Everyone wants their photos to look their best. Ideally, with minimal investment of time and effort on your part. That’s a fair request, and, fortunately, there are many developers ready to satisfy it. The number of available tools for each platform is great, but this review is aimed at a more specific audience – the MacBook Air owners.
In this round-up, we’ll present you a list of the five best photo editing software for MacBook Air. Unlike behemoths like Adobe Photoshop which require a rather powerful setup, these image editors run smoothly on MacBook Air hardware with low battery consumption.
PhotoWorks
PhotoWorks takes its place among the best photo editors for MacBook Air thanks to a great balance between user-friendliness, achievable image quality, and lenient system requirements. It is great for editing portraits, landscapes, or any other type of photo. Casual users and Instagram enthusiasts will be pleased with 200+ artistic effects, 3D LUT presets, a one-click enhancement feature, and other easy-to-use tools. More seasoned users can enjoy the benefits of color curves, content-aware features, and an abundance of available adjustable parameters. On top of that, this program has a dedicated portrait editing module. PhotoWorks lacks advanced layering tools, but thanks to it the app maintains simplicity, which makes it fun to use.
Luminar Neo
Luminar Neo is a tightly designed photo editor that utilizes cutting-edge technology and AI-powered tools. With an intuitive and user-friendly interface, you can easily access lots of filters, effects, and adjustments. AI-based features will help easily fix and enhance any aspect of your image, there is even a dedicated tool that removes power lines from landscape shots. Regarding downsides, Luminar has no proper cataloging feature and can lag occasionally.
Photoshop Elements
Adobe Photoshop Elements is an assembly of automatic tools for fixing the most common issues, from shaking reduction to exposure correction. It lets you introduce much more creativity into the workflow while being significantly easier to use than Photoshop and including guidelines for advanced editing. It also has convenient geo- and face-tagging options, along with a search tool. Elements take its place among the best apps out there, but it all comes at the cost of a hefty price tag. There’s a free trial to try Photoshop Elements out, though.
Photoscape X
Photoscape X is another interesting option for you to try. It is primarily a paid tool, but it has a free version that offers enough features for casual editing – resize, crop, rotate, merge, and more. The interface is a bit unconventional, but very convenient and practical, once you wrap your head around it. On top of regular image processing, you can create GIFs and collages. The downsides of Photoscape X are a paywall that hides the most advanced features, and slow processing of large files.
Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro is an Apple-exclusive photo editor on MacBook Air, that brings an extensive photo editing toolkit to the table. It includes hundreds of templates, replacement features, stylish effects, and whatnot. It also has an ML-Enhance mode that utilizes AI trained on millions of pro shots. Pixelmator Pro constantly gets improvements and enhancements. For example, one of the latest versions introduces basic video editing tools.
Choosing the Best Photo Editor for Mac
When picking proper photo editing software, try asking yourself these questions:
- What is my goal – deep and artistic overhaul or simple retouching?
- What is my budget – can I afford a robust paid program, or something uncomplicated and cheap will do?
- What is my skill level – can handle something complex or do I need something for casual users?
- How long will work – will the app train the MacBook Air battery, and how much will you be able to accomplish before the power runs out?
You will be able to narrow down your options in the vast ocean of photo editing software. No matter what you choose, we wish you the best in your artistic endeavors.