Mac: ShootShifter, a free download, has dual roles as both a powerful photo name organizer, as described above, but also a timestamp fixer and unifier. Free Album Player v.2.8.06 A simple yet powerful photo slideshow software. Make photo slideshow as easy as ABC. Album Player is the best photo slideshow software to make photo slideshows with photos and music to cherish photo memories of every moment! ArcSoft Panorama Maker 7 for Mac v.7.0.10105 Panorama Maker is a powerful and easy-to-use.
- Best Free Photo Management Software Mac 2020
- Mac Photo Management Software
- Photo Organizers For Windows 10
It’s easier than ever now to take a photograph. We do it all the time. From selfies to landscapes and from vacation snaps to family photos, we’re all busy filling our iPhones and our hard drives with folders and folders of images.
That growth in image-making gives us two challenges.
First, we have to be able to find and organize those images on our Macs. We know what we’ve taken; too often though, we just don’t know where those pictures are, or how to organize them effectively. That's especially true if we're using external hard drives to store our photos.
Second, we need to be able to make those images better because few of us ever play with the options in the camera app. We point and shoot, and we know that our pictures can be improved. Once we’ve found them, we need a quick and easy way to make those pictures look better.
For owners of Macs, the choice of photo management software is now broad.
How Do I Choose A Photo Management App?
There are dozens of programs that promise Mac users optimal management and simple image editing. When you’re assessing the best photo management software for Macs, you’re going to be looking at a number of features.
The organization of the images should be clear. You should be able to easily find the photos you want to open and edit. So the editing tools offered by the software should be straightforward and intuitive. Professional image editors might know what each icon stands for and what adjusting things like white balance can do but casual users need to be free to experiment and play. The goal for every photo management software will always be to combine powerful editing features with an easy workflow that makes improving and organizing images a breeze.
What Is the Best Photo Management Software for Mac?
One option has always been Picasa, Google’s now defunct photo service, and Mac comes with its own native photo editor which is okay as far as it goes. But there are plenty of Picasa alternatives that… let’s face it, do a much better job than Google ever did, especially for Mac owners. And Mac’s native editor only goes about as far as free software is expected to go.
One program that does manage to bring together strong editing and easy use is our own Picktorial. Now in version 3.5, Picktorial is photo organizing software for Mac that provides a single-space workflow. That means you get everything you need on one screen. You don’t lose the photo or have to battle through menus when you look for the option you want to use, whether that’s a blurring tool to soften a portrait or color adjustment to deepen a sunset.
It’s also a RAW image editor with a very simple conversion to Jpeg. That lets you work with the photo created by your camera before it’s been compressed.And the comparable editing is very neat. You can easily see how the image has changed and improved, and why all the work you’ve put into adjusting colors and changing brightness was so worthwhile. It’s beautifully done.
Additional Tips for Mac Photo Management
Picktorial is a great tool for managing photos on Macs but not just because of its easy workflow. One of the most important features of photo management software is non-destructive image editing.
Even the most talented and experienced image editors make mistakes. They don’t always know the best path to the best image, and they sometimes make changes that they regret. It’s vital that they can make all of these changes without damaging the original image. When you’re assessing photo organizing software for Mac, do make sure the program won’t be writing over the original images but will be making the changes separately. Picktorial even lets you roll back the changes out of order. That’s something even Photoshop can’t do.
Access to the metadata is important too. Every image you create will come with metadata built in. That data might include information about the speed and focal length used to take the photo—useful when you’re trying to improve your photography—but it could also include location data and date.
That’s useful information too but you might want to edit it to make it more consistent and make your pictures easier to find. Picktorial is one of the few photo management programs that allows users to edit their metadata.
When you’re assessing photo management software, make a checklist, and make sure that that check list has the following:
- Non-destructive editing
- RAW photo editing and seamless conversion
- Intuitive workflow
- Metadata editing
- Single space workflow
Those features aren’t all you’ll be looking for in photo management software for Macs. But they are a good place to begin. They’ll give you the means to find the images you’ve taken, retrieve them, and make them look as beautiful as you expected them to look when you took them.Like taking pictures itself, that’s now easier than ever to do too.
