photo editing apps

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on photo editing apps:

Get an advanced AI photo editor for half price

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Pick up a 1-year membership to advanced photo editing tools for only half the price.
Create professional-looking images with a one-year membership to Picsart Plus.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

First impressions can go a long way, especially on social media. If you’d like to boost the impact of your photography, from selfies to scenic shots, we’re serving up a limited-time discount on an advanced photo editing app.

You can currently get a one-year membership to Picsart for only $29.99 (regularly $60) with no coupon necessary. Instantly gain the full range of Picsart perks, and make your pictures appear professionally done, for half the price.

Make AI your photo editor with a lifetime subscription to Luminar Neo [Exclusive discount]

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Make AI your photo editor with a lifetime subscription to Luminar Neo.
Use Luminar Neo's AI superpowers to make your iPhone photos look amazing.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

While the cameras on our iPhones and how we take photos are constantly improving, we can always use a hand to clean them up after the fact. For those of us that aren’t professional photographers, or particularly adept at photo editing, user-friendly and innovative photo editing software can make this daunting task a whole lot easier.

Luminar Neo uses the power of artificial intelligence to edit, refine and stylize photos. And now, you can grab a lifetime license to it, bundled with other impressive photo editing add-ons, for only $79 (regularly $400) — but the savings don’t stop there. Cult of Mac readers can save an extra 10% by adding exclusive coupon code TAKE10NOW.

Transforming everyday pictures into truly beautiful photographs can become a reality with this AI-driven software.

Luminar Neo marks a year of creative upgrades with a special offer for you

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Right now you can get a 2-for-1 deal on the highly functional Luminar Neo photo editing app.
During Luminar Neo's birthday celebration, you can get a two-for-one deal on the highly functional photo editing app.
Photo: Skylum

Are you a photographer? If so, you should know about Luminar Neo, the full-featured photo editing app from Skylum that’s celebrating its first birthday.

SPONSORED
This post is brought to you by Skylum.
The team behind it, based in war-torn Ukraine, has relentlessly improved the award-winning software over the past year. With a multitude of new features — including several AI-powered tools that make photo editing magically creative — Luminar Neo offers serious photographers total control over their images.

Skylum is marking Luminar Neo’s one-year anniversary with a fantastic opportunity for savings. Read on for more on the app’s new features and the “1+1” deal on offer.

Magically enhance many photos at once with the new Batched app

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Batched lets you edit many photos as once.
Batched lets you edit many photos as once.
Photo: Adva Soft

This post is brought to you by Adva Soft.

Sometimes you want to make changes to just one of your treasured digital photos. Other times you wish you could modify a whole bunch of them at once, quickly and easily. With the new multi-photo-editing app Batched, you can do it either way.

Available for iOS and iPadOS, the tool makes it much easier to enhance scads of your cool pics to a variety of interesting degrees, including color-transfer functionality and numerous filters and effects.

And did we mention that most of the tools in the Batched app are free? They are, although some premium features can be unlocked with a subscription. Let’s take a look at what Batched can do for you.

Edit pics like a pro on your Mac with this Luminar AI bundle

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Edit photos in an instant with this AI powered app.
This dead-easy photo editing software comes with templates, plus lessons to teach you about photography.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

You don’t have to spend 12 hours waiting for the perfect shot to get a professional-quality photo. All you need is a good photo editor. The Complete Award-Winning Luminar AI Bundle does most of the work editing your photos for you — and makes all the rest easy.

And for just $39.99 (regularly $235), making the decision to get Luminar is a snap.

Make picture-perfect Instagram Stories and more with Pixlr — on sale for 58% off

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Pixlr Premium is on sale for $79 for 2 years.
Make art you can use with this photo editor and template software.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

With the right software tools, you can create professional-quality photos even if you aren’t an experienced photographer. And, if you get the really right software, you can create eye-catching images perfect for sharing on social media, advertising your business and more.

Ready to give your Instagram Stories a serious upgrade or start cranking out click-worthy YouTube banners and brochures? Pixlr Premium is an easy-to-use photo editor that comes with loads of tools for producing the best images around. Plus, it’s on sale for just $79 from Cult of Mac Deals.

Make every photo pop with a powerful AI powered Mac app [Deals]

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Luminar 4 Bundle
This intuitive photo editing app turns your shots into polished images, complete with AI augmented presets, tutorial and eBook guide.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

It’s easier than ever to take photos, but making them look their best still takes skill. That is, unless you’ve got a powerful, intuitive photo editing app like Luminar. It’s packed with powerful photo editing tools, but this bundle includes tons of extras so you can get the absolute most from it.

