2017 RANKING & REVIEWS
TOP RANKING BEST PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE
Good Photo Editing Software Makes Your Shots Look Like a Million Bucks
Photo editing software is something everyone can benefit from. Yes, everyone. Not just professional photographers or editors – everyone.
Professional photo editing software can touch up those photos from your big day. Did you get a bit of red wine on your wedding dress? With the best photo editing software for PC, you can touch up your digital photos and make it look like the stain was never there.
Sharing images of your baked goods to promote your local bakery? You can use top photo editing software to make your delicious confection stand out against a blurred background and upload your photo to social media.
PC photo editing software can help a creative agency make a model’s hair look shinier for a shampoo ad. Students can touch up their graduation photo to make their teeth look brighter and whiter with this kind of software – and it doesn’t even have to be the best professional photo editing software.
Award Emblem: Top 6 Best Photo Editing Software
Contrary to the popular belief, new photo editing software doesn’t have to be expensive. In fact, you can find cheap photo editing software and some are even free. Whether you’re looking for the latest photo editing software, free photo editing software, or something in between, check out our list of six photo editing software reviews to get started.
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AdvisoryHQ’s List of the Top 6 Best Photo Editing Software
List is sorted alphabetically (click any of the names below to go directly to the detailed review section for that software)
Top 6 Best Photo Editing Software | Brief Comparison & Ranking
Best Photo Editing Software | Highlighted Features |
| Adobe Photography Plan | High-end, comprehensive tool |
| Affinity Photo | Personas |
| GIMP | Free to sell and to use commercially |
| Nik Collective | Suite of free plug-ins |
| Paint.NET | User-friendly |
| PhotoScape | Batch editor |
Table: Top 6 New Photo Editing Software | Above list is sorted alphabetically
Photo Editing and Photo Editing Software for Digital Marketers
Digital marketers are always looking for ways to catch people’s attention whether it’s on social media or in an app. Photography is central to effective digital marketing, which means digital marketers need great photo editing software for good photographs.
For starters, we are visually oriented. Instagram boasts over 500 million active monthly users, and the number of brands that are using the photo sharing service to market their product or service is only growing. While sites like Instagram offer filters that are easy to apply, knowing how to use professional photo editing software takes your photos even further.
Source: Pexels
Additionally, quality photos can be used to break up large chunks of text. Reader fatigue is a real problem. Sharp, clear photos polished using the best photo editing software for PC can keep readers from bouncing off the page.
Studies also show that humans process photos faster than they process text, meaning brands can get more information across with images they process using professional photo editing software.
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AdvisoryHQ’s Selection Methodology
What methodology does AdvisoryHQ use in selecting and finalizing the credit cards, financial products, firms, services and products that are ranked on its various top rated lists?
Please click here “AdvisoryHQ’s Ranking Methodologies” for a detailed review of AdvisoryHQ’s selection methodologies for ranking top rated credit cards, financial accounts, firms, products, and services.
Detailed Review – Top Ranking Best Photo Editing Software for PC
Below, please find the detailed review of each card on our list of the best photo editing software. We have highlighted some of the factors that allowed these good photo editing software to score so high in our selection ranking.
Adobe Photography Plan Review
Adobe offers a Photography Plan through its Creative Cloud offerings. Adobe offers one of the most popular top photo editing software. The Photography Plan offers both Photoshop (one of the most popular and one of the best professional photo editing software ) as well as Lightroom, which is another photo editing program from Adobe.
The subscription is $9.99 a month. People can also pay $119.88 for an entire year.
What is Lightroom?
Lightroom is the less famous version of Adobe’s Mac and PC photo editing software. This doesn’t mean that it’s not a good photo editing software. Rather, it fulfills a specific need.
Lightroom is a top photo editing software that is specifically designed for the workflow of editing images. It is a good photo editing software that is for image management as well as image editing. It introduces efficiency into the photo editing process starting from when the raw image is imported all the way to when the final image is exported.
This is not an unfamiliar, new photo editing software. You can easily make typical edits including the basics like changing the exposure and contrast or cropping images. But the beauty of Lightroom is the ability to organize images while working so that post-production is an efficient process.
Photos in this top photo editing software can be tagged, organized into collections, assembled into slideshows, and shared to other platforms like Flickr. Users can also set presets for their photographs to make the process move faster.
This is also one of the latest photo editing software to reduce the risk of multiple changes. It’s a new photo editing software that does not destroy the original file, letting users play around without worrying about losing their initial photo.
Photoshop
Most people have heard of Photoshop. It is not a cheap photo editing software, but it is one of the best professional photo editing software.
Photoshop makes retouching photos extremely easy. An amateur photographer can get rid of under eye circles or pimples. One of the most innovative features of Photoshop that has been adapted by both pricey and cheap photo editing software is layers. Different level of edits can be tied to different layers to keep the entire process organized.
Users can also create automatic actions to make editing easier. There is an entire market of Photoshop actions that save time for people who don’t wish to learn the ins and outs of this best photo editing software.
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Affinity Photo Review
Affinity Photo is great for those who are new to photo editing and require a bit of hand holding to get started. As one of the best photo editing software, Affinity has a great suite of customizable tools for editing. It also offers a great layer system and live editing.
