Phone Apps for Photo Editing to Make Your Photos Stand Out

If you're looking to give your photos a professional touch, you're in the right place. With the right photo editing app, you can enhance your photos and make them stand out.

Snapseed is a popular choice among photographers, offering a range of tools to edit and enhance your photos. It's free to download and use, making it a great option for those on a budget.

Whether you're a casual smartphone user or a serious photographer, VSCO is a great choice for adding a touch of elegance to your photos. Its filters and editing tools are designed to give your photos a unique look.

VSCO offers a range of filters that can be applied to your photos, including the popular A6 filter, which adds a warm and vintage tone to your images.

For your interest: Most Popular Phone Apps

TouchRetouch is a mobile editing app that lets you erase unwanted elements from your photos with ease. It's available for both iOS and Android devices.

The app comes with a one-time fee, but it's worth the investment if you're not familiar with Photoshop or need a quick eraser for mobile photo editing. With tutorials available on the app itself, it's easy to learn and use the various features.

One of my favorite features in TouchRetouch is the single flick line removal tool, which automatically removes everything except the selected part of a line.

On a similar theme: Can You Have Two Snapchat Apps on One Phone

VSCO is a photographer's tool that creates quality results, with a focus on traditional photography and a good variety of photo corrections and adjustments.

It has a good selection of film-emulsion-type filters and can even import RAW files, making it a great option for those who want to achieve a specific aesthetic.

However, its feature set isn't as comprehensive as some of the other best photo editing apps, lacking selective edits, text or special effects.

You can save up to 10 "recipes" or lists of edits done to a photo, to use on other images, and the app also offers a nice array of pre-capture controls, including selective focus point, and manual control over white balance, ISO and exposure.

Suggestion: Cool Picture Editing Apps for Iphone

The free app is limited to basic edit tools and ten presets, but for $19.99/year, you'll have access to a video editor, more than 200 presets, advanced editing tools, still and animated montage tools, and more robust learning support.

VSCO has a community of users and influencers, but don't expect the kind of interaction you have on Instagram or other social networks.

You can post photos from VSCO to any network that's on your phone, though only one at a time, and any photos you post to your VSCO profile are public even to those who don't have a VSCO account.

The app is available for both Android and iOS, and is a great option for those who want to achieve a specific aesthetic in their photos.

Curious to learn more? Check out: How to Post Photos on Facebook from Phone

Adobe Photoshop Camera is a game-changer for photographers who want to enhance their photos with ease. It's available on both Android and iOS devices.

The app uses AI to apply special effects and photo corrections before or after you shoot with your phone's camera. This feature is especially useful for those who already use the Adobe suite.

Adobe Photoshop Camera has a range of filters, called "lenses", that can be used to apply special effects or make adjustments to color, lighting, and clarity. These lenses are incredibly versatile and can be used to create stunning images.

One of the standout features of Adobe Photoshop Camera is its use of Adobe Sensei, which automatically identifies the type of photo (portrait or landscape) and creates masks for key aspects, such as a face or the sky. This means that you can easily edit your photos without having to manually select and adjust each element.

The app also has a range of "sprites" – smart objects that can be pinched, zoomed, and moved within a Sensei-identified area of the picture. This feature is perfect for adding details to your photos, such as planets or clouds.

Adobe promises to add new lenses on a regular basis, some created by celebrity artists and influencers. This means that you'll always have access to fresh and exciting editing options.

The app is free to download and use, with no premium version to worry about. This makes it an excellent choice for photographers who want to experiment with different editing styles without breaking the bank.

For more insights, see: Most Used Apps on My Phone

Headings are a crucial part of any phone app, and they can make or break the user experience. Clear and concise headings can help users quickly understand what an app does and what features it offers.

A good heading should be short and to the point, ideally no more than 2-3 words. As seen in the review of the fitness app "Sweat Tracker", their heading "Workout Log" effectively conveys the app's purpose.

Headings can also be used to highlight important features or promotions within an app. For example, the review of the shopping app "Deal Finder" shows how their heading "Exclusive Deals" grabs the user's attention.

A well-designed heading can make an app more visually appealing and engaging. In the review of the puzzle game "Brain Teaser", their heading "Daily Challenges" creates a sense of excitement and encourages users to try the app.

