You have a lot of factors to consider when deciding which is the best photo editor for macOS X, and the importance of the various elements will vary from user to user. Because of that, picking a single application must involve compromises as what is right for one user may be too basic, too complicated, or too expensive for another.
Best High-End Photo Editors
- If you’re working on a budget and need advanced features for the least amount of money, Pixelmator is your best best. This is a full-featured editing program that gives you photo editing, retouching, color correction, painting, drawing and effects tools for the cost of three months of an Adobe subscription.
- Best Desktop for Photo Editing: Apple iMac Pro 27″ All-in-One Desktop, Space Gray (MQ2Y2LL/A) The new Apple iMac Pro is powered by the Intel Xeon W 8-Core processor. The base clock speed of the processor is 3.2 GHz, while the maximum speed is 4.2 GHz. The processor comes paired with 32 GB of internal DDR4 SD RAM. The memory has a speed of 2666 MHz.
Together, they make for very extensive and robust photo editing. Photoshop has without a doubt well earned its reputation as one of the best professional photo editing programs available with a straightforward efficient and quick user interface. But it does not do it all which is where Lightroom comes in. Lightroom offers a vast array of preset tools and creative effects and better organizational tools and catalog features.
If you have a completely open budget, then your best purchase is Adobe Photoshop. It was the original image editor and has been around since the old Apple Mac operating system. It's the industry-standard image editor and with good reason.
It's a hugely useful application with a comprehensive and well-considered feature set. Photoshop is equally well suited for home editing photos and producing creative and artistic raster images. Its development, especially since the introduction of the Creative Suite versions, has been evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Each release sees it become an even more rounded and robust application that runs natively on OS X.
Other photo editors have drawn inspiration from Photoshop. However, few can match the feature set that allows for the flexibility of non-destructive adjustments, easily applied layer styles, and the powerful camera and lens-specific image corrections.
More Affordable Options for Photo Editing
If you have a limited budget, then you can't find cheaper than free, and that is what GIMP is. GIMP is a free and open-source alternative to Photoshop, though the developers deliberately discount this.
GIMP is a powerful and flexible image editor that you can expand with free plugins. However, it isn't able to match Photoshop in several ways, including the lack of adjustment layers to make non-destructive edits to images and the flexibility of layer styles. Nonetheless, many users swear by GIMP and in the right hands, it can produce creative results that can match work produced by Photoshop. Sometimes GIMP can offer tools not available elsewhere. For example, the Resynthesizer plugin gave GIMP users a powerful, content-aware fill tool long before such a feature appeared in Photoshop CS5.
If you don't mind spending a little bit of money, though, you might also want to consider Pixelmator. It's a stylish and well-featured native photo editor for OS X.
Adobe Photoshop Elements is also a good, affordable alternative to the mainline product. It offers most of the features of Photoshop at a fraction of the price. It's certainly worth considering for home users, hobbyists, and even some professional work where advanced features are not needed.
What Is The Best Photo Editing Software For Mac
Photo Editors for the Home User
Free Mac Photo Editor Download
OS X comes with the Preview application pre-installed, and for many users, this will offer enough tools and features to make simple adjustments to digital photos. However, if you're looking for a little more functionality without the steep learning curve of GIMP or Photoshop, Seashore would be well worth a look. And like GIMP, it's available for free.
This attractive photo editor has a clear and intuitive interface and a user guide that will take new users with little knowledge through the concept of layers and image effects. It would be a good stepping stone for a move onto a more powerful photo editor, though it's likely to offer more than enough functionality for a large number of users.
The Best Photo Editor For Pc
So Which is the Best Photo Editor for Mac OS X?
Trying to decide which is the best photo editor of OS X is a matter of determining which one does the best job of reaching various compromises.
What Is The Best Photo Editor For Mac
What Is The Best Photo Editor
All in all, we have to conclude that GIMP offers the best overall compromise. The fact that it is free means that absolutely anyone with an internet connection can use it. While it isn't the most powerful or best-featured app, it is near the top. Despite that, though, novice users can also use GIMP for simple jobs, without having to embark on the steep learning curve to make full use of every feature. Finally, with the ability to install plugins, it is possible that if GIMP doesn't do what you want it to, someone else may have already produced a plugin that will take care of it.