• January 02, 2020
• 18 min to read

Most free photo editors available on the App Store are quite basic, offering just a limited number of filters and allowing you to easily and quickly liven up your photos before posting them on social media.

But if you’re an aspiring or professional photographer, you probably need a more powerful app with a broader set of tools to use your creativity to the fullest. Besides, you probably use your Mac for photo editing because working on a large screen makes it possible to adjust the slightest details.

1. Apple’s Photos (Built-in app)

Verdict: Adobe Photoshop Elements is an Adobe Photoshop portfolio program that was designed for photo editing and holds its position among the best apps for mac photo editing tightly. If you are not going to seriously turn your hobby for photographing into a professional activity, then there is no point in studying all the options Photoshop offers. Hopefully, our selection of the best free programs for photo editing on Mac will help you choose the right app to suit all your creative needs. Luminar (7 days trial) Luminar is another full-featured photo editor that’s popular with both Mac and Windows users. It can work as a standalone app as well as a plugin for such popular programs as. Adobe Photoshop Elements. Where you can use it: Mac and Windows Why we love it: While not truly a free photo editor, Photoshop Elements does have a free trial, and it’s far and away among the best photo editing software for Mac and Windows.The suite of automated editing tools — including for exposure, color balance, and reducing the effects of camera shake — make short work of the.

Apple’s Photos app is included for free on all recently released Macs. It does a good job at organizing your photos, but its collection of photo enhancement tools leaves much to be desired. Hopefully, our selection of the best free programs for photo editing on Mac will help you choose the right app to suit all your creative needs.

2. Luminar (7 days trial)

Luminar is another full-featured photo editor that’s popular with both Mac and Windows users. It can work as a standalone app as well as a plugin for such popular programs as Apple Photos.

Luminar uses Artificial Intelligence to enable sophisticated yet quick photo enhancements. Among these AI features are Sky Enhancer, which adds more depth and detail to the sky in your photos while leaving other areas untouched; Accent AI, which analyzes a photo and automatically applies the best combination of different effects to enhance your image; and Sun Rays, which allows you to place an artificial sun and adjust the lighting to your liking or make the sun rays already in your photo look even more incredible.

Luminar has over 60 filters you can apply to your photos to enhance them in a moment. Luminar also provides a set of powerful tools for cropping, transforming, cloning, erasing, and stamping, along with layers, brushes, and many more incredible features. Luminar supports the Touch Bar on the latest MacBook Pro, making photo editing even more effortless and pleasing.

3. Photolemur 3 (Free Version with watermark)

Photolemur is a relative newcomer on the photo editing market but it has all the chances to win the favor of beginner photographers and hobbyists. Live type for mac. Running on Artificial Intelligence, Photolemur is a completely automatic photo enhancer, meaning that it does all the editing for you in no time. It has the simplest interface, with only a few buttons and sliders to adjust the enhancement to your liking and view the before and after results.

All you need to do is choose a photo (or a few) that you want to improve, drag and drop or import them using the Import button, and let the program make enhancements. After it’s done, you can compare the edited version with the original image by using the before–after slider and, if you want, adjust the skin tone or even enlarge the eyes using additional sliders. Pretty easy, huh?

Photolemur also offers a number of impressive styles to touch up your photos and give them a sophisticated and professional look. With this app, you don’t need to stuff your head with photo editing nuances and terms. Just run Photolemur and watch the magic happen!

4. Aurora HDR (14 days trial)

As you probably can tell from the name, Aurora HDR is designed to help photographers enhance their HDR photos, making them even more detailed and beautiful. It’s an ideal tool for editing your photos, with an extensive collection of more than 20 tools including details, tone, mapping, color, glow, and vignette. Each tool has its unique selection of controls to adjust its effects.

Aurora HDR enables you to work with brushes, layers, and masks, and provides a number of automatic AI tools for recognizing and removing noise, enhancing colors, lighting, and details, improving clarity, and adding contrast to dull areas while leaving other areas untouched.

