When you think of image editors on any platform, your mind goes straight to Photoshop. For most of us, paying Adobe’s high costs will get us an app that does more than we really need or care to do. As a result, we feel Pixelmator will win the hearts of most users on the Mac. It handles just about every image editing task you’d think to throw at it, and for less than the cost of two months of a Photoshop subscription.
PhotoPad - Photo and Image Editor from NCH Software is a really great and affordable option packed with advanced editing features. Its easy image enhancing tools make it an ideal tool for beginners and the advanced tools make it a photo editor of choice for professionals. Affinity fully supports Photoshop files. You can move files between the two apps seamlessly and the images will remain intact. As for multi-tasking, you can edit images as a batch in the background as you do other things on your Mac. There are many other features that you get with this best photo editing software for Mac.
Pixelmator
Platform: OS X
Price: $30 Download Page Features
Note: This doesn’t even begin to dive into the features in Photoshop, which are too long to name here. You can visit Adobe’s official Photoshop page to learn more, but even they don’t detail every single feature. Your best bet is to make use of their 30-day trial and explore for yourself.
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Where It Excels
Pixelmator does so much for such a low price. Thanks to Adobe, we’ve come to expect powerful image editing tools to cost at least a few hundred dollars. You can buy Pixelmator for only $30 and it’ll do most everything you need. Cost-efficiency doesn’t make an app worth buying, of course, but you can do so much with this one that it’s hard to believe the price is so low.
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If you take a look at the feature set you’ll notice it looks a lot like Photoshop’s. You won’t find some things (more on that later), but it can do the tasks most of us care about. You can repair photos with the healing brush, manipulate the structure of an image with the liquify tool, make all sorts of color adjustments with common tools like curves and levels but also employ filters for quick edits, save to a variety of formats (including Photoshop), and a ton more. Pixelmator has shapes and drawing tools, too, in case you’re creating images that aren’t just photos. You can add styles to those shapes, photos, or other elements quickly. The same works for layers. Pixelmator works a lot like Photoshop but with a more user-friendly and attractive interface. If you don’t feel like paying for Adobe software anymore, a small learning curve will have casual Photoshop users working well in Pixelmator very quickly.
Another huge advantage? Pixelmator is very fast. You don’t have to wait for much of anything. It utilizes a lot of OS X core technologies to stay optimized, and in version 3.0 FX the developers rebuilt its engine with speed enhancements in mind. The software just runs very quickly. For those with older hardware who feel Photoshop chugs along at too leisurely of a pace, Pixelmator will operate with less lag.
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Where It Falls Short
You’ll realize Pixelmator isn’t Photoshop in several areas if they pertain to you. It doesn’t have a Camera RAW plug-in, which is immensely useful for those who shoot in RAW. It’s practically an application in itself. Pixelmator also can’t handle HDR (only through artificial means) animation, 3D rendering, color management, fine-grained space-efficient web image export, and a variety of other specific tasks that you may or may not need. For most, these shortcomings will not matter. To photographers and designers, however, they might. Of course, if you focus on photography and require complex editing you may prefer using Photoshop Lightroom anyway, and can use Pixelmator for your other image editing needs. Regardless, if you don’t need anything mentioned here you won’t feel Pixelmator falls short at all.
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Design matters too. Syntax highlighting for multiple programming and scripting languages is one of the most useful tools in any text editor, and autocomplete is a welcome addition as well. If you’re writing code or creating a website, a good text editor will save you time and help you work more efficiently. A tabbed interface makes it easy to manage multiple documents at once, and the best text editors will cache your progress automatically so nothing is lost if you accidentally close the program. The best text editors will also offer recordable macros to help you code more efficiently, as well as flexible customization options and plugins.
The Competition
If you don’t want to pay the hefty cost of Photoshop, you’ve come to the right section. Here are a few options that can help you do some of what Photoshop can do for a much lower price.
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Adobe Photoshop ($19 per month) still reigns king as the image editor of the “elite” but not of the people. If you need to handle more complex tasks or have every feature imaginable at your disposal, you want Photoshop. Of course, you’ll have to pay for that privilege. Photoshop, as many of us know, doesn’t come cheap.
GIMP (Free) has been the go-to open source image editor for awhile, and it can do many things Photoshop can do. If you prefer Photoshop’s interface, however, you might want to check out GIMPshop (Free) instead, as it is basically the same program made to emulate the style of Photoshop.
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Seashore (Free) is another image editor based on the GIMP’s technology, but has an interface that fits more with Mac OS X. It also focuses on providing basic image editing tools for most users rather than acting as a full replacement for Photoshop (or other expensive image editing software). If you just need to make basic edits, it is worth a look.
