Digital image processing is no longer just for people who take professional photos: With our smartphones, almost all of us have a camera at hand in everyday life that is often not that bad, and hobby photography with digital SLR or system cameras is also a popular creative activity. Even those who maintain a website or blog or create content for a company may prefer to take their own photos instead of hiring someone or using stock photos.
Anyone who has ever tried out an image editing tool will quickly notice how much you can often get out of photos with a little post-processing: From simple changes to exposure and white balance - for example if the wrong camera settings were chosen or the lighting conditions were not optimal - to comprehensive creative editing, everything is possible.
Image editing is not just about photos alone: many tools are just as suitable for creating and designing other visual content such as logos, graphics for social media posts or print templates, or for combining photos with other elements.
In this article, we present the five best photo editing software that have excellent ratings on Capterra. You can find our methodology for selecting the tools at the end of the article.
Top 5 image editing programs
1st Adobe Lightroom
Introduction to the image editing program Lightroom ( source )
Overall rating: 4.8/5
Reviews: 209
Lightroom is one of the best-known tools for managing, editing and optimizing photos and, with its extensive range of functions, is aimed at people who take professional photos, but not only. Simple corrections can be made with just a few clicks, for example to adjust white balance, exposure and color and to compensate for unfavorable lighting conditions (e.g. when photos were taken against backlight). Users can correct the perspective of shots, crop or straighten them and use correction tools to remove distracting elements. During editing, it is possible to compare different photos and the photos can be marked and given star ratings for sorting purposes. The "Select People" function can be used to automatically recognize people in an image in order to change details such as facial features or clothing. Video editing functions are also available.
Lightroom can be used to perform very complex and advanced image editing and even if the sliders for editing are intuitive, it is worth getting to grips with it to find out what you can do with the tool. Adobe offers tutorials for beginners as well as experts. Presets make it possible to optimize images with one click and, for example, create certain lighting moods or optimize portrait photos with presets for different skin tones. Users can use existing presets as well as create their own or integrate presets from other people: some photographers, for example, offer presets for purchase that others can use to give their own photos a similar atmosphere.
Lightroom can be used as a desktop version, as an app for smartphones and tablets, and as a web-based version, with projects automatically synchronized in the cloud version. The latest version is only available as an annual subscription, which includes the full version of Lightroom as well as Adobe Portfolio, Adobe Fonts, 1 TB of cloud storage, and access to updates and upgrades. The photo subscription version offers either 20 GB or 1 TB of cloud storage, and in addition to the cloud-based Lightroom version, the non-cloud-based version Lightroom Classic and Photoshop for desktop and iPad are available. The software can be tested free of charge for 7 days.
2nd Adobe Photoshop
Introduction to the photo editing program Photoshop ( source )
Overall rating: 4.8/5
Reviews: 1,733
Photoshop is also a software from Adobe and is probably one of the best-known image editing programs. The functions of Photoshop and Lightroom overlap, but the two tools were developed for different purposes: Lightroom is intended for managing and processing large quantities of photos, while Photoshop is designed for the complex editing of individual images. Photographers often use both software solutions: In Lightroom they sort their photos into catalogs and edit them, in Photoshop they carry out retouching or combine several photos to create new compositions. While Lightroom is primarily about photography itself, Photoshop allows you to change, distort and edit images more creatively. Even when it is not about photos at all but about completely different types of graphics, Photoshop is the tool of choice.
In Photoshop, users can transform their photos in creative ways, remove distracting objects, add text and vector graphics, and make complex edits using filters, layers, and masks. For individual editing steps, any number of layers can be placed over the original image and hidden or shown, for example for color correction and white balance. One popular function is replacing the sky in photos to give them more drama. Photoshop brushes in a wide variety of styles, such as felt-tip pens, spray pens, markers, or chalk, offer a wide range of options for digital drawing, painting, calligraphy, or hand lettering, and can also be designed by the user.
a certain amount of time to get used to, and just like with Lightroom, Adobe provides how-to guides for Photoshop. If you want to go deeper, you can find free and paid online courses from various providers for both Photoshop and Lightroom.
Photoshop can be purchased in the aforementioned photo subscription together with Lightroom or as a standalone product in the Creative Cloud subscription for desktop and iPad. Pupils, students and teachers receive a discount.
3. Canva
Introduction of the graphic design platform Canva ( source )
Overall rating: 4.7/5
Reviews: 10,836
While Lightroom, for example, is primarily intended for editing photos, taiwan telegram data the graphic design platform Canva focuses on other visual media used for specific purposes, such as social media graphics, logos, business cards, infographics or presentation templates. For these and numerous other use cases, Canva offers an extensive library of professionally created templates as well as stock photos, graphics, videos and audio files, some of which are free and some of which are paid. You can also create, save and share your own templates in the drag-and-drop editor. Data can be visualized in diagrams or charts and inserted into media or embedded on websites, for example as a Gantt, pie or Venn diagram, mind map or organizational chart. The image editing functions include a background remover that automatically isolates the subject in the foreground of photos and intelligent resizing to bring images into different formats for different channels. Teams that primarily use Canva to create social media posts can schedule them with a content calendar.