Aurora HDR does a great job dealing with difficult lighting situations and creating full-of-life images while being easy to use.

5. Pixelmator (Trial 30 Days)

Pixelmator is a photo enhancer beloved by many Mac users, as it offers a good combination of a modern and simple interface, the ability to work on multiple layers, and powerful features that take photo editing to a whole new level. With so many editing tools, brushes, and effects, you can enhance your photos to your liking. You can choose between two versions of Pixelmator – standard and pro – depending on your needs. The standard version is great for basic photo editing with its selection of essential tools and filters, while the pro version is packed with extra brushes, tools, and effects that let you push your creativity to new boundaries. You can decide which version is suitable for you according to what features you’re looking for in a photo editing app.

6. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 (Trial link)

Photoshop Elements isn’t as affordable as other photo enhancers for beginner photographers. But luckily there’s a trial version available, so you can check it out before deciding whether this app is worthy of your money. Photoshop Elements acquired many powerful features from Photoshop, only Elements is simplified for amateur photographers and enthusiasts. It includes a good number of effects and filters, plus automated editing options for improving lighting, color balance, and exposure, and even opening closed eyes and reducing the effects of camera shake.

In addition to all of these awesome features, Photoshop also offers editing modes for beginners, intermediate users, and experts. Beginners will probably prefer Quick mode, as it focuses on essential tools to quickly enhance your photos by improving color, lighting, and other basic settings. Guided mode provides intermediate users with step-by-step guidance with more professional features like artistic effects, skin tone correction, and background replacement. Expert mode gives you full access to the app’s really powerful editing features and is ideal for creating stunning images.

7. Affinity Photo (Free Trial)

Affinity Photo’s interface may seem overwhelming at first, especially for novices, but when you come to grips with it you’ll find that the app is just what you’ve been looking for. Its numerous professional tools, effects, and filters encourage you to get creative with your photos. Among the coolest features Affinity Photo has to offer is a before and after view to compare the original photo with its edited version.

Affinity Photo works with 15 file types, including common ones like PDF, PSD, JPG, and GIF as well as some less popular ones. The app amazes with its abundance of basic and top-notch editing tools, allowing you to tweak your photos using all possible kinds of instruments. Affinity Photo allows you to edit HDR photos, apply artistic filters and effects, play with masks and layers, and create breathtaking compositions by combining several images in one. If you find its interface a bit much and are afraid of getting lost in all those advanced tools, you should probably look for something more suitable for your level. But Affinity Photo is worth mastering.

8. Google Photos

Google Photos is a popular cloud storage service for photos and videos. It can’t boast countless masterly tools like other photo enhancers that we review in this article, but it includes some fundamental features like filters, color adjustment sliders, and transformation tools.

Although Google Photos may not be that helpful when it comes to editing photos, it does a pretty good job at storing high-resolution images and videos with 15GB of free online storage, compared to iCloud’s mere 5GB (which you can upgrade to 50GB for a monthly fee). If you’re planning to go on a trip and take plenty of photos, then it might be smart to sign up for Google Photos to use that extra storage space when you come back.

9. PhotoScape X (Free)

A relatively new photo editing app, PhotoScape X has been gaining popularity with many Mac and PC users since its release in 2008. Its interface is simple but unconventional, with a number of tabs running along the top of the window. Each is responsible for a specific stage of editing. The Viewer tab allows you to browse and organize your photos. After you pick a photo, you can switch to the Editor tab, which includes a broad set of instruments, filters, and effects and a useful feature that enables you to compare the adjusted photo with the original.

The next tabs, including the Batch tab, mainly concentrate on editing and renaming multiple photos at once. The GIF tab allows you to easily create an animated GIF from a group of selected photos.

The downside of PhotoScape X is a lack of selection tools, so all changes are applied to the whole image rather than to a selected part.

