TOP 7 best photo editing software for smartphones in 2022 | Articles | Phones

What was tak­en into account in the rat­ing
pics art
Adobe Light­room
VSCO Food­ie — Free Pho­to Edit­ing App
Snapseed
Afterlight
Avatan
Pho­to­Lab
Out­come

Art pro­cess­ing has already become a manda­to­ry step before post­ing pho­tos on social net­works. But it is not always pos­si­ble to get to a PC and process the image in a famil­iar edi­tor. There­fore, we have com­piled a rat­ing of the most pop­u­lar pho­to edit­ing soft­ware for smart­phones. With these appli­ca­tions, you can adjust the image in a few taps.

We put togeth­er a small cheat sheet on how not to process: mis­takes when pro­cess­ing por­trait pho­tos. Now let’s talk about where the pro­cess­ing will be sim­ple and con­ve­nient.

Cre­ate beau­ti­ful pho­tos quick­ly with art edit­ing apps. Pho­to: victoriaedenpresets.com

What was taken into account in the rating

• Price. The top includes both free pro­grams and those that offer addi­tion­al fea­tures for an annu­al sub­scrip­tion.
• In-app adver­tis­ing (avail­able or not).
• The num­ber of effects, tools for retouch­ing, cor­rec­tion.
• Con­ve­nience. If the appli­ca­tion is intu­itive, does not con­fuse the user, it gets the high­est score.
• Addi­tion­al fea­tures. For exam­ple, in some appli­ca­tions, you can share the result­ing pho­tos, sub­scribe to blog­gers.

We per­son­al­ly test­ed each pro­gram and rat­ed it on a five-point scale accord­ing to the select­ed cri­te­ria.

pics art

A pop­u­lar pho­to edit­ing soft­ware for iOS and Android phones. This is more than just a pho­to and video pro­cess­ing pro­gram in Russ­ian. With­in the plat­form, you can:

• search users;
• sub­scribe to accounts and hash­tags;
• par­tic­i­pate in chal­lenges;
• vote for your favorite entries.

There is a free ver­sion with reduced fea­tures. Fea­tures of the free ver­sion:

• 15 stan­dard tools (crop­ping, cloning, expo­sure adjust­ment, white bal­ance and sharp­ness, auto­mat­ic pho­to enhance­ment, etc.);
• more than 25 avail­able effects (each has set­tings);
• you can cut out objects in the pho­to (entire­ly, high­light­ing the con­tour or shape);
• cre­at­ing col­lages;
• there are tips — you can cre­ate beau­ti­ful pho­tos from the lessons;
• adding text, draw­ings;
• retouch­ing tools: smooth­ing and chang­ing skin tone, chang­ing the col­or of hair, eyes, teeth whiten­ing, body shap­ing.

Pic­sArt is a wide selec­tion of free and paid image edit­ing tools. And also the oppor­tu­ni­ty to test your­self in cre­ative chal­lenges / Pho­to by the author

There is a pre­mi­um access. The price at the time of this writ­ing is 1,990 rubles per year (you can test for 7 days for free). It includes:

• music library;
• new fil­ters, stick­ers, fonts and tem­plates;
• no water­mark on the video;
• addi­tion­al tools for retouch­ing;
• sav­ing images in high qual­i­ty;
• remov­ing unwant­ed objects from the image;
• stock pho­to library;
• lack of adver­tis­ing.

Price – 3/5
No ads — 5/5
Num­ber of effects — 5/5
Con­ve­nience — 5/5
Addi­tion­al fea­tures — 5/5

Total score — 4.6

Adobe Lightroom

A pop­u­lar Insta­gram pho­to edi­tor for iOS and Android. Com­pared to Pic­sArt, it looks more com­pli­cat­ed. But for begin­ners, there is a “Train­ing” tab. There is a large library of mate­ri­als.

You will learn how to process pho­tos using this pro­gram, cre­ate effects. Like Pic­sArt, it’s not just an edi­tor, but also a plat­form for show­cas­ing cre­ativ­i­ty. You can sub­scribe to oth­er users, share your pho­tos.

Adobe Light­room is not only a handy edi­tor with a lot of free and paid tools. But also a plat­form for cre­ativ­i­ty. Pho­to of the author.

There is a paid ver­sion. The price at the time of this writ­ing is 1499 rubles per year. It includes:

• more than 150 styles from pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers;
• restora­tion brush (removes an extra object from the pho­to);
• mask­ing — cor­rec­tion of image areas with high accu­ra­cy;
• arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence — it will tell you which styles are more suit­able for the select­ed pho­to;
• edit­ing RAW files;
• the abil­i­ty to share the process of cre­at­ing a pho­to with oth­er users in the Dis­cov­er sec­tion;
• Adobe Cre­ative Cloud stor­age.