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LiveQuartz ($2) is another simple image editor. It comes with layer support, brushes and other tools, plus a few basic filters. It’s another decent option for basic edits.
Pixen (Free) is a more specialized image editor for pixel artists. It’s worth mentioning here because Photoshop’s tools for low-resolution artwork are pretty bad and Pixen makes for a good supplement (if you need one).
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Lifehacker’s App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.
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What Is The Best Photo Editor For Macbook
Photo editing pushes laptop capabilities right to the edge. Top-quality work demands a high-resolution, color-accurate display, and a fast processor. But the rigors of traveling with photo gear plus a computer make small, lightweight machines with long battery lives a real plus. Similarly, storing thousands of high-resolutions calls for a large hard drive, while peak performance is only possible with an SSD.
When we last looked at the best options in the market, there were some clear leaders. We’ve now updated our list, with new and improved models that have come on the market over the last six months. In particular, Kaby Lake chips, updated GPUs from Intel and Nvidia, and faster SSDs have arrived. There are also more high-resolution screen options, including some OLED versions. If you are in the market and photo editing is a top priority, one of these laptops is likely to suit your needs.
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga (2nd gen) and Yoga 920
The Thinkpad X1 Yoga delivers a lot of punch, including stylus support, in a sleek package
I’ve lumped these two machines together because they are similar, but also offer some tradeoffs depending on your needs. Both machines are have 14-inch displays, support a stylus, and can fold back on themselves in classic Yoga fashion. Both qualify as Ultrabooks and weigh in at about 3 pounds, with support for up to 16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD, and a fingerprint reader. Both units also feature excellent keyboards and TrackPoints, and do pretty well on ports, with USB 3.0, USB-C, and Thunderbolt support.
Free Image Editing Software Mac
After the above, there are some differences. The X1 Yoga has the option of an amazing 2560×1440 OLED display that is about the best I’ve ever used for watching movies or showing off images. The Yoga 920 doesn’t offer an OLED option, but you can get it with up to a 4K IPS panel. The X1 Yoga also only comes with a dual-core 7th generation i7 (i7-7600U), while the Yoga 920 can be configured with a quad-core 8th generation CPU (i7-8550U). Video outputs are also slightly different, with the 920 featuring DisplayPort over USB-C and the X1 Yoga having a more traditional HDMI port.
Neither unit has an SD card slot, unfortunately, although the X1 Yoga does have a slot for a microSD in the back. However, the slot is hard enough to access that you’ll probably wind up with a card reader anyway.
Microsoft Surface Pro (newest 2017 version)
If you like to use a tablet or stylus for your image editing in your studio, and want to have access to the same capability on the road, the Microsoft Surface Pro may be ideal. It’s powerful for its small size, and features a pressure-sensitive active stylus while also offering a reasonable keyboard. You’ll probably also want to pair it with a Bluetooth mouse like the Microsoft Arc Touch. Microsoft removed the model number from the most recent version, so don’t confuse the new Surface Pro with the original version that also carried that name.
By itself, the 1.7 pound unit certainly won’t give you the same big-screen experience of larger laptops, but its 12.3-inch screen is sharp and high-resolution. While the base model comes with an i3, you can bump up to an i5 or i7 for more power. You’ll also want an external card reader to use with your camera, but with up to 1TB of internal SSD, you may not need an external drive to keep your images while you travel. When you’re in one location for awhile, you can use the mini DisplayPort to drive an external monitor–or even do what I do and travel with a portable USB-powered display. The entry level version is now $800, with a loaded model costing up to $2,700 with an i7, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD. You’ll need to purchase a keyboard cover and stylus on top of that, unless you already have them.
Apple MacBook Pro 15 and MacBook Pro 13
Apple’s MacBook Pro has long been a favorite among professional photographers. A big part of it is, of course, that it runs the same macOS many of them run on desktop computers. But it was also an early pioneer of ultra-high resolution LCDs with a large color gamut, and a relatively compact, stylish, design. However, many PC vendors have caught up in features, and surpassed the now-aging MBP models in raw performance. Apple has made some recent improvements, including adding a Force Touch trackpad, faster SSDs, a fingerprint reader, and improving the battery life–although the lack of an SD card slot remains a sticking point.