Affinity apps free to photographers and designers during COVID-19

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Affinity Photo for iPad
Affinity Photo for iPad.
Photo: Serif

Imaging software companies have been stepping up to support photographers and artists with work drying up because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Joining Adobe and Skylum, Serif is offering three months free access to its Affinity suite of apps, which includes Affinity Photo for Mac and iPad. If trial users like Affinity they can purchase the apps for 50 percent off the retail price.

Luminar 4 adds AI tools to transform skies and faces in photos

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Luminar sky enhancement
New AI sky enhancement tools are a blast.
Screenshot: Skylum

Imaging software brand Skylum announced new tools to its popular editing app Luminar to support creative digital artists and enhancements to help portrait photographers create more flattering images.

Luminar 4.2 features an AI Augmented Sky tool, allowing artists to seamlessly add objects to create unconventional composite images. Photographers can now remove excessive shine and add slimming effects to the faces of their subjects.

Darkroom iOS photo app switches to monthly subscription

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Darkroom photo editing app for iPhone and iPad
Darkroom wants to make a great photo editing app even better.
Screenshot: Darkroom/App Store

Every photographer has an editing workflow with a rhythm formed with a particular piece of software. Darkroom is among the preferred apps for the mobile shooter who does a lot of editing on their iPhone or iPad.

Darkroom’s developers (pun intended) announced Wednesday a business change to a subscription-based app for new users.

How to crop, straighten and unskew photos on iPad and iPhone

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Crop photos
It’s not better, but it offers a different perspective.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

You’ve always been able to crop photos on your iPhone and iPad. It’s easy to “zoom” into your images, cutting out cruft and distraction at the edges of the frame to focus on what’s important. But now, in iOS 13 and iPadOS, you can do more than crop and chop. Now you also can skew images — aka correct perspective errors — all inside the Photos app’s edit mode.

You can do all kinds of things with this new Photos tool. If you snapped a picture of a painting in the gallery, and didn’t hold your iPhone parallel to the wall, you can fix that. Or you can get more radical, perhaps by “fixing” an image of a skyscraper to stop it from disappearing to a point in the distance. The good news is that these perspective tools are fun and easy to use. Let’s check them out.

Photoshop for iPad shows that Adobe totally still has it

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30% of tablets sold last quarter were iPads
30% of tablets sold last quarter were iPads
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Adobe’s Photoshop is now available in the App Store, ready for you to try. You have to sign up for a $10 monthly subscription, even just to test it out, but there’s a one-month free trial included in the sub. With that out of the way, how is it? Extremely limited, but very promising.

If you’re familiar with Photoshop on the Mac or PC, then you will feel immediately at home. You will also feel immediately frustrated, because the app does almost nothing. We learned earlier this month that Photoshop for iOS would offer a cut-down feature set compared to the full desktop version. Still, this app is so basic that — if you want to actually get any work done — you should grab something like Affinity Photo instead.

But as an example of an iPad app, Photoshop is stellar. It’s easy to use, and yet most of the basics are there. And there’s a new UI innovation, called the Touch Shortcut, that should be in every app. Let’s take a look.

10 years later, Hipstamatic is still around and deep in its retro roots

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new logo for Hipstamatic X
Hipstamatic X hits the App Store Tuesday.
Photo: Hipstamatic

The smartphone photography tidal wave started with ripples from Hipstamatic. It was the first app with filters for snap-happy iPhone users to change the look of their photos.

A tap of the finger and that ho-hum photo of your dog became a work of art, quirky and painterly with the look of a photo spit out by an old Polaroid camera. Quickly, it became a tool for serious artists and photographers.

Hipstamatic celebrates 10 years this Tuesday with a free download for iPhone called Hipstamatic X. The anniversary app will bring some of the simple, original analog charm of the first app as well as a stable of old-school cameras, from Pinhole to Tintype.

Pixelmator Photo first impressions: An amazing iPad image editor [Review]

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Pixelmator Photo should be on every photographer’s iPad.
Pixelmator Photo should be on every photographer’s iPad.
Photo: Nuria Gregori

Pixelmator Photo, a new image-editing app for iPad, gives you tons of tools for tweaking your images. The app lets you apply filters, crop, trim and generally making your photos look great.

In this regard, Pixelmator Photo is like a zillion other photo apps for iOS. What sets it apart are a) the now-expected Pixelmator polish, and b) machine learning that powers pretty much everything.