There is a paid ver­sion. The price at the time of this writ­ing is 1499 rubles per year. It includes:

• more than 60 basic styles;
• sav­ing sev­er­al ver­sions of the processed pho­to;
• stan­dard tools (crop and expo­sure, con­trast and white bal­ance, hue and sat­u­ra­tion, sharp­ness);
• addi­tion­al tools: remove haze, change tex­ture and clar­i­ty;
• orga­niz­ing images — you can cre­ate fold­ers, albums for con­ve­nience.

Price – 3/5
No ads — 5/5
Num­ber of effects — 5/5
Con­ve­nience — 5/5
Addi­tion­al fea­tures — 5/5

Total score — 4.6

VSCO Foodie — Free Photo Editing App

The Food­ie app is pop­u­lar among food blog­gers. Avail­able for iOS and Android. Here are col­lect­ed 23 fil­ters for dif­fer­ent types of food (meat, desserts, spaghet­ti, fruits). There are also fil­ters for self­ies, inte­ri­ors and nature.

Each fil­ter can be fur­ther con­fig­ured, changed:

• bright­ness, con­trast;
• sat­u­ra­tion;
• main col­or;
• grain;
• shad­ows;
• sharp­ness and blur.

An inter­est­ing addi­tion is that users share “pho­to recipes”. Below the pho­to shows how to get the same effect.

“Recipes” for your pho­tos in the Food­ie app. Pho­to of the author.

Pho­tos and videos can be tak­en imme­di­ate­ly from the appli­ca­tion, already with the desired fil­ter. There is a basic retouch­ing of the face: smooth­ness of the skin, elon­ga­tion of the chin, cor­rec­tion of the eyes and nose.

There is only one draw­back — on Android and iOS, not every­thing is trans­lat­ed into Russ­ian. In cam­era mode “Pho­to, Video, Edit, Recipe, Effect, Fil­ter” instead of Russ­ian ana­logues.

Price — 5/5 (free pho­to edit­ing soft­ware)
No ads — 5/5
Num­ber of effects — 5/5
Con­ve­nience — 3/5 (not every­where there is a trans­la­tion)
Addi­tion­al fea­tures — 4/5

Total score — 4.4

Snapseed

One of the best pho­to edit­ing apps for iOS and Android.

Snapseed is an appli­ca­tion with a sim­ple inter­face, a large set of basic set­tings, fil­ters, with its own library of lessons. Pho­to of the author.

The appli­ca­tion allows you to cre­ate your own pre­sets and apply them to oth­er pho­tos. This will save pro­cess­ing time.

You can cre­ate a pre­set in the “Styles” tab. You need to apply changes to the pho­to, reach the end of the list and click on the “+”. It remains only to enter the name of your pre­set.

You can delete and change your own styles by open­ing the menu (“Ellip­sis” at the end of the list of styles). If you want to share a pre­set with your friends, you need to click on the lay­ers icon in the upper right cor­ner. And in the menu that opens, select “QR-style”.

The “+” but­ton allows you to add your own pre­set. By click­ing on the “Ellip­sis” you can open all your pre­sets. You can imme­di­ate­ly share the fin­ished pho­to on social net­works, make a QR code for it or down­load it to your smart­phone. Pho­to of the author.

There are 29 cor­rec­tion tools avail­able, includ­ing:

• basic: expo­sure adjust­ment (auto­mat­ic and man­u­al), white bal­ance, sharp­ness, crop­ping, rota­tion;
• bokeh (makes the back­ground soft­er);
• sof­fit shine — adds a soft glow;
• tonal con­trast — detail in the shad­ows, mid­tones and high­lights is enhanced;
• grunge: over­lay mul­ti­ple styles and tex­tures;
• face cor­rec­tion: smooth­ing, chang­ing light­ing;
• change in the posi­tion of the head and oth­ers.

Pecu­liar­i­ties:

• 11 basic styles;
• saves pho­tos in PNG and JPG;
• opens pho­to in PNG, JPG and RAW;
• no ads.

Price — 5/5 (free)
No ads — 5/5 (none)
Num­ber of effects — 4/5
Con­ve­nience — 5/5
Addi­tion­al fea­tures — 3/5

Total score — 4.4

Afterlight

Mul­ti­func­tion­al pho­to edit­ing app for iOS and Android.

Func­tions:

• a basic set of tools for adjust­ing expo­sure, hue/saturation, con­trast, and tone;
• more than 70 ready-made pre­sets with min­i­mal set­tings;
• more than 60 tex­tures, frames, over­laps, frames.

Most of the tools are free. But there are paid frames and fil­ters.

Lots of free edit­ing tools. The image can be saved to the device or imme­di­ate­ly shared on social net­works. Pho­to of the author.

The dis­ad­van­tage is that the pro­gram is in Eng­lish. But the appli­ca­tion is sim­ple, so it is under­stand­able even with­out trans­la­tion.

