This is an ultimate guide covering the best photo editing apps.
You might have asked yourself before, “what photo editing apps do bloggers or photographers use?”
Luckily, there is a multitude of apps on the market that allow you to make edits to your photos right on your phone.
Many of these same apps have an array of filters, so knowing what filter apps bloggers, photographers, or casual enthusiasts use and which apps are best for strict editing is vital to your success.
Here is a list of the best photo editing apps for bloggers, photographers, or anyone interested in editing their photos.
⭐ How to Choose the Best Photo Editing App?
Features: Make sure the app has the editing tools you need, such as color correction, cropping, and filters.
Ease of use: Look for an app that is user-friendly and easy to navigate.
Compatibility: Consider if the app is compatible with your device and operating system.
Cost: Some apps are free to use, while others require a subscription or purchase.
Community and Support: Look for an app with a large user base and active community to get help and tips from other users.
Integration with other apps: If you use other apps for storage, organization, or social media sharing, look for an app that can integrate with them.
Table of Contents
27 Best Photo Editing Apps
1. Instasize
Android & iOS – Free
Instasize is a go-to app for many social media creators.
You can edit images on the go easily by transforming them from unedited pics to Instagram-ready posts in seconds.
Instasize is popular among many photographers because they offer many features within the app so you don’t have to switch back and forth between multiple apps.
They offer photographer-inspired filters, editing adjustments, resizing for social media formats, a collage maker, beauty tools, a text editor, and other cool features you have to check out that they add continually.
2. Snapseed by Google
Android & iOS – Free
“The quintessential option for mobile editing.”
Snapseed was originally developed independently before it was acquired by Google.
However, Google hasn’t slowed the product down by any measure. For many bloggers, Snapseed is the go-to app for all of their editing needs.
It’s known for its expansive brush tools as well as its photo masking features, which allow you to edit a specific portion of your photo while leaving others unchanged.
3. Canva
Android & iOS – Free
“Create striking designs with ease.”
Canva is a great piece of software for creating quick, visually pleasing graphics featuring your stunning photos.
The app is known for its intuitive, quick interface and takes much of the guesswork out of good design.
Check out our Canva Review for more info!
4. VSCO
Android & iOS – Free
“Fine-tune the control you have over your cellphone camera.”
VSCO has been around for a while and has long been the mobile editing app used by professional bloggers and mobile photographers.
It features a robust set of features like focal point lock and exposure control and when used by the right hands, can be a total powerhouse, making your mobile photographs look like they came out of the lens of a DSLR camera.
VSCO also comes complete with its own community of like-minded photographers, like a more pro-focused Instagram.
5. A Color Story
Android & iOS – Free
“Create a cohesive, sophisticated color palette for your audience.”
While many editing apps focus on a feature-rich platform in which to fine-tune your photographs, A Color Story takes a distinctive approach in its clever use of color.
With carefully curated filters, A Color Story can bread life into your brand with rich layers of color that can be coordinated as simply as a tap of your finger.
It’s a great way to create a cohesive look for your brand while staying in style.
6. Over
Android & iOS – Free
“Make striking designs with an intuitive interface.”
Much like Canva, Over stands to make brand-building and design accessible to everyone with a smartphone.
It features tools for editing, layout, and typography that will complement your photos nicely.
Best yet, it uses an intuitive, colorful, and incredibly simple interface that never feels like it’s lacking.
With over 10,000+ templates and graphics to choose from, your blogging brand will look better than it’s ever looked.
7. Colorcinch
“Convert Colorcinch – the #1 photo editor & cartoonizer designed to be simple, beautiful, and free”
Colorcinch is an all-in-one photo and text editor. You can resize, enhance and transform images to your liking.
One of its best features is the “cartoonizer” which lets you turn your photos into a cartoon in one click.
8. Prisma Photo Editor
Android & iOS – Free
“Convert your amazing photographs into realistic paintings.”
How would you like to take your gorgeous photographs and turn them into works of art? Prisma Photo Editor does just that.
Using a unique algorithm, the app can convert any photo you throw at it into a myriad of different pieces of art, from watercolor, gauche, oil, and everything in between.
Better yet, these filters are one tap away and completely tweakable, so you have full control over the results.
Add a unique flair to your brand by giving your photos an artistic spin using Prisma Photo Editor.
9. Foodie
Android & iOS – Free
“Be the food photographer everyone wants you to be.”
Foodie is a camera and photo editing app that is designed around our impulse to take photographs of our food.
And while many of us treat that facet of our lives as a hobby, some of us are in the business of telling stories through what we eat.
Foodie is the perfect app for enthusiasts and food bloggers alike—it features live in-camera filters, a timer, and an intelligent guide for getting the best angle of your food at all times.
10. Adobe Photoshop Express
Android & iOS – Free
“The cornerstone of photo editing has made its way to mobile.”
Adobe isn’t the kind of company that stands down from a challenge. Designing a mobile-friendly version of their massive (and massively popular) photo editing app was quite the challenge, but one they’ve overcome after releasing Adobe Photoshop Express.
While it’s not their full-fledged product, it comes shockingly close to something that you use on your smartphone.