10. Gimp (Free)

Gimp is a free open-source photo editing app that has been on the market for over 22 years and is available for Windows, Mac, and even Linux. Unlike many free apps, Gimp doesn’t have any ads or in-app purchases. Its grey interface might seem a little old-fashioned and it may be a bit sluggish when it comes to complex effects, though.

Gimp offers a vast collection of advanced tools that hardly any free photo editor can boast. It has numerous enhancement options such as clone and heal brushes, layers and channels, accurate selection tools, a number of transformation instruments, and, of course, color adjustment controls. Gimp is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing photos and is beloved by so many users for its price (free) and versatility. But if you can’t come to grips with Gimp’s interface, it may be worth paying some cash for a more user-friendly program.

Current Stable Version

Best Image Manipulation Software For Mac

The current stable release of GIMP is 2.10.22 (2020-10-04).

We think your OS is Well, we don't actually know. Either JavaScript is disabled, or I am not working quite right.. So I am showing you all the options.

Show downloads for GNU/Linux | OS X | Microsoft Windows | All

GIMP for Unix-like systems

If available, the official package from your Unix-like distribution is the recommended method of installing GIMP!

The flatpak build is new and has known limitations, though it will likely provide faster updates, following GIMP releases closely.
Therefore choose your installation medium according to your needs.

Flatpak build available in: i386, x86-64, ARM and AArch64.

Flatpak additional instructions

The flatpak link above should open your software installer and prompt you to install GIMP. Yet it may not work out-of-the-box on some platforms since the flatpak technology is new. If that is the case, ensure flatpak is installed and if clicking the link still does not prompt to install GIMP, then manually install by command line:

flatpak install https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.gimp.GIMP.flatpakref

Once installed, it will be made available exactly the same way as other applications (menus, desktop overview, or any specific application launch process used by your desktop).
If this is not the case, we suggest to report a bug to your desktop or distribution asking for proper support of flatpak. In the meantime, you can still run it by command line (not as the recommended method, only a workaround):

flatpak run org.gimp.GIMP//stable

This installation will also provide regular update. You don't have to come back on this page and install again (it will not work!) when a new version of GIMP is released. Instead if your distribution and/or desktop has a good support for flatpak, it should propose to perform updates.
Once again, if your distribution does not have proper support, you can always fall back to using the following command line:

flatpak update

Systems without flatpak support

GIMP can also run on Solaris and is available for the BSD family of systems such as FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

Please refer to the documentation for your Unix-like system on the installation of software.

GIMP for macOS

Note: the currently available package provides GIMP 2.10.14 and has not yet updated to the latest version, GIMP 2.10.22. We're working on that, please check back later.

The download links above will attempt to download GIMP from one of our trusted mirror servers. If the mirrors do not work or you would rather download directly from our server, you can get the direct download here.

Best Photo Editing Apps For Mac

Supported OS: macOS 10.9 Mavericks or over

Since the 2.8.2 version, GIMP runs on OSX natively. No X11 environment is required.

Native build

The official GIMP 2.10 DMG installer (linked above) is a stock GIMP build without any add-ons. Just open the downloaded DMG and drag and drop GIMP into your 'Applications' folder.

The SHA256 hash sum for gimp-2.10.14-x86_64-1.dmg is: 52654d85f894834f6c134c724beff3eddf212a1bda317299314322cfeff97e52

Check it on VirusTotal: gimp-2.10.14-x86_64-1.dmg

Older Downloads

Previous installers for OSX can be found here: download.gimp.org.

Macports

An easy way to compile and install GIMP and other great Free software on your Mac is by using Macports. The installer allows you to choose from a large directory of packages. To install gimp using Macports, you simply do sudo port install gimp once you have Macports installed.

Last we checked, the GIMP port file pointed to the current stable release and we have reports from people who've built GIMP successfully this way.

Homebrew

Homebrew is similar to Macports and provides packages (aka formulas) to install, either by compiling them from source or by using pre-made binaries. There are indications that there is now a formula for GIMP, installable with: brew tap homebrew/cask && brew cask install gimp.