The current version of the MBP 13 with Retina Display starts at $1,500, while the 15-inch Retina model starts at $2,400. As is typical, photographers will more likely be interested in the higher-end configurations, which are $2,000 and $2,800, respectively. The new models have higher price points than before, but with beefier specs. You can now get up to a 1TB SSD in the 13-inch model, and a 2TB SSD in the 15-inch. With 30MP and up cameras becoming common, and 4K video widespread, these larger hard drive options are a welcome addition. The 15-inch version comes with a discrete Radeon Pro GPU to help maximize image processing performance. The 13-inch models rely on an integrated GPU, although those have gotten substantially faster over the last couple years, so you may not miss having a separate discrete GPU. Both versions feature up to 7th-generation Core i7 CPUs–dual-core for the 13-inch, and quad-core for the 15-inch.
Dell XPS 15 Touch (2017): Still a Winner
Spoiler Alert: The newest version of the Dell XPS 15 is once again my favorite laptop for photo editing. I’ve just bought my third XPS 15, this time the 2017 Touch edition. Featuring an optional 4K display that covers 100 percent of Adobe RGB, a Kaby Lake quad-core Core i7, an Nvidia 1050 GPU, a 1TB SSD, and up to 32GB of RAM, it has just about everything a road warrior photographer could want. It hasn’t really gotten any lighter over the last year, as it is still over 4 pounds, but it is a little smaller and sleeker. While starting configurations of the machine run as little as $1K, configured as above will run you just over $2K.
The only things I could see regretting are that it doesn’t have the Kaby Lake Refresh chips yet, and there’s no stylus support. Also, you pay a heavy price in battery life for the 4K display and discrete GPU. Don’t count on more than 4 hours of reasonable use, so it isn’t the ideal option if you’re mostly on the go without a power plug. It’s also overkill if you don’t need a quad-core CPU or high-end GPU. For straight ahead benchmarks, some of the dual-core models in this roundup are just as fast. But if you want high-performance 3D graphics, Photoshop processing, or video rendering without a full-on gaming laptop, this model delivers. If you are willing to wait, I’m sure there will be an update early next year, or the not-yet-available HP ZBook x2 offers Kaby Lake Refresh and an active stylus, although it is larger and heavier.
The unit has a good selection of ports, including HDMI, USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, and an SD card slot. Starting at a little over 4 pounds, the latest XPS 15 is about the lightest laptop you can find that can pack this much punch, and with the aforementioned 100 percent Adobe RGB color gamut.
To provide some perspective on progress in this category, the above image shows three generations of Dell XPS 15 laptops. Over the last 4-5 years they’ve shrunk significantly, weigh 1.5 pounds less, and pack nearly twice as much power under the hood. Typescript tutorial. The display has also jumped from a gamut similar to sRGB to one that is almost identical to the much-larger Adobe RGB color space.
HP ZBook x2
The HP ZBook x2 looks to be a creator’s dream portable
HP has spared nothing in designing the ZBook X2 for creatives of all kinds. It has the latest and most powerful CPU (up to i7-7600U) and a workstation class GPU (Nvidia Quadro M620), but still weighs in at less than 5 pounds. There aren’t any review units to look at yet, but the 4K, 100-percent Adobe RGB, DreamColor display promises to be gorgeous. Somewhat unique for a high-end machine, not only does it support a full-featured Wacom stylus, but is a 2-in-1 so you can remove the keyboard and use the tablet flat or with the kickstand to prop it up.
HP has built some pre-packaged bundles for particular uses, such as Photographer, Digital Artist, and Video Editor. HP has also provided some customizable keys alongside the screen, so you can further accelerate your workflow.
Don’t fret if we missed your photo editing favorite
It was hard to pick out just a few machines from the dozens of excellent laptop models out there. For many, apparently small features like backlit keyboards, multiple USB 3.0 ports, Thunderbolt, stylus-support, high-resolution display, choice of DisplayPort, HDMI, or VGA output, or battery life can easily change which model is right for your particular needs. This is especially true with Windows Ultrabooks–with literally dozens of similar models crowding the sub-four-pound, SSD-powered Windows laptop space.
Unfortunately, some laptop makers are also making it harder to compare the actual specifications for their units. Manufacturers often completely neglect to state maximum RAM capacity, base CPU speed (they seem to like bragging about the higher Turbo Boost speed instead), or drive RPMs (or interface used in the case of SSDs). Hopefully, though, the models we’ve described can serve as a baseline for your shopping so you’ll know what’s available and what some of your alternatives are.
If you have a very-high-end photography workflow, that involves a lot of multi-layer Photoshop images, and are okay with lugging around something larger, also take a look at our best laptops for engineers guide for ideas.
If you have a different laptop you love for your photo editing work, let us know about it in the comments.
Now read: The top laptops for everyone
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