Mac Photo Management Software

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Photos in macOS Mojave helps you keep your growing library organized and accessible. Powerful and intuitive editing tools help you perfect your images. Memories displays the best images from your photo library in beautiful categorized collections. And with iCloud Photos, you can keep a lifetime’s worth of photos and videos stored in iCloud and up to date on your Mac, iOS devices, Apple TV, and even your PC.

iCloud Photos.

One convenient home for all your photos and videos.

iCloud Photos gives you access to your entire Mac photo and video library from all your devices. If you shoot a snapshot, slo-mo, or selfie on your iPhone, it’s automatically added to iCloud Photos — so it appears on your Mac, your iOS devices, Apple TV, iCloud.com, and your PC. Even the photos and videos imported from your DSLR, GoPro, or drone to your Mac appear on all your iCloud Photos–enabled devices. And since your collection is organized the same way across your Apple devices, navigating your library always feels familiar.

Learn more about iCloud Photos

Apple's Photos for Mac app is great, but it can be limiting. If you want an alternative photo editor for the Mac, here's our pick of the best free or low cost photo editing software for the Mac.

Make an edit here, see it there. When you make changes on your Mac like editing a photo, marking a Favorite, or adding to an album, they’re kept up to date on your iPhone, your iPad, and iCloud.com. And vice versa — any changes made on your iOS devices are automatically reflected on your Mac.

Fill your library, not your device. iCloud Photos can help you make the most of the space on your Mac. When you choose “Optimize Mac Storage,” all your full‑resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud in their original formats, with storage-saving versions kept on your Mac as space is needed. You can also optimize storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, so you can access more photos and videos than ever before. You get 5GB of free storage in iCloud — and as your library grows, you have the option to choose a plan for up to 2TB.

The moment you’re looking for, always at hand.

The Photos app uses Moments, Collections, and Years views to organize your photos and videos by when and where they were taken. With People, you get powerful face recognition capabilities that group photos by person. Places lets you see all your photos on a beautiful world map. You can even search for photos by what’s in them, like strawberries, sunsets, and surfboards.

Quickly find what you’re looking for with the always‑on sidebar. You can go right to your favorites, or view your library organized by people or places. There are albums that automatically collect your videos, selfies, panoramas, and other media types. You’ll find all the albums you create in My Albums. Moving your content around is as simple as dragging and dropping, with a handy selection counter that shows you how many items you’ve selected. And you can filter by criteria like favorites, edited, videos, and keywords.
The Moments view groups photos and videos taken around the same time and place, like an afternoon hike. Collections are made up of distinct Moments taken at the same place, such as on a trip. And Years lets you view your entire library in a beautiful mosaic of all the photos and videos you’ve taken each year.
It’s easy to find just the photo you’re looking for with Search in Photos. You can search for photos based on who’s in them or what’s in them, like strawberries or sunsets. And if you’re looking for photos you imported a couple of months ago, you can look back at each batch in chronological order with an expanded import history.
You’ve spent years capturing moments worth remembering. Photos can automatically turn them into unforgettable experiences called Memories — shareable collections of your best photos — based on people, places, holidays, pets, kids, favorite activities, weddings, anniversaries, nights out on the town, and more.
With Shared Albums, you can get an overview of the photos and videos you’ve shared with friends and family, and the ones they’ve shared with you. And it’s easier than ever to see Likes and Comments that have been posted.
Download third-party project extensions from the Mac App Store to create print and digital projects like books, cards, calendars, photo albums, websites, and more.

Perfect your best shots with powerful editing tools.

Create standout photos with a comprehensive set of powerful but easy-to-use editing tools. Instantly transform photos taken in Portrait mode with five different studio-quality lighting effects. Choose Enhance to improve your photo with just a click. Use a filter to give it a new look. Or use Smart Sliders to quickly edit like a pro even if you’re a beginner. With Markup, you can add text, shapes, sketches, or a signature to your images. You can turn Live Photos into fun, short video loops to share. And you can make edits to photos using apps like Photoshop and Pixelmator, and your changes will automatically be saved back to your Photos library.

  • Light
    Brilliance, a slider in Light, automatically brightens dark areas and pulls in highlights to reveal hidden details and make your photo look richer and more vibrant.
  • Color
    Make your photo stand out by adjusting saturation, color contrast, and color cast.
  • Black & White
    Add some drama by taking the color out. Fine-tune intensity and tone, or add grain for a film-quality black-and-white effect.
  • White Balance
    Choose between Neutral Gray, Skin Tone, and Temperature/Tint options to make colors in your photo warmer or cooler.
  • Curves
    Make fine-tuned contrast and color adjustments to your photos.
  • Levels
    Adjust midtones, highlights, and shadows to perfect the tonal balance in your photo.
  • Definition
    Increase image clarity by adjusting the definition slider.
  • Selective Color
    Want to make blues bluer or greens greener? Use Selective Color to bring out specific colors in your image.
  • Vignette
    Add shading to the edges of your photo to highlight a powerful moment.
  • Editing Extensions
    Download third-party editing extensions from the Mac App Store to add filters and texture effects, use retouching tools, reduce noise, and more.
  • Reset Adjustments
    When you’ve made an edit, you can judge it against the original by clicking Compare. If you don’t like how it looks, you can reset your adjustments or revert to your original shot.

