• Put your control track into Waveform dB. NOTE: This tip works best if you are editing a podcast with significantly higher intensity on your s’s. • Identify the dB barrier that most of your track falls below, but your s’s go above. • Auto Duck the selected audio, most likely between -18dB and -20dB. • Select and Duplicate the control track. Text editor for mac.
How do you choose the best photo editing software? We’ve picked the best paid-for mainstream photo editing programs that will work on both Mac and PC, and we’re looking for ease of use.
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.
Pixelmator
Platform: OS X
Price: $30
Download Page
Features
- Layer-based workflow allows for flexible adjustments
- Several image adjustment tools for a variety of options
- Layer styles save time when creating common effects
- Includes a robust set of filters for image alteration and manipulation
- Supports importing and exporting several popular image formats
- Several helpful retouching tools, including a healing brush helps you easily remove unwanted blemishes and even objects in photos
- Beautiful filters for quick image enhancements, color changes, and popular “retro” looks
- Support for OS X Mavericks features like tags, multiple displays, and App Napp
- Excellent brushes and painting tools
- Over 160 awesome effects
- Open and save in PSD, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, and many other popular formats
- Save images in iCloud for automatic syncing across all your Macs
- Share photos directly from Pixelmator via email and to popular social networks
- Works seamlessly with existing Photoshop documents
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.
Gimp
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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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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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Jericho Powers I’m sold So this is my first review, but the reason I’m going to do one is because I am THAT thrilled with my 2 years of using this app. Microsoft picture editor for mac. That’s right, I’ve been using his app for 2 years and I’m still in love.
Read more ReadSeashore (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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Apple Macs are great devices for photo editing, especially for professionals. The Mac’s Retina display, coupled with powerful processors, make for a seamless image editing workflow.
No matter if you’re an amateur looking to enhance your family vacation photos or a professional photographer working under pressure, there are Mac image editors to suit your needs.
Here are the best free and paid image editors for Mac.
The Best Free Mac Image Editors
If you’re looking for a basic editor, you don’t need to buy a fully featured editing suite. A basic image editor is both easy to use and has all the features that you’d need to fix and enhance your personal photos.
1. Photoscape X
Photoscape X is a great basic image editor for Mac you’ve probably never heard of. It’s an all-in-one app that lets you edit RAW images, fix photos, add filters, and more. Using the brush tool you can quickly fix small issues with your photos. Photoscape has a batch mode that lets you resize and rename photos with just a click.
Download:Photoscape X (Free)
Get them onto your computer screen, fire up some top notch image-editing software and you’ll be able to unleash the full potential of your images. If you want your snaps to stand out, they need a bit of tender loving care. Best image editor app for mac. A bad photo with an Instagram filter is just a bad photo that’s trying too hard. These editors put you in control of your photos, making corrective and creative effects work in sympathy with the image rather than just being slapped over the top.
2. GIMP
GIMP is an open source project that’s been in active development for over twenty years. It’s often referred to as the best free photo editor. Thanks to its community-based development, it offers professional features that you only otherwise find in paid apps like Photoshop.
GIMP is laid out like a professional editing tool and has a steep learning curve. But it has all the basic and professional features you would expect from a graphic design suite. GIMP’s Layers feature is powerful and you can even use some Photoshop plugins with GIMP. If you’re new to GIMP, use our introductory guide to GIMPAn Introduction to GIMP Photo Editing: 9 Things You Need to KnowAn Introduction to GIMP Photo Editing: 9 Things You Need to KnowGIMP is the best free photo editing app available. Here's everything you need to know about editing photos in GIMP.Read More to learn the basics.
Download:GIMP (Free)
3. Photos
If all you’re looking for is a simple way to manage your photo library on Mac8 Starter Tips for Managing Your Photos Library on Mac8 Starter Tips for Managing Your Photos Library on MacAre your Mac photos a mess? Follow these beginner's tips to get them under control and improve your picture organization.Read More and perform some basics edits to fix or enhance your personal photos, the built-in Photos app will be more than enough.
The Photos app has a good auto-enhance tool, a crop tool, basic image editing, and filter support. Plus, it has a familiar user interface. If you feel comfortable editing photos in the iPhone Photos app, you’ll be right at home on the Mac version as well.
4. Pixlr X
Pixlr X runs smoothly on any modern web browser. If you only need to edit a couple of photos every now and then, it doesn’t make sense to download a feature-rich image editor. Instead, see if Pixlr’s web-based image editor is enough for you.
Pixlr X has all the basic image editing features you’d expect. You can crop, resize, add filters, and easily remove the background from any image. There are a couple of tools for adjusting the visual elements of the picture and you can add text and doodle over images. If you have a stock image, you can use Pixlr X to quickly create a poster or flyer as well.
Visit:Pixlr X (Free)
The Best Paid Mac Image Editors
If you’re serious about photo editing, you’ll need professional tools. A fully-featured photo editing suite will help improve the quality of your work. Because paid apps are designed for professionals from the ground up, you’ll end up saving a lot of time once you get used to the workflow.
Mac Text Editor
1. Lightroom
Lightroom is the default photo editor for professional photographers. Lightroom’s workflow sets it apart. Other than the stellar photo editing features, it also has a simple yet robust image organization feature. And this is why a lot of professionals stick with Lightroom.