- January 02, 2021
- 18 min to read
Most free photo editors available on the App Store are quite basic, offering just a limited number of filters and allowing you to easily and quickly liven up your photos before posting them on social media.
But if you’re an aspiring or professional photographer, you probably need a more powerful app with a broader set of tools to use your creativity to the fullest. Besides, you probably use your Mac for photo editing because working on a large screen makes it possible to adjust the slightest details.
1. Apple’s Photos (Built-in app)
Apple’s Photos app is included for free on all recently released Macs. It does a good job at organizing your photos, but its collection of photo enhancement tools leaves much to be desired. Hopefully, our selection of the best free programs for photo editing on Mac will help you choose the right app to suit all your creative needs.
2. Luminar (7 days trial)
Luminar is another full-featured photo editor that’s popular with both Mac and Windows users. It can work as a standalone app as well as a plugin for such popular programs as Apple Photos.
Luminar uses Artificial Intelligence to enable sophisticated yet quick photo enhancements. Among these AI features are Sky Enhancer, which adds more depth and detail to the sky in your photos while leaving other areas untouched; Accent AI, which analyzes a photo and automatically applies the best combination of different effects to enhance your image; and Sun Rays, which allows you to place an artificial sun and adjust the lighting to your liking or make the sun rays already in your photo look even more incredible.
Luminar has over 60 filters you can apply to your photos to enhance them in a moment. Luminar also provides a set of powerful tools for cropping, transforming, cloning, erasing, and stamping, along with layers, brushes, and many more incredible features. Luminar supports the Touch Bar on the latest MacBook Pro, making photo editing even more effortless and pleasing.
3. Photolemur 3 (Free Version with watermark)
Photolemur is a relative newcomer on the photo editing market but it has all the chances to win the favor of beginner photographers and hobbyists. Running on Artificial Intelligence, Photolemur is a completely automatic photo enhancer, meaning that it does all the editing for you in no time. It has the simplest interface, with only a few buttons and sliders to adjust the enhancement to your liking and view the before and after results.
Best Free Photo Management Software Mac 2020
All you need to do is choose a photo (or a few) that you want to improve, drag and drop or import them using the Import button, and let the program make enhancements. After it’s done, you can compare the edited version with the original image by using the before–after slider and, if you want, adjust the skin tone or even enlarge the eyes using additional sliders. Pretty easy, huh?
Photolemur also offers a number of impressive styles to touch up your photos and give them a sophisticated and professional look. With this app, you don’t need to stuff your head with photo editing nuances and terms. Just run Photolemur and watch the magic happen!
4. Aurora HDR (14 days trial)
As you probably can tell from the name, Aurora HDR is designed to help photographers enhance their HDR photos, making them even more detailed and beautiful. It’s an ideal tool for editing your photos, with an extensive collection of more than 20 tools including details, tone, mapping, color, glow, and vignette. Each tool has its unique selection of controls to adjust its effects.
Aurora HDR enables you to work with brushes, layers, and masks, and provides a number of automatic AI tools for recognizing and removing noise, enhancing colors, lighting, and details, improving clarity, and adding contrast to dull areas while leaving other areas untouched.
Aurora HDR does a great job dealing with difficult lighting situations and creating full-of-life images while being easy to use.
5. Pixelmator (Trial 30 Days)
Pixelmator is a photo enhancer beloved by many Mac users, as it offers a good combination of a modern and simple interface, the ability to work on multiple layers, and powerful features that take photo editing to a whole new level. With so many editing tools, brushes, and effects, you can enhance your photos to your liking. You can choose between two versions of Pixelmator – standard and pro – depending on your needs. The standard version is great for basic photo editing with its selection of essential tools and filters, while the pro version is packed with extra brushes, tools, and effects that let you push your creativity to new boundaries. You can decide which version is suitable for you according to what features you’re looking for in a photo editing app.
6. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 (Trial link)
Photoshop Elements isn’t as affordable as other photo enhancers for beginner photographers. But luckily there’s a trial version available, so you can check it out before deciding whether this app is worthy of your money. Photoshop Elements acquired many powerful features from Photoshop, only Elements is simplified for amateur photographers and enthusiasts. It includes a good number of effects and filters, plus automated editing options for improving lighting, color balance, and exposure, and even opening closed eyes and reducing the effects of camera shake.
In addition to all of these awesome features, Photoshop also offers editing modes for beginners, intermediate users, and experts. Beginners will probably prefer Quick mode, as it focuses on essential tools to quickly enhance your photos by improving color, lighting, and other basic settings. Guided mode provides intermediate users with step-by-step guidance with more professional features like artistic effects, skin tone correction, and background replacement. Expert mode gives you full access to the app’s really powerful editing features and is ideal for creating stunning images.
7. Affinity Photo (Free Trial)
Affinity Photo’s interface may seem overwhelming at first, especially for novices, but when you come to grips with it you’ll find that the app is just what you’ve been looking for. Its numerous professional tools, effects, and filters encourage you to get creative with your photos. Among the coolest features Affinity Photo has to offer is a before and after view to compare the original photo with its edited version.
Affinity Photo works with 15 file types, including common ones like PDF, PSD, JPG, and GIF as well as some less popular ones. The app amazes with its abundance of basic and top-notch editing tools, allowing you to tweak your photos using all possible kinds of instruments. Affinity Photo allows you to edit HDR photos, apply artistic filters and effects, play with masks and layers, and create breathtaking compositions by combining several images in one. If you find its interface a bit much and are afraid of getting lost in all those advanced tools, you should probably look for something more suitable for your level. But Affinity Photo is worth mastering.
8. Google Photos
Google Photos is a popular cloud storage service for photos and videos. It can’t boast countless masterly tools like other photo enhancers that we review in this article, but it includes some fundamental features like filters, color adjustment sliders, and transformation tools.
Although Google Photos may not be that helpful when it comes to editing photos, it does a pretty good job at storing high-resolution images and videos with 15GB of free online storage, compared to iCloud’s mere 5GB (which you can upgrade to 50GB for a monthly fee). If you’re planning to go on a trip and take plenty of photos, then it might be smart to sign up for Google Photos to use that extra storage space when you come back.
9. PhotoScape X (Free)
A relatively new photo editing app, PhotoScape X has been gaining popularity with many Mac and PC users since its release in 2008. Its interface is simple but unconventional, with a number of tabs running along the top of the window. Each is responsible for a specific stage of editing. The Viewer tab allows you to browse and organize your photos. After you pick a photo, you can switch to the Editor tab, which includes a broad set of instruments, filters, and effects and a useful feature that enables you to compare the adjusted photo with the original.
The next tabs, including the Batch tab, mainly concentrate on editing and renaming multiple photos at once. The GIF tab allows you to easily create an animated GIF from a group of selected photos.
The downside of PhotoScape X is a lack of selection tools, so all changes are applied to the whole image rather than to a selected part.
10. Gimp (Free)
Mac Photo Management Software
Gimp is a free open-source photo editing app that has been on the market for over 22 years and is available for Windows, Mac, and even Linux. Unlike many free apps, Gimp doesn’t have any ads or in-app purchases. Its grey interface might seem a little old-fashioned and it may be a bit sluggish when it comes to complex effects, though.
Photo Organizers For Windows 10
Gimp offers a vast collection of advanced tools that hardly any free photo editor can boast. It has numerous enhancement options such as clone and heal brushes, layers and channels, accurate selection tools, a number of transformation instruments, and, of course, color adjustment controls. Gimp is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing photos and is beloved by so many users for its price (free) and versatility. But if you can’t come to grips with Gimp’s interface, it may be worth paying some cash for a more user-friendly program.