It supports several file types and has fantastic PSD support. Editors can work in any color space including RGB, LAB, Greyscale, and CMYK. This top photo editing software comes with tutorials and learning guides to help new editors get a feel for things. While this is a definite plus for users who are new to the game, the advanced options provided by this good photo editing software are limited.
There is not very much plug in support, and this photo editing software is not conducive to easy project management. That said, this top photo editing software comes with modules called personas that have different work set ups with specific tools.
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GIMP Review
GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. We included GIMP as one of our free photo editing software reviews. It offers free photo retouching and editing and is a cost-effective alternative for those who can’t afford the other Mac and PC photo editing software on our list.
Just because GIMP is not one of our pricier photo editing software reviews, does not mean it isn’t worthwhile. In fact, it is considered a good photo editing software alternative for those who can’t afford programs like Photoshop.
GIMP is a good photo editing software that allows users to change their interface to suit their editing needs since different projects require different tools. For example, users can choose the widget theme where spacing color, and tool sets can be changed. The interface is organized by docks and tabs.
This top photo editing software’s full screen mode makes it easy to take advantage of the entire screen while editing.
GIMP users can also fix things like perspective distortion and barrel distortion while using this photo editing software. There are channel mixers editors can use to create distinctive black and white photography as well as features for digital retouching. On top of all of this, GIMP supports several different file formats.
GIMP is not necessarily a new photo editing software, but it is regularly updated by volunteers and other users who make changes. It is not just a cheap photo editing software,it is also a free photo editing software. There are no restrictions on how it is used – the software can be used commercially.
The license also allows users to change this photo editing software and distribute it, but the changes must be published to the source code under GPLv3+ as well. This means that there may be version of GIMP out there that are not free. It is perfectly legal for someone to sell a modified version of GIMP, so long as they also provide the source code with the modifications.
GIMP is one of the best photo editing software for people who cannot afford to spend too much money. It’s both popular and powerful. it has features like drawing, effects, and of course layers, so people who are familiar with Photoshop won’t have too much difficulty navigating this photo editing software.
Nik Collection Review
Nik Collection is a free and unique option for people looking for good photo editing software. It isn’t a standalone offering. Instead, the Nik Collection is a suite of plugins that people can use with other top photo editing software like Photoshop or Lightroom.
The collection of plugins that are offered include tools for filters, color correction, color enhancement, image sharpening, and more.
These specific plugins are:
Analog Efex Pro: It adds a vintage feel to photos, so that they have the effect of being taken with an old camera. It can create the effect of scratches, light leaks, dirt, scratches, and more.
Color Efex Pro: A plug in specifically used for color correction and precision.
Viveza: Used to apply edits and enhancements with precision.
HDR Efex Pro: Used to make adjustments to tonality.
Sharpener Pro: Enhances specific details using Structure, Contrast, and Focus tools.
Dfine: Improves images with tailored noise reduction.
All of the plugins in the Nik Collection are free.
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Paint.NET Review
Paint.NET is a photo editing software that comes with a tabbed document interface. It’s a simple and powerful professional photo editing software that people can use for free.
Originally meant as a replacement for Microsoft Paint, Paint.NET is now a free and good photo editing software for people to edit and manipulate their photos, adjust the contrast, or play around to create specific effects.
At first glance, it seems like a boring and basic program. Unlike pricier, new photo editing software, Paint.NET starts off as a barebones program that provides the essentials and then people who need more simply install some of the plug ins that other users have developed.
Basic tools in this good photo editing software include Clone, Eraser, and the Magic Wand. This top photo editing software for free has a user-friendly design that makes the process smooth for photographers and casual users.
Although this isn’t a new photo editing software that can serve as a total replacement to Photoshop, it’s still a good alternative for people who don’t have the money to license professional photo editing software.
This is also a good photo editing software for people who make many changes and like to experiment with their photos since Paint.NET comes with an unlimited number of undoes and redoes.
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PhotoScape Review
PhotoScape is a relatively new photo editing software. This PC photo editing software made up of seven main components: Animated GIF, Batch Editor, Editor, Page for adjusting the layout, Merge, Print, and Viewer.
Through this best photo editing software’s viewer you can easily manage images, view them in folders, and create slideshows, making the project management component of editing a little easier.
Through the editor, users can resize photos, make adjustments to brightness and color, correct backlight, add frames and balloons, add text, draw pictures, crop photos, apply filters, remove red eyes, and more.
The batch editor lets people make edits to multiple photos at the same time. This professional photo editing software also allows users can also make the most of their screen space while editing through the Page setting that allow users to put together multiple images in the same frame to create one photo. The Combine tools also makes it possible to put together photo vertically or horizontally to create a single photo.
Other tools include:
- Animated GIF: Create animated photos
- Splitter: A single photo can be spliced into many different pieces
- Screen Capture
- Color Picker: Close up on images to pick and use a specific color
- Rename: Change file names for a group of photos
- Raw Converter: Convert RAW to JPG
- Face Search: Find similar photos on the internet
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Conclusion – Top 6 Best Photo Editing Software
Good photo editing software can take your photos from good enough to show stopping and the lucky news is you don’t need a huge budget to afford it.
You may not be able to afford the latest photo editing software update from Photoshop, but there are top photo editing software options on the market that are comparable to the famous photo editing software. Getting started is as simple as downloading the product and familiarizing yourself with the interface.
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