Paid Photo Editing Apps

Whether you merely shoot with your smartphone or you're a professional photographer working in a studio, you need software to organize, optimize, and edit your digital photos. Camera technology is improving at a tremendous rate: Today's smartphones are more powerful than the point-and-shoots of just a few years ago, and pro-level cameras have passed the 150-megapixel mark. Photo editing software is keeping up, with ever-more-powerful features. People who shoot with a four-camera Galaxy S21 Ultra or with an advanced digital SLR both care how their photos look. To get the best results, you need to import the shots into your PC to organize them, pick the best ones, perfect them, and print or share them online. 

Here are the best choices in photo editing apps to suit every photographer.

Adobe Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom is officially Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. This software is a successor of Photoshop and is much more advanced and updated than it. It is basically an image enhancer and manipulation software and a part of the Adobe software suite. It is compatible with Windows, IOS, Android, Mac OS, and Apple TV. It is non-destructive software. It keeps the original files and edits saved separately. It is usually used for importing and saving, editing, tagging, and sharing numerous digital images. Being a successor of Photoshop, Lightroom is advanced software, but still, it lacks a lot of features of Photoshop.

Users can perform almost all types of modifications such as importing, sorting, organizing, and finally rendering and exporting them. The users can also share their edits and images directly on the web.

It is designed in such a way that the users can work on multiple images. Its workflow is easygoing and user-friendly. Moreover, in Lightroom, the users can apply the presets much faster than in photoshop. Photoshop works on the action, and it is a step by step process. While in Lightroom, the preset can be applied to multiple images at the same time, making the application more demanding and efficient.

Pros: 

• It is easy to view the photos in Lightroom
• Searching photos made easier
• Lightroom saves hard drive space

Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is probably the most popular photo editing software on the market.

For as little as $9.99/month you can have access to the latest full version of Photoshop CC for your desktop. Made for professional graphic designers, Photoshop is your complete package for editing, sizing, optimizing, enhancing and designing nearly any graphic imaginable for your site and blog.

In Photoshop, you work in layers, making it easy to make changes quickly to only one aspect of your image – for example, a filter layer or text layer.

One new feature that the latest version of Photoshop offers is the ability to create artboards so you can work on multiple images at a time. This ensures all your images or image variations are contained in one file.

If you don’t know how to use Photoshop, Adobe offers tutorials that walk you through learning the essentials to editing your first photo, and more.

If you’ve been using Photoshop for a bit and want to learn more features, check out their tutorial library where you can learn how to create a product mockup box or create fiery text.

Luminar AI

Functioning more like a smartphone app than a desktop image editor, Luminar AI is one of the most simple pieces of editing software I’ve ever used, making it perfect for beginners.

There’s virtually no learning curve – you just import your image and the artificial intelligence-powered ‘Templates’ suggest the starting point for the edits, all dependent on the contents of the photo.

From there, you can make further AI-powered edits, or take full control with any of the regular tools – there’s even a masking option if you want to add or remove an effect.

The actual AI features are incredibly powerful, but also a cinch to implement – performing complex edits like slimming a subject’s torsos, changing eye colour or even adding fog to a landscape, are all just a mouse click away.

It certainly feels a lot like cheating! Luminar AI will appeal to anyone who’s more interested in the final result than in the process.

It’s perfect for anyone who doesn’t know the first thing about editing a photo and can allow complete novices to perform professional retouching in seconds.

What it lacks, however, are all the DAM features for pros, as well as intricate export options, layer-based editing and any kind of keywording – for those, you’ll need to use the Lightroom Plugin or wait to see what Luminar Neo offers.

CyberLink PhotoDirector 365

What photographers need to know, however, is that PhotoDirector is one of the most fully featured and best value options on the market here in 2022.

Whilst most of the other best photo editing software focus on a few key editing tasks in particular, this multi-faceted photo edit has chosen to include virtually every tool you could ever want, plus a host of others you never even knew existed!

Aside from all the usual editing tools to get the most out of your raw files, you’ll also find special effects, animations, sound effects, GIFs and more – it’s a playground of features, designed to help you have a lot of fun trying to create art from your photos.

You can buy PhotoDirector outright for a reasonable $54.99, but the real value lies in its subscription – at less than $3 per month, it’s perfect for students, beginners or those on a tight budget.

Corel Paintshop Pro 2021

If you’re looking for an alternative to Photoshop that doesn’t feature a subscription fee, here’s your answer: Corel Paintshop Pro 2021.

Now boasting numerous powerful AI-Powered tools that go well beyond free Photoshop alternatives, PsP has become a fully-featured graphics manipulation tool that provides excellent value for money.

AI Upsampling is an incredibly useful feature for those of us with lower megapixel cameras, or for when we’ve cropped in on an image and require it larger, without degrading quality.

Then there’s AI Artifact Removal, which does a fine job at restoring fine detail and original colours in JPEGs, and AI Denoise which helps clean up images shot at high ISO.

The Sea-to-Sky™ tool is a somewhat unusual addition but allows drone and underwater photographers access to a one-click solution for enhanced contrast and clarity.

AI Style Transfer is a fun tool that transforms photos into stylised artwork, much like the popular smartphone apps and Instagram filters.

For photographers and fans of HDR, the new HDR Studio offers a great way to get that unique look with AI-powered presets.

You can preview, organize, and streamline your photo editing workflow in the Manage workspace, which also allows you to add keyword tags to your photos, create catalogues, make batch edits to multiple images at once, and review metadata and file information.

If you need to extend its capabilities, Paintshop Pro supports various 64-bit plugins from Adobe, Topaz Labs, Nik Collection by DXO and many more. You can even import and export PSD files to work across platforms.

Aside from all the photographer-specific tools, Paintshop Pro 3 remains a graphic design software, with all the brushes, colour palettes, gradients, patterns and manipulation tools you’d expect.

Much like Photoshop, the workspace is not immediately intuitive, and with various customisation options available, there’s a steep learning curve to get going. There’s also no mobile app.

However, as a one-off payment for both the Ultimate and Pro editions, PaintShop Pro is a fantastic option that represents a unique amalgamation of Lightroom and Photoshop in one.