10 Best Photo Editing Software for macOS in 2020

Your hunt for the best photo editing software for macOS has brought you here. Our rating and ranking process for the best photo editing software will clear all your doubts and give you the clarity to choose which software you would work best with.

The software which you want may depend on the type of task which you want to perform. You may need the best photo editing software possible to do a professional-like touchup to your photos, or you could be a newbie trying to learn basic editing for your social media, or you could be searching for the best software to manage your photos and do basic editing. Do not worry, we’ve covered all the possibilities for you here. Even if you’ve got a Windows device, we’ll let you know which software is good for your cross-platform use.

Related: 25 best photo editing apps for your phone

Here we bring you the 10 best photo editing software for macOS.

What are the criteria for choosing the best photo editing software for macOS?

Our criteria for choosing 10 best photo editing software for macOS was:

  • Functionality
  • Features
  • Overall user experience
  • Ranking and rating

What is the ranking criteria for choosing the best photo editing software for macOS?

We lined up about 30 photo editing software and rated and ranked them. Our rankings were based on their functionality and usability they provide to users. To give you unbiased rankings for the best photo editing software for macOS, we also searched for their rankings on other websites and agencies. The rankings were then made by comparing how often they were chosen in the best photo editing software lists, and what their rankings were on those platforms. We also used our ranking algorithm to give you this list of the best photo editing software for macOS.

List of the 10 best photo editing software for macOS

1. Pixelmator Pro

Pixelmator is a popular image enhancer for many Mac users as it offers a good blend of modern and simple visualization, multi-layer capabilities, and powerful features that take image editing to a whole new level.

Pixelmator Pro comes with a new ML-Enhance mode that uses professional artificial intelligence with a 20 million photo catalog, automatically adjusting each color correction. Like Luminar, this feature gives you a great place to start making customized repairs to your photos. There’s also a denoise feature that removes noise and pressure sensors in images.

Pros:

  • Machine Learning enhances several features
  • Quick selection and repair tools are decent
  • Flexibility with raw editing features

Cons:

  • Export options are limited
  • The dark, monochrome interface may not have good visibility

2. GIMP

The GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program is full of features and allows you to customize your own images.

Gimp offers a large collection of advanced tools that no free software editor can boast.

It has many upgrade options such as clone and cooling brushes, layers and channels, intuitive selection tools, multiple transition tools, and, of course, color correction controls.

Gimp is one of the most powerful image enhancement tools and is loved by many users for its price and flexibility.

GIMP also comes with a problem that most open source applications encounter: the UI looks old and useless. GIMP is one of the most difficult to use editing apps you’ll find on this list.

Pros:

  • Easily expandable
  • Feature-packed
  • Opens almost any image file

Cons:

  • The interface is a little cluttered
  • Hard to learn

3. Luminar 4

Luminar 4 is a full-featured pro photo editing tool for Mac and it’s also very easy to use.

It comes with over 60 filters, some of which use artificial intelligence, to enhance your photos with just one click.

It works much better with photography and good shooting.

You have access to all standard image editing tools such as masks, layers, radios, color correction, and more.

You can use them to make changes to your photo in your photo just as you would any other photo editing app.

Sorting lets you get really close to your final result with just one click. From there, you can make minute changes to find the perfect result.

Pros:

  • Integrated image catalog
  • Non-destructive editing
  • AI sky replacement

Cons:

  • Drastic interface changes from V3
  • Appearance and style lack subtlety
  • Still no virtual copies

4. Affinity Photos

This app features professional tools and supports almost all popular file formats including JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, PDF, PSD, and RAW images.

It comes with all the basic photo editing tools you can expect in a photo editing app such as eye removal, scanning, sorting, painting and drawing tools, color correction tools, masks, filters, and more.

It also has an unadjusted UI with clearly marked tools that are easy to find and use. Play, manipulate, edit, and create Affinity Photos whether you’re a serious graphic designer or just someone looking to do basic editing.

Pros:

  • High-powered photo editing
  • Raw processing within the workspace
  • Editing of very high resolution in real-time
  • Can read, open and edit Photoshop PSD files

Cons:

  • Difficult to learn for beginners
  • No 3D or internal vector tools
  • No custom workspace

5. Adobe Photoshop Elements

Photoshop Elements gets a lot of powerful features from the regular Photoshop, however Elements only makes it easier for Amateur photographers and enthusiasts.

It includes a number of effects and filters, as well as automated editing options to improve brightness, color balance, and exposure, and even fix closed eyes and reduce the effects of camera scratching.

In addition to all of these great features, Photoshop also offers editing methods for beginners, intermediate users, and professionals.

For beginners, they will probably like faster mode, because it focuses on the important tools for improving your images faster by improving color, lighting, and other basic settings. Guided Mode provides central users with a step-by-step guide with professional features such as artistic effects, skin tone correction, and background restorations.