I’ve taken the app, which launches today, for a quick spin, and it’s pretty great. The photo-editing space is so crowded with great apps, though, that we’re spoiled for choice. How does Pixelmator Photo match up?

Take the pain and expense out of photo editing [Deals]

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Movavi Photo Editor
Bring the best out of your photos with the help of this Mac app
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Digital photos are one of the most effective and enjoyable forms of content of our time. Want in on the fun? Great, but you might get overwhelmed by the complexity and cost of standard platforms.

If that’s the case, this affordable, intuitive photo editor is worth a look.

Create funky photo art with this double-exposure iPhone app

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Fusion
Who could do this to a selfie.
Photo: Fuzion

Of the countless apps for creating stunning effects to your iPhone photos, the best ones have two things in common: ease of use and effects that are actually stunning.

Fuzion, an artsy double-exposure iOS app, aspires to be in that elite stable of must-have photo styling apps. Its developers should know relatively quickly if they have a hit on their hands when it launches Thursday.

This app reinvents how lighting works in iPhone photos

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The Apollo app brings immersive illumination to Portrait mode photos.
Before and after. The Apollo app brings immersive illumination to Portrait mode photos.
Photos: Indice

This post is presented by Indice, maker of the Apollo app.

The photos you take are only as good as the lighting. That’s true no matter whether you’re using a top-of-the-line DSLR or an iPhone. The difference is, with an iPhone, you can change the lighting after you’ve taken the picture. That’s thanks to Apollo, an iOS app that uses the iPhone’s depth data to totally reimagine the lighting conditions in your photos.

Improved TinType app gives selfies old-timey feel

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TinType app
The TinType app makes use of the TrueDepth technology for a more authentic shallow depth of field.
Photo: Hipstamatic

Instant gratification, the kind you get from a selfie, used to come on a thin sheet of iron.

A tintype photo was novel and relatively immediate in the late 19th century. Have your picture made then wait while the photographer developed the image. After a few minutes, you had a photo to share.

Users of the TinType app by Hipstamatic have been bringing that distinctive and, at times, haunting aesthetic to portraits and selfies since 2012.

How to remove annoying objects from your photos

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How will TouchRetouch manage with this delicious breakfast?
How will TouchRetouch manage with this delicious breakfast?
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

We’ve all taken the perfect photo, only to have to have it ruined by some unwanted element. A pole sticking out of someone’s head. A passing car in the background of an otherwise-perfect street scene. Or a political enemy in one of Stalin’s portraits.

But whereas the Soviet regime employed a team of photo retouchers to chop the gulag-bound dissidents from Stalin’s selfies, iPhone apps can remove clutter in seconds. Today we’ll see how to use my favorite: TouchRetouch.

Unleash your graphic design prowess with Pixelmator [50 Essential iOS Apps #40]

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Pixelmator on iPad surrounded by camera gear
Pixelmator is a powerful, all-in-one graphic design app for photographers and designers alike
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

50 Essential iOS Apps: PixelmatorSince its introduction, the iPad has slowly won over new markets of people. Over the past couple years, photo and image editing apps have found a home on Apple’s tablet. Pixelmator for iOS takes photo editing and graphic design on iOS to a new level, bringing a photoshop-like experience to your fingertips.

Protect your photo collection with Google Photos [50 Essential iOS Apps #21]

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Google Photos library backup on iPhone X
Google Photos is the photo and video backup app we all wish Apple would give us.
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

50 Essential iOS Apps: Google Photos Photos and videos are some of our most important mementos, helping us recount our fondest memories. The thought of losing those keepsakes shouldn’t be something that keeps you up at night.

With Google Photos, every photo and video on your iOS device can be safely backed up to the cloud, accessible even if your iPhone or iPad goes up in flames. Even better, Google Photos can help you free up space on your iOS device, so there’s always room to take more pictures.

Tweak your photos to perfection with Snapseed [50 Essential iOS Apps #4]

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tune image editing tools in Snapseed
Snapseed's editing tools are accessed with a flick of your thumb
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

50 Essential iOS Apps: Snapseed Photo Editing app The iPhone’s camera is arguably one of the best cameras most people will use for capturing life moments. Sometimes, though, those photos don’t turn out quite as perfect as you hope. The iOS Camera and Photos apps have some basic editing tools, but if you’re looking for more fine-tuned tweaks, Snapseed is a powerful, free photo editor for iOS that helps revive and tweak your shots.