With an emphasis on fast, intelligent results using photo filters and color correction, Photoshop Express is a great way to quickly spruce up any photo.
Of course, you can also dive deeply into the fine-tuning features of the app to get that perfect look, if that’s the kind of person you are!
11. Adobe Lightroom
Android & iOS – Free
“Take complete control over your photography right from your phone.”
Adobe Lightroom is similar to Adobe Photoshop in that it offers photo editing and retouching features.
However, Lightroom is a heavier piece of software for serious photographers.
It does away with the robustness of Photoshop Express and focuses on things professional photographers want, like raw editing, an in-app camera, and even presets and color profiles that can be fine-tuned just like the full desktop version of the software.
Adobe Lightroom is a great tool for serious photographers that need a lot of power while still maintaining portability with its online photo editor.
12. Desygner
“Design beautiful designs and manage your content easily”
Desygner is an intuitive graphic design tool for non-designers and content creators.
The editor is intuitive, and it has thousands of templates, images, and icons free to use.
You can find features like resize, a background remover, or even animation, all of them made easy to use in just one click.
The editor and its free version offer much more than other competitors, but on the other hand, Desygner prices are too good to be true.
13. Photo Collage Pro Editor
Android & iOS – Free
“With such an easy-to-use interface, collages are just a tap or two away.”
Photo Collage Pro Editor sits amid the likes of Canva and Over.
While it offers rudimentary photo editing features, its heart is truly in the design side of photography and blogging.
It features 120+ layouts to choose from and allows you to easily take your photos and create intricate, professional collages.
From typography to stickers, Photo Collage Editor is a great tool for those photographers that cultivate a “fun” brand.
14. Adobe Photoshop Fix
Android & iOS – Free
“Adobe does it again—this time they’ve taken on quick and simple photo retouching on mobile.”
If you thought that, surely, Adobe would stop at Photoshop Express and their mobile version of Lightroom then you’d be wrong.
Not one to slow down, Adobe has created Photoshop Fix, which is another piece of software made for the purposes of photo editing.
So, how does this app stand out from Photoshop Express and Lightroom?
It’s cleverly centered around quick and easy photo retouching, so things like healing, liquefy, and smoothing is all the focus.
Like it or not, Photoshop Fix is an asset to any photographer who needs to do some retouching on the go, which is something many mobile photo editing apps
15. Visage
Android & iOS – Free
“Fix your face with simple, intelligent controls.”
Much like Adobe Photoshop Fix, Visage is an app that stands to give users quick and intuitive retouching features right on their smartphones.
While the tools aren’t quite as robust as Adobe’s, they have their own inherent charm in their simplicity.
Visage is a great piece of software for, say, the teenage bloggers out there worried about that errant blemish or freckle, or those of us who feel the need to make our teeth a few shades whiter before we send them out into the world of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Visage certainly has its place in a market where handheld devices are getting increasingly sophisticated in how they shoot portraits—front-facing cameras are getting better and better and software algorithms can convincingly cheat exposure, and focal points, and even mimic things like bokeh.
16. Enlight Photofox
Android & iOS – Free
“Transcend photography and turn your photos into pieces of visual art.”
With a name like “Enlight Photofox” it’s hard to anticipate what you’ll find in this kind of app.
Fortunately, while the name may be lacking, it’s packed with unique and interesting features that make it a distinctive facet of both the Android and iOS app stores.
While it does photo editing well, it focuses primarily on special effects and what it refers to as “glitch art”, which can give your photos an interesting and artistic twist.
The app’s motto is “express yourself effortlessly” and their app lives up to that standard.
17. Instagram
Android & iOS – Free
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Sometimes the first tool at your disposal is just fine.”
Sometimes simple is all you need. While Instagram may seem run-of-the-mill to most, its array of filters and editing features are distilled to be exactly what most of us need.
Brightness, contrast, leveling, and cropping are most of what you’ll find within Instagram’s editing mode but, ask yourself, what do you usually do when you edit photographs?
You might be surprised to find that Instagram is all you need and that ubiquity isn’t always a bad thing.
18. Afterlight 2
Android & iOS – Free
“With a plethora of filters and elegant effects like double exposure, you can give unprecedented style to your photography.”
Afterlight 2 is one of those applications that does every facet of editing exceptionally well.
You have fine-tuned control over how your photographs look as well as over 130 filters to choose from to quickly enhance your photos.
But what makes Afterlight 2 stand out is its double exposure features and its custom textures.
Once relegated to professionals who understood the intricacies of analog photography, double exposures can be created through Afterlight 2 in mere seconds.
It’s never been easier to create a striking visual style and enhance the look and feel of your smartphone photos!
19. SKRWT
Android & iOS – $1.99
“A weird name but a surprisingly robust app—take control of your cellphone camera’s distortion and shoot like a pro.”
Don’t worry—we’re not sure how to pronounce its name either. However, SKRWT is a great, paid mobile app for having intricate control over your photos.
Hailed by the developers as the “missing link in high-end smartphone photography”, SKRWT does seem to have the credibility to back that claim up.