Expert mode gives you full access to powerful programming features of the app and is perfect for creating great images.

Pros:

  • Retouch performance is the same as Photoshop
  • Easy to learn
  • Numerous tutorials
  • All RAW formats supported
  • AI technology for more powerful guided edits and auto creations

Cons:

  • Some aspects are unclear
  • Elements Organizer can’t integrate with iCloud Photo Library
  • A limited selection of included patterns

6. Fotor Photo Editor

The Fotor Online Photo Editor is full of features that make creating great photos as easy as pressing a few buttons on your computer. It’s free to use and offers a moderately priced version with upgraded capabilities.

Getting started with a photo editor requires you to sign up for a free account. Once that’s done, you have access to a variety of tools that allow you to edit your photos and create beautiful collages and images using their large selection of templates.

With this photo editor, you can easily change the contrast and color of multiple items of washing, crop out images, add borders, move and change your photos, add different text, use various filters, and much more, all from the easy-to-use toolbox on the right side of the app. You can even create collages for your photographic art!

Pros:

  • Smart filter and effects
  • The easy photo collage tool
  • RAW file converter

Cons:

  • Not very feature-packed
  • Not suitable for creating artwork from scratch

7. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

If you need a simple and efficient way to process, touch up, and display multiple catalogs or hundreds of images, Adobe Lightroom is one of the best photo editing software. A powerful, yet easy-to-understand, animation tool for editing. Photographers, pro photographers, and painters use Lightroom how traditional photographers use black.

Best of all, Lightroom automatically saves your photos to the cloud and lets you organize them using the same or similar Lightroom interface, whether you’re using your phone, tablet, or computer.

Pros:

  • Excellent photo editing tools
  • Full-res backup on the cloud
  • Auto-tagging of generic keywords
  • Great interactive tutorials

Cons:

  • Can’t rename a photo or edited version
  • No side-by-side zoomable comparison of images in the library

8. Apple Photos

This app has easy-to-use editing tools such as filters and Smart Sliders. In addition, it has a Markup tool, which can add text, shapes, and create drawings and signatures. Other tools include Light, which is used to unlock hidden information; and Return used to compare with the original type.

Photos surpassed all other Mac image editing software in its integration with the iCloud Photo Library.

This excellent center allows users to fill their libraries, not their devices. This is done by keeping photos and videos compatible with other Apple devices, such as iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. This integration works in such a way that, for example, an photo taken by the iPhone is immediately available to other devices.

Pros:

  • Intuitive, slick interface
  • Face recognition
  • Plug-in support
  • Neat tricks for iOS Live Photos
  • Good sharing options

Cons:

  • Auto-albums not editable
  • Filters aren’t adjustable

9. Photolemur 3

Photolemur is relatively new in the photo editing market but has all the potential to gain the likes of professional photographers and beginners.

It works with Artificial Intelligence and Photolemur 3 is a baseline enhancement tool for all images, which means it makes all your edits in no time.

It has the simplest interface, with only a few buttons and sliders to adjust to your tastes while viewing the before and after results.

All you need to do is select the image you want to enhance, drag and drop, or import it using the import button, and let the program do the enhancements. After it’s done, you can compare the edited version with the original image by using a before-and-after slider and, if you want, change the skin tone or widen the eyes using additional add-ons.

Pros:

  • Fast and simple image processing
  • Batch processing unlimited images
  • Extensive image format support including RAW
  • Good exposure and white balance results

Cons:

  • Some images lack sharpness
  • No zoom tools

10. Google Photos

Google Photos is a popular cloud storage service for photos and videos. Google Photos may be useless when it comes to photo editing, but it does a great job of storing high-resolution photos and videos with 15GB of free online storage, compared to iCloud’s 5GB.

The editing tools include basic features, limited to selecting simple filters, and slider controls for adjusting brightness and color, as well as tools for cropping, rotating, and adjusting the scale. You can also combine a set of photos to create a collage or slideshow with pictures, but Google Photos’ editing tools are certainly more limited than Mac’s and other photo editing apps.

If you’re planning to take a trip and take lots of photos, then it would be wise to sign up for Google Photos to use that extra space when you return.

Pros:

  • Attractive, ad-free interface
  • Good facial recognition
  • Photo sharing suggestions
  • Basic photo books
  • Good for basic editing and enhancement on the go

Cons:

  • No undo step for editing and blemish removal
  • Sharing suggestions could improve
  • Not for pro-level editing

Photoshop: Mac or Windows – Which is Better?

Many times people ask them that which one is better for Photoshop – MacBook or Windows? They know that I have used Photoshop for 2 years on my MacBook and around 3 years on Windows. Although, I did not use the Windows for 3 continuous years. I used it for 2 years before the MacBook and then from the past 1 year till today. If you’re thinking that I switched from MacBook to Windows because I think Photoshop is better for Windows than macOS then you are wrong. Or maybe not.  😆

Related: How to Optimize the Performance of Photoshop

The reason I switched to Windows that I do a lot of other stuff for my other businesses and Windows integrate better with my requirements. I still have my MacBook in my drawer and I can use it whenever I want.