If you’re clicking thousands of photos for a project and you need to select a couple of dozen good ones, Lightroom makes the process easy for you. You can skim through thousands of RAW files, mark the important photos, move them to a different directory, edit them in a particular style, save that style as a preset, go back and apply it to other photos, and then finally export the images in multiple formats.
And once you’re done with the project, you can use Lightroom’s library to keep the important photos and back them up using your Adobe Cloud account. For professionals, this is what makes Lightroom’s $9.99/month starting price palatable.
Download:Adobe Lightroom ($9.99/month)
2. Photoshop
S7raw
Photoshop is a different kind of photo editor. You can think of it as Lightroom’s bigger brother. Photoshop is designed specifically for image manipulation and enhancement. Photoshop is famous for its advanced selection tools, complex layer system, and infinitely customizable brushes.
You can use Lightroom to bring out all of the details from a RAW image file or to enhance an image aesthetically (to fix colors and saturation levels). Once you’re done with that, you can import the image in Photoshop to kick things up a notch. In fact, you can’t edit RAW images in Photoshop without the Camera RAW plugin.
Photoshop is a massive, complex application with over two decades of consistent updates. It has way too many features, but once you master the basics, Photoshop gives you the tools to turn your imagination into reality.
Using Photoshop, you can merge multiple images together, completely change the color palette of an image, and fix parts of an image to make them better (particularly portraits).
Download:Adobe Photoshop ($9.99/month)
3. Affinity Photo
You can think of Affinity Photo as a lightweight version of Photoshop. It has the most common features from Photoshop like the advanced selection tools, brushes, and layer support. Affinity Photos weighs in at 350 MB instead of the 2GB behemoth that is Photoshop. Affinity Photo is also much faster than Photoshop, especially on Macs without a dedicated graphics card.
Plus, unlike Photoshop, you can buy Affinity Photo outright for $49.99. If you don’t like Adobe’s shift towards subscription pricing and increasing dependence on cloud syncing, take a look at Affinity Photo. If you’ve already learned the basics of Photoshop (you can open PSD files in Affinity Photo), it will be much easier to pick up Affinity Photo.
Download:Affinity Photo ($49.99)
4. Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro is a powerful image editing app that’s designed to be easy to use. Free video editor for mac. It’s an all-in-one tool for image manipulation. Pixelmator Pro is a mix of Lightroom, Photoshop, and Illustrator. It has basic features from all three apps.
You can use it to edit RAW images, enhance photos, fix parts of images, and create posters by adding beautiful text and other elements. Pixelmator Pro can stretch itself from being a basic photo editing app to a graphic design suite, depending on your needs and skillset.
Download:Pixelmator Pro ($39.99)
Other Great Mac Apps Worth Using
There’s something for everyone in the apps listed above. We recommend most people start with Pixlr X and see if that does the trick. However, if you’re looking for a fast, beautiful, and feature-rich photo editor that’s designed for the Mac, Affinity Photo is a great choice.
Tag Editor supports ID3 tags for MP3, WAV, AIFF, FLAC files, and MP4 tags for MP4 and M4A files.. A few niggles, it doesnt look for an existing album name, so I have to revert that column. Use, see and control all changes in one spreadsheet window. Free mp3 tag editor for mac. Tidy your entire audio collection by both auto and manual methods quickly and easily! It would be more user friendly if you could select the columns you want to convert (this is an early use review, so the functionality might be there and I haven’t spotted it).
Best Html Editors For Mac
There are many more great Mac apps out there just waiting to be explored. Take a look at our list of the best macOS appsThe Best Mac Apps to Install on Your MacBook or iMacThe Best Mac Apps to Install on Your MacBook or iMacLooking for the best apps for your MacBook or iMac? Here's our comprehensive list of the best apps for macOS.Read More to discover some of the apps you should be installing on your Mac.
Raw Therapee
Explore more about: Adobe Photoshop, Batch Image Editing, Image Editor, Photography.
I would definitely add Luminar - https://macphun.com/luminar
It was initially developed for Mac, but they had announced the open Windows Beta just today.
For Mac, it has really useful and effective tools, even 'AI' enhancement filter, which is a prototype of the legendary 'Make it awesome' button everyone was looking for.
Take a look at it, you won't regret it!For RAW images editing i would like to recommend 'Raw Therapee', pretty full featured free software, very simular to Adobe Lightroom.
Affinity for the Mac is my choice, that is just my opinion. The one time cost
is well worth it. The app has the 'apple feel', almost intuitive. Apple-Mac
architecture is not for every one but this paring is a winner.
There is a tutorial, that is only basic or go to the Tube.
How about 'Affinity Movie'?I think PhotoScape X is more full-featured than Fotor.
Pinta is a worthy mention. I prefer it's UI over GIMP and GIMPShop. It's the cross platform version to Paint.NET. http://pinta-project.com
Adobe sales Photoshop CC plus Lightroom for $9.99 a month. Not $19.99.
Really! Agreed. Where does the author derive his opinions from?! Affinity is not only excellent as a standalone application, they also have extensions in support of Apple's Photos as well.
Agreed. Affinity is very powerful and one of the best looking app to work with :)
No Affinity Photo? Really? Where do you live?