Most notable is their distortion correct algorithm, which will automatically correct the standard distortion caused by the tiny sensors in smartphone cameras. Start shooting like a professional with SKRWT.
20. Facetune
Android & iOS – $3.99
“Portrait photography is more important than ever—make sure you have the right app for it.”
The price may be steep, but Facetune is hoping to capitalize on the recent uptick in portrait photography thanks to the increasingly higher resolution front-facing cameras and software tweaks that make ordinary portrait photography look better than ever thought possible on a smartphone.
With Facetune, you have full control over the look of your portraits, from the width of your smile (seriously) to the whiteness of your teeth.
21. TouchRetouch
Android & iOS – $1.99
“Sometimes there’s one thing between you and the perfect photo. What if you could erase it with your finger?”
What do you do when you’re faced with a marketplace of photo editing apps? If you’re TouchRetouch then you find a niche area of that market and completely corner it.
That’s exactly what the app did—they’re the go-to source for removing unwanted objects from photos.
Using just the tip of your finger you can paint over unwanted objects and tell the TouchRetouch to make them disappear.
If it sounds too good to be true, then check it out for yourself—it really works!
22. Pixelmator
Android & iOS – $4.99
“With layer support, you have an almost limitless amount of space to enhance your photography.”
Sometimes the best way to make your editing app stand out amid a sea of similar apps is to charge for it.
At $4.99, it’s up to you to decide if the value is justified with Pixelmator.
However, the app does things many other mobile editing apps do not, such as layer support.
Not to mention, while Pixelmator is, at its core, a photo editing app, it also moonlights as a fully functional sketching application.
If you think about it, paying for Pixelmator is a 2-for-1 deal!
23. Mextures
Android & iOS – $1.99
“You can do no wrong with a non-destructive workflow and over 150+ high-res textures give you plenty to play with.”
The developers may have been juxtaposing “mobile” and “textures” when they named their app, but regardless of its unorthodox name, Mextures remains a great app that specializes in high-quality, layered textures to your photographs.
With over 150+ high-resolution textures, you can add plenty of grunge, dust, or whatever else you want to give your photographs a little added style.
And the people at Mextures want you to play to your heart’s galore—they feature a “non-destructive workflow”, meaning you can undo every single effect and bring your photograph back to its original state no matter how much you’ve changed it.
24. Camera+
Android & iOS – $3.99
“An original member of the mobile photography line-up and still excellent after all these years.
Sophisticated control of your cellphone camera means you’ll take better photos than you could otherwise.”
Camera+ is an oldie but a goodie. The developers behind this app saw the writing on the wall long ago—they knew that consumers wanted more out of their smartphone cameras and Camera+ set out to fill that void.
With things like in-camera motion tracking to capture crisp action shots and features the devs call “focal peaking”, which uses computing power to ensure your subject is as focused as it possibly can be, Camera+ remains a great tool for professional photographers, bloggers, and anyone that wants to get the most out of their smartphone camera.
25. Pixlr
Android & iOS – Free
“A great alternative to Photoshop in every way.”
Pixlr has long been a go-to browser-based Photoshop alternative for those of us who need to edit photos on-the-fly or simply can’t afford the luxury of an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
Since its creation, the developers have ported their popular browser application to both iOS and Android, where it stands as a great way to edit, retouch, and add layers, type, and color to your photos.
Pixlr on mobile does a lot of what other apps do in the same category, but it has the added clout of its browser-based origins, which makes it a popular facet of mobile photo editing.
26. Fotor
Android & iOS – Free
“License and monetize your photography with an easy, intuitive interface.”
Fotor is one of those rare applications that doesn’t just stick with what’s popular.
Instead, it cultivates a niche business model that it can rely on that not many others are involved in.
Fotor’s model is in monetizing your photography. However, it also features a baked-in photo editor.
But many consumers use the app for its social network and to monetize their shots by offering them to the general public.
Fotor’s photo licensing is quick, and intuitive, and makes an often-times challenging process a piece of cake.
27. Camera MX
Android & iOS – Free
“Lesser-known doesn’t mean lesser quality, especially when you do away with in-app purchases and make your app one-price-fits-all.”
CameraMX is working on marketing its app to users that want easy access to filters without paying for in-app features.
While the app is much like a lot of the others on the market, the developers of CameraMX decided to offer their app for a one-time fee, so you know exactly what features you’ll have access to.
While CameraMX doesn’t do anything remarkably different from the competition, it still has its place in the photo editing marketplace.
Most of all, the app offers a wide range of 35mm camera effects that can give your photographs a grainy, vintage look.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the easiest way to edit photos?
The easiest way to edit photos would depend on the individual’s level of experience and familiarity with photo editing software.
What are the 5 basics of photo editing?
Cropping, adjusting exposure, color correction, sharpening, and removing blemishes.
Final Remarks
Hope you enjoyed this list of the best photo editing apps for bloggers!
Nate Torres is a portrait photographer based in Southern California. Outside of photography, Nate specializes in SEO, content marketing, and entrepreneurship. He is also the founder of Imaginated.com, a platform for creator education.