Before I proceed, I would like to tell you the configurations of my current windows PC and MacBook Pro 2015 with retina display.

Dell LaptopMacBook Pro 2015
Screen1920 x 1080 pixels2560 x 1600 pixels (winner)
ProcessorIntel i7 (winner)Intel i5
RAM8 GB8 GB
Graphics Memory4 GB (winner)1 GB
Hard Drive1 TB SATA256 GB SSD (winner)
Price$1099 (cheaper)$1299

This is all a software requires to run. You might be wondering that my Dell has 1 TB space then why did it lose against my MacBook’s 256 GB. The reason is that my Dell has SATA hard drive and MacBook has SSD. The SSD drives are much faster than SATA drives. If you want to test, then test the speed of iMac 2013 with iMac 2015. Both desktops are almost same except that iMac 2015 has SSD, but iMac 2015 takes 1/3rd of time to boot up when compared to iMac 2013. This is the power of SSD drive.

If you want to know the recommended system requirements for Photoshop, head over to the Adobe’s site. The link will open in a new tab.

Let me give you my experience with the Help of a Table:

I learned Photoshop on Windows so Windows stay close to my heart. This does not mean that I will be biased towards Windows. The reason I went for MacBook two years later because I saw almost all the Photoshop users use macOS and I want to try that out also. #Curiosity

WindowsMacBook Pro
StartupI honestly feel that Photoshop takes a lot more time to startupI used three different versions of Photoshop and all of them loaded within 5-6 seconds. I must say that 5-6 is good amount of time given that Photoshop is quite a big software
SpeedI don’t see a big difference in speed when compared with MacBook.But some calculation intensive functions like refine edge tool, liquify tool takes a bit more on MacBook. But it’ll be 2-3 seconds more, not 30-40 seconds.
TouchpadNone of Window’s laptop has force touchpad technology which is a big loss.MacBook force touchpad works seamlessly with Photoshop. The ability to click anywhere on the touchpad is the best thing that anyone can have.
Zooming in and Moving an ImageI include this point because this is a vital part. We all zoom in a lot in Photoshop and Windows work smoothly with zoomed in imagesMacBook lags a bit when you zoom in and move your image. The movement is not smooth which is not designer-friendly.
FeaturesBoth Windows and MacBook have equal featuresBoth Windows and MacBook have equal features
Keyboard ShortcutsWindows has “windows” button which MacBook does not have. This button does not do any task in PhotoshopMacBook has “Command” and “Control” button. They both work in Photoshop. So, MacBook has one extra button that windows don’t have and Adobe utilized it for keyboard shortcuts. This is why you have more keyboard shortcuts available on a MacBook.
StabilityWhole world knows that Windows is less stable than macOS and Photoshop cannot escape. In the past one year, my computer got hanged 7 times when I was using Photoshop. Thanks to the Auto Save feature in Photoshop not all of my work got lostMy MacBook never ever got frozen in 2 years. Cheers, Apple!
PricePhotoshop subscription remains same for both OS but machine price varies. Windows laptops are a lot cheaper and you can get one at $200.MacBook is notoriously expensive and everyone cannot afford it. If you go for a 15″ model, you can buy a small car at that price.
Photoshop PluginsThere are a variety of Photoshop plugins for Windows but lesser when compared to macOSAlmost, all plugin manufacturers know that majority of their potential customers use MacBook. So, they generally first launch their plugin for MacBook owners and then for Windows. The smaller firms which don’t have the budget to create a plugin for both OS, satisfies themselves with a plugin for MacBook owners only.

Final Verdict

Back in the 1980s, computers were quite expensive and only rich people could afford them for personal use. When Microsoft first developed Windows, they said that it’s an OS for people who want to use computers in their homes.  Still today, Windows want you to use your PC and a personal computer. Yes, there are few versions which target enterprises, but deep-down windows are meant for personal use.

macOS is also made for day to day use but Apple focuses a lot on creativity. If you see Apple adverts or its website, you will see at least a split-second scene where a designer is designing something on his MacBook, iPad, iMac, etc. Therefore, designers like macOS more and they go for MacBook.

Although Adobe never says that they give preference to one OS more than others, but I personally feel that Adobe support macOS more than windows. You can see that almost all the Adobe tutorials, help guides, or videos are made on macOS. I don’t remember that I saw them using Windows. Even in webinars, they use Apple’s products.

If you ask my opinion that if I must choose one OS, I would choose macOS. I don’t know the main reason but I feel more connected with Photoshop on my MacBook.

I am using Windows nowadays because TrickyPhotoshop is not all of my company, it is one of my company. In my other companies, I need to do a lot more on my laptop (Photoshop does not count here) and windows work better.