NOTE! Please be aware that it was announced recently that Homebrew is using analytics. To turn this off in homebrew then run: brew analytics off
You can read more about this on Brew Analytics.

Fink

Fink is a package repository that offer mostly precompiled binaries. It provides the apt-get command known to e.g. Debian and Ubuntu users, and installing GIMP is as easy as sudo apt-get install gimp once you have installed the Fink installer.
If there's no binary package, then fink install gimp will compile GIMP from source.

Disclaimer: we haven't been able to determine if it is possible to install or build recent GIMP from Fink. Last we checked, GIMP 2.6.12 appears to be the most recent GIMP package that is offered there.

GIMP for Windows

The download links above will attempt to download GIMP from one of our trusted mirror servers. If the mirrors do not work or you would rather download directly from our server, you can get the direct download here.

Supported OS: Windows 7 or over

These links download the official GIMP installer for Windows (~200 MB). The installer contains both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of GIMP, and will automatically use the appropriate one.

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing system. It works by downloading GIMP from a distributed network of BitTorrent users, and may improve download speed dramatically. Choosing this option will download the torrent file for the GIMP installer. You may need to install a torrent client to make use of this file. Learn more..

Hash Sum

The SHA256 hash sum for gimp-2.10.22-setup.exe is: f7851c348584ce432dfd8e69b74a168c7dec33ebfddc29c96ad2d6b83aded083

Check it on VirusTotal: gimp-2.10.22-setup.exe

Older Downloads

• Previous v2.10 installers for Windows can be found here: download.gimp.org.
• Previous v2.8 installers for Windows can be found here: download.gimp.org.

GIMP User Manual

These links download language-specific Windows installers for GIMP's local help. By default, they will place the help files with your GIMP installation.

Note: GIMP uses online help by default. If you want to use this local help offline, you will need to change GIMP's help settings.

1. In GIMP, select [Edit] > [Preferences] > [Help System]
2. For 'User manual', select 'Use a locally installed copy'
3. Under 'Help Browser', you can choose between your system's web browser and GIMP's help browser plugin (if available).

See the online help for more settings.

• Chinese Simplified (39 MB)
• Catalan (40 MB)
• Danish (39 MB)
• Dutch (39 MB)
• English (39 MB)
• English (United Kingdom) (39 MB)
• Finnish (39 MB)
• French (41 MB)
• German (41 MB)
• Greek (38 MB)
• Italian (43 MB)
• Japanese (39 MB)
• Korean (40 MB)
• Norwegian Nynorsk (35 MB)
• Portuguese Brazilian (40 MB)
• Romanian (39 MB)
• Russian (40 MB)
• Spanish (40 MB)

Source for version 2.10 (Stable)

GIMP releases available from gimp.org and its mirrors contain the source code and have to be compiled in order to be installed on your system.

For instructions, how to build GIMP from source code, please see this page.

GIMP 2.10.22 is now available at https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/v2.10/. You may want to read the Release Notes for GIMP 2.10.

To allow you to check the integrity of the tarballs, here are the hashes of the latest releases:

gimp-2.10.22.tar.bz2 (sha256):

2db84b57f3778d80b3466d7c21a21d22e315c7b062de2883cbaaeda9a0f618bb

gimp-2.10.20.tar.bz2 (sha256):

e12f9f874b1a007c4277b60aa81e0b67330be7e6153e5749ead839b902fc7b3c

gimp-2.10.18.tar.bz2 (sha256):

65bfe111e8eebffd3dde3016ccb507f9948d2663d9497cb438d9bb609e11d716

gimp-2.10.16.tar.bz2 (sha256):

cbf9fe9534b913a9487b00cd9710cbc569bfd71fdd2f8c321547701a7d70cbeb

gimp-2.10.14.tar.bz2 (sha256):

df9b0f11c2078eea1de3ebc66529a5d3854c5e28636cd25a8dd077bd9d6ddc54

gimp-2.10.12.tar.bz2 (sha256):