Bring even more life to your Live Photos. When you edit a Live Photo, the Loop effect can turn it into a continuous looping video that you can experience again and again. Try Bounce to play the action forward and backward. Or choose Long Exposure for a beautiful DSLR‑like effect to blur water or extend light trails. You can also trim, mute, and select a key photo for each Live Photo.

Add filters for striking effects.

With just a click, you can apply one of nine photo filters inspired by classic photography styles to your photos.

Share your favorite photos in more places than ever.

Use the Share menu to easily share photos via Shared Albums and AirDrop. Or send photos to your favorite photo sharing destinations, such as Facebook and Twitter. You can also customize the menu and share directly to other compatible sites that offer sharing extensions.

Turn your pictures into projects.

Making high-quality projects and special gifts for loved ones is easier than ever with Photos. Create everything from gorgeous photo books to professionally framed gallery prints to stunning websites using third-party project extensions like Motif, Mimeo Photos, Shutterfly, ifolor, WhiteWall, Mpix, Fujifilm, and Wix.

Photoshop is the best known photo editing software for macOS, but it's far from the only option. You can also reach for a brilliant, feature-packed free photo editor for your Mac if you don't need the power of Adobe's industry-standard app.

Why do you need a photo editor?

Digital photography has come a very long way in a very short time. The pictures you can capture with a recent smartphone are amazing, with resolution, colours and low-light performance that would have seemed impossible a few years ago.

Nevertheless, there’s always room for improvement, whether it’s removing red-eye, cropping out unwanted bits or just drawing comedy moustaches on your in-laws. For those things, you need a dedicated photo editor.

1. Preview and Photos

Don’t overlook the free photo viewing and editing apps included with macOS – they’re as well designed and powerful as any Apple software

Software

It’s easy to overlook the apps you already have. Preview isn’t just a viewer: if you tap on the Markup icon you’ll see tools you can use to edit or add to your image, and under the Tools menu you’ll find options to adjust the colours and sizes. You can also export in multiple file formats.

Apple’s Photos app contains some handy tools too. You can experiment with automatic enhancement, which tries to guess the best settings for your image, you can remove red-eye and minor blemishes, you can apply special effects filters or adjust the colour parameters, and you can rotate and crop images too.

2. GIMP

The closest free tool to Photoshop, GIMP is an open source photo editor with an incredible set of tools, filters and options for advanced editing

If you want Photoshop-style image editing power without the price tag or monthly subscription, GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is the app for you. It’s been around forever, benefits from regular updates, and is packed with advanced features to make your images look amazing.

If that's not enough, it's also expandable via third-party plugins – including ones designed for Adobe Photoshop.

Whether you’re an illustrator, photographer or just want an application that will let you experiment with your images, GIMP is up to the task. From fixing lens distortion to selective colourisation.

It’s a superb free photo editor, but don’t expect to be a GIMP pro within seconds of installing it: like other powerful apps it has a reasonably steep learning curve. Don’t let that put you off, because GIMP is worth the effort.

Download here: GIMP Dell printer drivers 2335dn manual.

3. Pixlr Editor

A fully-featured free photo editor for your web browser, complete with layers, manual color manipulation tools, healing brushes and much more

Pixlr Editor was once available as a downloadable desktop app for Windows and Mac, but earlier this year its developer announced that the free photo editor would be going online-only.

Pixlr Editor's main appeal is its layer-based composition, which enables you to add, organise and edit different bits of content individually before putting them all together – so for example you might have a background image in one layer, some people in another layer, and some text in another.

There’s an excellent selection of editing and drawing tools, colour options and filters, and photo veterans will smile when they see familiar friends such as Gaussian Blur, Heat Map and Night Vision. There’s also a companion web app, Pixlr-o-Matic, for getting creative with photo filters.

4. Fotor Photo Editor

Free photo editing software that includes some excellent editing tools, but the very best ones are only available as in-app purchases

Fotor Photo Editor is an interesting one: it’s available as a Mac app for download, but it’s also online as a browser-based editor (Chrome is recommended; if you visit in Safari you’ll be warned of potential issues).

Fotor is best described as a photo enhancer: its tools enable you to change the parameters of an image – colour levels, brightness, rotation, vignettes, size and so on – or to digitally slim people or remove wrinkles, and there are some cool creative tools including focus effects.

The main app is free but some features require a subscription to Fotor Pro: smoothing, blush, reshape, most filters and many special effects are watermarked in the free edition. There’s enough here to have fun without paying up, but clearly the developer hopes you'll opt for a subscription.

Download here: Fotor Photo Editor

5. Google Photos

Google's image editor is a streamlined tool designed for simple editing

As with most Google things, 99.9% of Google Photos’ features are browser-based. There are uploader apps for macOS and iOS, which can add new pictures to your Google photos library automatically, but everything else happens online.

You get unlimited storage for images with a resolution up to 16 megapixels, but higher quality photos will eat into your Google Drive storage allowance.

Editing takes place in the browser and works much like Apple’s Photos app. Download madden 2004 full version. You can choose from a range of colour filters, adjust lighting, colours and how much the image should 'pop', and you can rotate your image or crop it.

There are no tools for retouching blemishes or other imperfections, but for colour adjustment and filtering, Google Photos is pretty good and pretty quick.