Everyone takes a lot more photos these days, whether you’re snapping away with a smartphone every minute or sat on a desolate hillside waiting for the sun to come up and create the perfect vista. But whether it’s a snapshot or a masterpiece, your best photos can be better with just a few simple tweaks, and that’s where you need the best photo editing software.
The phrase actually includes a wide range of packages and services. At the top of the tree remains Adobe’s Photoshop, then there’s a variety of easier-to-grasp packages; some of these concentrate purely on editing, while others are more general purpose design suites. Then you’ve a myriad of free tools and online cloud services that also provide some editing functions, here’s our pick of them all.
The Photoshop triptych
Adobe’s fully-fledged Photoshop is now part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud. That means you buy it on subscription much like you do Netflix, keep on paying and you can keep on using it and benefit from all the latest updates and features, stop paying and lose all access.
At present you can get the Photography Plan for just over £100 a year, charged monthly at £8.57. For that you get Photoshop CC and Lightroom CC. It’s a great double-act, with Photoshop handling serious edits and creative projects of all sorts, while Lightroom organises your photos and lets you make easy tweaks and corrections.
By comparison you can pick up a standard copy of Lightroom 6 for £110, it won’t every expire and there’s no ongoing cost, but then it won’t receive updates either. Or you can go with Photoshop Elements, below, for £80 and upgrade every 3 years say, at a cost of around £2.20 a month.
If you’re keen on photography to the extent that you regularly buy new cameras, lenses and other kit then we’d certainly say the ongoing investment in Photoshop and Lightroom is worth the money. If you rarely fiddle with your photos except to fix the odd exposure or tweak white balance then Lightroom alone will suit you. While if you rarely spend money but want to play about with some cool effects all the same, then Elements is for you.
Standalone packages
Now that we’ve got Photoshop Creative Cloud out of the way, let's have a look at the packages that you can simply buy off the shelf and enjoy for as long as you please.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 14
Adobe’s Photoshop has been the biggest name in photo editing for decades, after all saying that an image has been ‘photoshopped’ is as common as saying ‘hoovering’ instead of vacuuming. Unlike hoover though, Adobe’s Photoshop remains the big name in the sector, only one little problem, this isn’t Photoshop, this is Photoshop Elements.
We’ve talked about Photoshop and creative cloud in the intro, and if the idea of paying every month for your software doesn’t appeal then Photoshop Elements is a sound alternative.
It’s easy to use for starters, and there’s ‘guided edits’ to help you get to grips with some of its more complex features. It’s also designed to help you make promotional materials, such as flyers and posters, using your photos. Want to make collages, you’re in the right place. it’s also some great filters and effects that you can add for instance impact. it does have serious editing tools too, you get layers and masking and all that stuff.
If after reading this article you’re not sure which photo editing software to buy, then Elements is probably the one you need. And right now you can buy it direct from Adobe for just £47. Read our full Adobe Photoshop Elements 14 review.
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11
As its name suggests, Xara’s Photo and Graphic Designer isn’t a pure image-manipulation tool. You can tweak your photos and make basic edits but this is more about working them into designs for desktop publishing - be that a poster or even a catalogue.
Back to photo-editing there are options to colour correct, clone, heal, stitch panoramas and more. All your changes are non-destructive so you can switch back and forth with ease, because of this you work in Xara’s own format and only export a finished file when you’re ready. There’s no support for RAW files here either, so it’s not suited for the most-serious photographers.
Beyond photo editing there’s a huge range of painting and drawing tools to add other elements. It’s great stuff and still the package we reach for first when we need to knock up a flyer for an event. And at £50 is very well priced for what is a flexible do-it-all creative package. Read our full Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 11 review
Adobe Lightroom 6 - still the best way to manage your photos
If you want to create a surreal masterpiece with numerous blended images, a myriad of layers and complex blending and effects, then Lightroom isn’t the software you’re looking for. Instead this package concentrates on tweaking your photos, improving contrast, fixing white balance issues, making small spot changes, cropping and reshaping even, but essentially leaving the original image recognisable.
It’s not as purist as it was once. The latest version can work on multiple exposures to create HDR effects and it now has panorama stitching as well. Most importantly, Lightroom has excellent support for RAW file formats (as do other Adobe products) so if you shoot in this way you can get much more out of your images.
Lightroom is also about photo management, turning your innumerable images into a far more accessible library. A new feature identifies faces, though it’s a bit hit-and-miss. If you want to undertake design projects then you’ll need a proper editor too, and so Adobe CC’s Photography Plan (see above) will appeal. However, if you just want to manage your photos and tweak the odd one then Lightroom 6 is the way to go. Read our full Adobe Lightroom 6 review
Alternatively … Google Photos
Keeping photos on your PC is so last year, and if you’re going to upload them all online then why not manage and edit them there too? Add in unlimited free storage for JPEG images up to 16-megapixels (or resized down to that if bigger) plus 1080p videos, and you’ve got a brilliant one-stop-shop for casual photographers. You can even upload bigger pictures, but these count against your free 15GB Google Drive storage limit.
Admittedly its editing tools are very basic indeed. Just a handful of sliders to tweak contrast and saturation levels. To be honest it’s barely a photo editor, but it’s surprising just how much you can improve a photo with a couple of tweaks.
It’s convenience that’s the main boon here, photos from your phone will automatically upload and you can then access them from your handset or any web browser. Already got a Gmail or Google username and password, then you won’t even need to sign up for an account, and it works seamlessly with Google Drive too. It’s a great service and we recommend you start using it today. Read our full Google Photos review
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