1. Best Photography Apps For Mac
2. Best Android App For Macro Photography
3. Best Apps For Photography Mac Pro
4. Best Mac For Photography Editing

• Read More: Best Calendar App for Mac: Fantastical 2 Review (and Runner-Ups) Best Image Editing Apps for Mac: Final Thoughts. While all these photo editing apps are good, you will find that some of them suit you better than the others. For me, Luminar and Affinity Photo work the best and hence I.
• Jun 03, 2020  The best Photos extensions for Mac for photo books, calendars and more The best free task and to-do list apps for Mac Amazing free animated screen savers for Mac with moving scenes.

Browse and download Photography apps on your Mac from the Mac App Store. The Mac App Store has a wide selection of Photography apps for your Mac.

• 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)

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)

Best Photography Apps For Mac

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. 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.

BestMacBook for PhotographersiMore2020

Photographers have often turned to MacBooks to get the job done. Portable and powerful, these laptops are great for photo-editing for beginners and professionals alike. For most photographers, we recommend the 16-inch MacBook Pro with an i9 processor, which first arrived on the scene in 2019. There are other noteworthy models we've gathered to help you choose the one that fits your needs best.

Best Overall: 16-inch MacBook Pro (2019) i9 processor

If you're a professional photographer and need the best that money can buy, we highly recommend this version, which comes with an 8‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 processor and Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz. For this, you'll receive a graphics card boost and 1TB of storage versus the 512GB of storage found on the base model. If this isn't enough, you can add more memory, a better graphics card, and more storage. In doing so, the cost of this model can quickly exceed nearly $6,000, which is something to keep in mind.

However, if you're a photographer looking to run video and photo apps, this is almost certainly the one you should buy. Just think carefully before adding extras.

Pros:

• Apple's best MacBook Pro to date
• Graphics boost, upgrades
• Up to 64GB of memory available

Best Overall

16-inch MacBook Pro (2019) i9 processor

The best of the best

If you're okay with the price, no doubt this is the MacBook to get.

Source: iMore

When it comes to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, $700 separates the base and most complete package. Add more memory, storage, and a better processor, and the price can jump even more. Despite this, the smaller of the two MacBook Pro models has a lot going for it.

At just over three pounds, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is only slightly heavier than the MacBook Air. For this, you receive a better processor and graphics card, more storage availability, and a Touch Bar. On the downsize, adding an even better graphics card or more storage suddenly pushes this model past the $2,000 mark, which might make you reconsider buying a 13-inch versus 16-inch model.

If you're comfortable with the 13-inch screen size and less concerned with price, you should buy this model over the MacBook Air.

Pros:

• Better internals than MacBook Air
• Great mobility
• Much cheaper than the 16-inch model

Cons:

• You can't upgrade the graphics card
• Price can rise quickly as you add components
• Is 13-inches enough?

Best Alternative

13-inch MacBook Pro (2020)

More powerful

There's much to love about this model, which offers better internals than the MacBook Air.

Best for Beginners: 16-inch MacBook Pro (2019) i7 processor

The least expensive 16-inch MacBook Pro model still packs a punch, offering a 9th-generation Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz. The base 16-inch MacBook Pro comes with 16GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory, 512GB SSD storage, and four Thunderbolt 3 ports. The model comes standard with an AMD Radeon Pro 5300M with 4GB of GDDR6 memory graphics processor and can be upgraded to AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 4GB of GDDR6 (for an extra $100) or AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 ($200) for better performance.

On the obvious downside, this is still an expensive laptop. Plus, you'll need to recharge this laptop more often than you would with the non-16-inch offerings. And like all MacBooks, it isn't usually on sale at a discount.

Pros:

• The least expensive 16-inch model
• Pay only $100 extra for a graphics boost
• Biggest MacBook Pro display to date

Cons:

• Still very expensive
• Not the most powerful MBP you can buy

Best for Beginners

16-inch MacBook Pro (2019) i7 processor

Largest display for less

The entry-level 16-inch MacBook Pro is an excellent choice when the size of the screen matters the most.

Source: Apple

The entry-level MacBook Air (2020) offers a 13-inch Retina display with True Tone, 1.1GHz dual-core 10th-generation Intel Core i3 processor with Turbo Boost up to 3.2GHz, 8GB 3733MHz LPDDR4X memory, 256GB SSD storage, Intel Iris Plus Graphics, and Touch ID. At 2.8 pounds, the 2019 MacBook Air is the lightest MacBook currently on the market. It's also the least expensive.

The lower price comes with drawbacks, starting with having an slower processor and less robust graphics card than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It also contains fewer Thunderbolt 3 ports than most of the MacBook Pro models. On a positive note, the MacBook Air offers one more hour of use between charges than the similar-sized MacBook Pro.

Pros:

• Same screen size as 13-inch MBP
• Up to 11 hours of wireless web between charges
• Price

Cons:

• Only two Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports
• Not as powerful as MBP models

Best Budget

MacBook Air (2020)

Fun, yet practical

Best Android App For Macro Photography

The best all-around option for teachers, the MacBook Air is a great looking device that will provide you with years of service.

Best Apps For Photography Mac Pro

Time to snap

In 2019, the MacBook lineup shrunk after Apple discontinued the 12-inch MacBook. The change brings to four the number of Apple laptops we recommend for photographers. Our favorite, the 16-inch MacBook Pro with an i9 processor, is the best choice for professional photographers.

This great device offers an 8‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 processor and Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz. You'll receive a graphics card boost and 1TB of storage versus the 512GB of storage found on the base model.

Looking for even more? Add more storage, better memory, and an improved graphics card for even more splendor!

Credits — The team that worked on this guide

Bryan M. Wolfe is a dad who loves technology, especially anything new from Apple. Penn State (go Nittany Lions) graduate here, also a huge fan of the New England Patriots. Thanks for reading. @bryanmwolfe

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

Prop up your MacBook in style with one of these stands

Best Mac For Photography Editing

Looking for a stellar stand for your MacBook or MacBook Pro? It's more than just a way to show off your toy: it can help optimize space, reduce desk clutter, help with storage, and more.