7d80b58e0784120d57d327294f6a1fda281ff51a61935c2cd764da281acaac71

gimp-2.10.10.tar.bz2 (sha256):

12d1f243265c7aee1f2c6e97883a5c90ddc0b19b4346cf822e24adbb6c998c77

gimp-2.10.8.tar.bz2 (sha256):

d849c1cf35244938ae82e521b92b720ab48b8e9ed092d5de92c2464ef5244b9b

gimp-2.10.6.tar.bz2 (sha256):

4ec8071f828e918384cf7bc7d1219210467c84655123f802bc55a8bf2415101f

gimp-2.10.4.tar.bz2 (sha256):

ffb0768de14a2631b3d7ed71f283731441a1b48461766c23f0574dce0706f192

gimp-2.10.2.tar.bz2 (sha256):

1cb0baaecdefe44d371a15f2739a1bcbce4682336b4ccf8eb7b587ce52c333eb

gimp-2.10.0.tar.bz2 (sha256):

7fcc96fb88cb0a0595d2610f63a15dec245bb37bf9db527d37a24fb75e547de2

GIMP help files are available at https://download.gimp.org/mirror/pub/gimp/help/.

Please consider using one of the mirrors listed below.

Development snapshots

We now have a separate page for development versions of GIMP.

Want to check out the GIMP development release?
Get it on our development downloads page.

FTP and Web Mirrors

We had a server move a while back that caused us to lose our existing mirrors (moved from physical to virtual server and to an environment that doesn't allow FTP access). On the plus side, we are now able to offer rsync access to download.gimp.org.

If you are running one of the existing GIMP mirrors, or want to create a new one, please contact us to get your rsync credentials.

https://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/gimp.org/pub/gimp/

ftp://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/gimp.org/pub/gimp/

rsync://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/gimp.org/pub/gimp/

Denmark

https://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gimp/gimp/

ftp://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gimp/

rsync://mirrors.dotsrc.org/gimp/

Finland

https://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/

ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/

rsync://rsync.nic.funet.fi/ftp/pub/mirrors/ftp.gimp.org/

France

http://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/gimp/

ftp://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/gimp/

rsync://ftp.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/gimp/

Germany

https://ftp.fau.de/gimp/gimp/

ftp://ftp.fau.de/gimp/gimp/

rsync://ftp.fau.de/gimp/

https://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/

ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/misc/grafik/gimp/

https://artfiles.org/gimp.org/pub/gimp/

Greece

https://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/gimp/

ftp://ftp.cc.uoc.gr/mirrors/gimp/

Japan

http://www.ring.gr.jp/pub/graphics/gimp/

Netherlands

https://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/gimp/gimp/

ftp://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/software/gimp/gimp/

Philippines

http://mirror.rise.ph/gimp/

ftp://mirror.rise.ph/gimp/

Poland

https://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/

ftp://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/

rsync://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/graphics/gimp/

gopher://ftp.icm.edu.pl/1/pub/graphics/gimp/

Sweden

https://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/gimp/

ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/gimp

rsync://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/gimp

Ukraine

https://gimp.ip-connect.info/gimp/

rsync://gimp.ip-connect.info/gimp/

ftp://gimp.ip-connect.info/mirror/gimp/

https://mirror.klaus-uwe.me/gimp/gimp/

ftp://mirror.klaus-uwe.me/gimp/

rsync://mirror.klaus-uwe.me/gimp/

United Kingdom

https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/

ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/

rsync://rsync.mirrorservice.org/ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/

United States

https://mirror.jaleco.com/gimp/gimp/

https://mirror.umd.edu/gimp/gimp/

http://gimp.cp-dev.com/

ftp://devhost.cp-dev.com/gimp

rsync://gimp.cp-dev.com/gimp

https://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/gimp/gimp/

ftp://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/gimp/

rsync://mirrors.syringanetworks.net/gimp/

https://mirrors.xmission.com/gimp/gimp/

ftp://mirrors.xmission.com/gimp/gimp/