Price — 5/5
No ads — 5/5
Num­ber of effects — 5/5
Con­ve­nience — 3/5 (no Russ­ian lan­guage)
Addi­tion­al fea­tures — 3/5

Total score — 4.2

Avatan

An ana­logue of the pop­u­lar web edi­tor. There is a ver­sion for iOS and Android.

Pecu­liar­i­ties:

• user sub­scrip­tion. There is nav­i­ga­tion for work in oth­er accounts;
• the appli­ca­tion is free, but for iOS there are in-app pur­chas­es (addi­tion­al pre­sets);
• search by users’ works;
• basic tools: auto­cor­rect and crop, change expo­sure and white bal­ance, con­trast and sat­u­ra­tion, sharp­ness and grain­i­ness;
• detailed face retouch­ing is avail­able: elim­i­na­tion of imper­fec­tions, apply­ing make­up, los­ing weight and plas­tic surgery;
• over 100 free effects, stick­ers and tex­tures.

Edi­tor and social net­work at the same time. You can sub­scribe to a user, search for works by tag. Lots of free tools and fil­ters. Pho­to of the author.

Price — 4/5 (the main ver­sion is free, there is lit­tle paid con­tent)
No ads — 3/5 (there is, but not often)
Num­ber of effects — 4/5
Con­ve­nience — 5/5
Addi­tion­al fea­tures — 3/5

Total score — 3.8

PhotoLab

The main func­tion of the app is self­ie edit­ing. There­fore, here are the most pop­u­lar frames, stick­ers and effects for cre­at­ing vivid pic­tures. There are 23 cat­e­gories of effects in total, new ones appear reg­u­lar­ly (for exam­ple, ded­i­cat­ed to the hol­i­days).

The appli­ca­tion is not suit­able for pro­fes­sion­al work with pho­tos:

• the styles and effects here are car­i­ca­tured;
• there are no basic tools (expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion, white bal­ance)
• there are real­ly a lot of effects, but they are for fun, not pro­fes­sion­al cor­rec­tion (for exam­ple, sex change).

You can down­load the pho­to edit­ing soft­ware for iOS and Android.

Pho­to Lab is not suit­able for pro­fes­sion­al retouch­ing. But with the help of the appli­ca­tion, you can make a fun­ny avatar, post­card or col­lage. Pho­to of the author.

Minus­es:

• the appli­ca­tion con­stant­ly offers to pay for the paid ver­sion (1470 rubles at the time of writ­ing). In the paid ver­sion, there are no ads, logos and water­marks on fin­ished pho­tos. And in the paid one there are more inter­est­ing effects for self­ies;
• does not work with­out Wi-Fi or mobile Inter­net;
• Lots of ads in the free ver­sion. It is among the tape with effects, appears when you save the applied fil­ter and in oth­er places.

Price – 4/5
No ads — 2/5
Num­ber of effects — 4/5
Con­ve­nience — 4/5
Addi­tion­al fea­tures — 3/5

Total score — 3.4

Outcome

Here are the rat­ings received by the pro­grams on a five-point scale:

And a small sum­ma­ry for each pro­gram in abstract form:

pics art — Lots of free con­tent. There is a paid ver­sion for those who want more tools. The appli­ca­tion allows you to show your cre­ative nature — to par­tic­i­pate in chal­lenges and show cre­ativ­i­ty to oth­er peo­ple.

Adobe Light­room — a com­plete appli­ca­tion for pro­fes­sion­al pro­cess­ing. Some fea­tures are paid. You can share pho­tos with oth­er users. There are many tuto­ri­als to study.

VSCO Food­ies — a lot of fil­ters (espe­cial­ly for shoot­ing food). In the appli­ca­tion, you can imme­di­ate­ly shoot a video or pho­to with the select­ed fil­ter. Or repeat the effects saved in the recipe library.

Snapseed is a free, user-friend­ly appli­ca­tion. There are basic cor­rec­tion tools. You can cre­ate your own pre­sets. There is a “Guide” — briefly but com­pre­hen­sive­ly told about work­ing with the appli­ca­tion, about cre­at­ing effects.

Afterlight — an appli­ca­tion with many ready-made pre­sets. The dis­ad­van­tage is the lack of the Russ­ian lan­guage.

Avatan — Lots of free basic tools. There are over 100 free pho­to effects in the arse­nal.

Pho­to­Lab — an appli­ca­tion with a large (about 900) num­ber of effects. Allows you to cre­ate col­lages, post­cards and fun­ny avatars. Can’t be pro­fes­sion­al­ly cor­rect­ed.

And remem­ber: shoot­ing high-qual­i­ty con­tent is impos­si­ble with­out a good cam­era phone. We have col­lect­ed for you the TOP bud­get mod­els in a sep­a­rate arti­cle.