. Full color graphics with masking and layer functions are available for manipulating the images. This program is developed for those people who are very creative and always like to create something new different from others.
Part 2. Top 10 Free Photo Editing Apps in 2018
Smartphone is not only used for making calls or sending messages but there are many more purposes. One of the most popular uses of Smartphone these days is uploading and sharing edited pictures. There are various types of photo editing apps which are helpful in editing the pictures and instantly sharing them on your social media account. Using such types of apps is more convenient as you can edit the images anywhere without opening your computer. Here is the list of top 10 photo editing apps that you can download in your smartphone.
It is the best free picture editor app that can make many of the desktop software’s at shame. It is loaded with several numbers of features. It allows the modification to the depth, curve and brightness of field that makes your pictures attractive. This app is developed by Google for photo editing and you can easily edit the photos on the android and iOS devices directly instead of the desktop.
Platform: iOS 8.0 and later / Android 4.1 and later
Free Photo Editing App
Price: Free
It is compatible for Android and iOS devices and the drawing’ and ‘painting’ filters are there. Additional filter options are available in the in-a pp purchases. Once you have edited the photos using this app on your mobile you can share the pictures easily through email, sms, whatsapp, Facebook or Instagram. This is easy to use and supports mostly all images formats.
It is the image manipulation app that is designed to build your photography skills faster. There are a large number of digital images can be edited, viewed or organized by this app. It offers 1 TB of cloud storage as well so that cloud backup of images can be created. This app gives you a very powerful solution to edit the images on the Android and iOS mobile devices directly. There are one tap preset available to edit the images in one tap.
It is best free photo editor app that offers great reliability in editing pictures. Manual adjustments for the color, brightness, contrasts and saturation can be done using this app. Cropping and resizing option also available there to resize the size of images for Facebook or other social media sites. Playful stickers and overlays are also available for this app. This app also offers in app purchases to remove ads and get few additional features.
This photo editing app for Android is best for you to keep editing your photos in batches. It can easily make the quick fixes for blemishes on your face, reshaping, teeth whitening and, adding filters. Easily take away pesky imperfections. This app offers love photo filters to apply on images and mostly it is used by the youngsters to edit and make the images.
This app is available for free with the in- app purchase options. It allows basic editing with over 100 of filters to choose from. It allows the users to make the collage as well and share it online in the real time. It offers you wide range of effect to apply on images and you can easily edit the photos because interface of the app is very easy to use for everyone. College photo making option is also there so you can use up to 9 photos to make college.
To add an artistic touch to your images, download this photo editing app on your Android device. It allows the users to use more than 640 filters, frames and effects to make your photos outstanding. It offers realistic photomontages. PhotoLab app works fast that’s why you can easily edit the photos in seconds and make the perfect one. There are many frames available to give the final touch to your photos.
It is the great photography mobile app available for download for free. Subtle one-tap presets with various adjustment tools. This app provides photo sharing platform with the high quality camera for clicking HD pictures. VSCO app is actually a community of people just like the Instagram so you can use this app to edit photos and to connect with different people as well.
This Photo editing app for iOS is integrated with advanced settings. Clone tool, tone mapping, channel mixer and masking tool can be used in this app to make the pictures attractive. This app comes with every tool that you must have to edit the photos. There are more than 100 effects available in the app to edit the photos and make them cool.
It is one of the free photo editing apps that is ideal for the iOS devices. With the help of this app, you can create impressive pictures. Retouch and distort tools can be used. There are dozens of beautiful frames available to use with the images. If you are facing the issue of color cast with the images then you can instantly remove and set the accurate white balance to your images.
Part 3. Recommended Photo Editing Program for Desktop Users
Wondershare Fotophire Editing Toolkit is one of the most interesting and the useful photo editing programs for desktop users. It is loaded with amazing features that can transform your pictures. This is the fast and efficient free photo editing software for the computers. It offers more than 200 effects to make the pictures or images perfect. If you are looking for the photo editor free download then Wondershare Fotophire is the best option. Photo editing, cutting and erasing are the key features of this photo editor. It also features the photo maximization and photo focus to give the professional touch to your photos. More than 100 styles of photo frames are provided by this software. You can easily turn your photos into an art piece by getting the full control of the overall intensity.
You can Get Wondershare Fotophire Editing Toolkit for Mac Here.
The most important feature for which you should try this software is that it is available for 7-day free trial. Thus, you can use this software for the personal or business purposes both.