Lightroom is a top-notch cloud-based photo editing app that's part of the Adobe ecosystem. It's available on both Android and iOS, and its mobile version is free to download.

The biggest perk of Lightroom is its Creative Cloud sync, which allows you to start editing an image on your phone and finish it later on your desktop. This flexibility is a big deal when you're traveling or shooting regularly.

You can also correct lens distortion and remove chromatic aberration with Lightroom, something not many mobile apps offer. The app's core tools, such as exposure, contrast, and highlights, are smooth and precise.

Adobe Lightroom Mobile is part of a cloud-based workflow that includes storage of your entire photo library and access to the full-resolution files on all your devices.

You can start editing an image on your phone and finish it later on your desktop, thanks to the Creative Cloud sync.

Lightroom Mobile offers unmatched cloud syncing, making it a great option for those who work across multiple devices.

The app is available for both iOS and Android, and it's part of the Adobe ecosystem.

Additional reading: Role of Mobile Phone Apps

The biggest perk of Lightroom Mobile is the ability to correct lens distortion and remove chromatic aberration, something not many mobile apps offer.

You can also correct lens distortion and remove chromatic aberration, something not many mobile apps offer.

Lightroom Mobile doesn't feel as fun to use as Luminar Neo, but it's more of a pro-grade utility, and I found myself treating it more seriously, which isn't always what I want from a photo editing app.

The subscription model can be off-putting, as there's no one-time purchase option, and the plan includes 1TB of cloud storage.

Lightroom Mobile is solid, but it's not as powerful as the desktop version, which has more advanced masking features and AI capabilities.

The mobile app is free, or you can pay $4.99/month for a Premium subscription that gives you 100GB of storage space.

Lightroom Mobile is a great learning platform, with an ever-growing library of interactive tutorials that will teach you to edit your images like a pro.

The feature set is quite deep, with dozens of tools to work with exposure, color, selective edit, filters, and such.

Worth a look: How to Make Android Phone Not Restart Apps in Backround

Edits are non-destructive, so you can always return to your original image.

The edits are quick and responsive, so you know exactly how the adjustment affects your picture.

You can contribute your own edited pictures to Lightroom Discover, where you can see animations of the steps other photographers and artists used to create their best images.

Lens Distortions is a great tool for adding natural elements to your pictures, and it's completely free to use. You can add sun flares, fog, rain, or snow with just a simple click or two.

The interface is user-friendly, allowing you to adjust the effects to your liking. You can use just one effect or layer multiple effects on top of each other, giving you endless possibilities.

I personally use a combination of classic and principle light hits to create a desired flare of my preference.

Take a look at this: Do Phone Apps Use Data

We tested a wide range of photo editing apps to see which ones stand out from the crowd. We used a Samsung S24 Ultra, iPhone 14 Pro Max, and iPad Pro for the most recent round of testing.

We loaded a sample photo in each editing app and experimented with it to get a feel for the user experience and identify any pain points. We took note of what features were available to free users and what was paywalled, as well as where and how ads were placed.

To judge the editing apps' ability to fix problematic images, we loaded the same set of original photos in each editor and made the same set of adjustments. We tested each app's autofix capabilities and ability to lift shadows and correct blown highlights.

We exported the adjusted photos at the same resolution and quality settings, or as close as we could get, and then compared the files side by side. We also spent a lot of time playing with each app's undo/redo and edit-history functionality to see how badly we could mess up without having to start over completely.

Here's a breakdown of how we tested the photo editing apps:

Snapseed is a budget-friendly option that packs a lot of powerful features into a totally free app. It's not as sophisticated as Lightroom, but it's a great choice if you want a lot of editing tools without spending a dime.

One of the best things about Snapseed is that it's completely ad-free. You get a diverse range of tools at no cost, including raw-file editing, selective edits, and healing brushes.

Snapseed includes an assortment of "looks" or filters to quickly punch up images without degrading them. These filters are designed to be easy to use and won't wash out your images.

If you don't want to use one of Snapseed's pre-made "looks", you can access a panel of 28 labeled icons, each representing a submenu with multiple individual tools. This makes it easy to find what you need and make adjustments on the fly.

The Tools menu in Snapseed is very intuitive, allowing you to slide your finger left or right to apply adjustments and up and down to select another adjustment in the same submenu.

Broaden your view: Texting Apps without Phone Number