The 5 Best Photo Editing Software for Windows
Great pictures tell stories. While your camera captures only one way to tell a tale, you’re able to give it multiple angles in post-production. Hence, you need the right tools to edit your pictures.
In this article, we’ll discuss the best photo editing software for Windows that you can use for different purposes depending on your needs. Whether you need to tweak your photos a bit to upload on your social media accounts, or need them for professional photography, you will have options.
Without further ado, let’s begin.
1.Photo Director Essential
Photo Director Essential is an all-in-onephoto editing software for beginners. It has some features similar to Lightroom and Photoshop, such as photo processing and image enhancement.
Other features that the software offers are intuitive layer editing, ready-to-use templates, hundreds of filters, frames, and overlays. Moreover, you’re able to apply masks and photo effects, adjust the colors, combine multiple photos, and do basic editing like adding text or cropping the image.
Photo Director also allows you to remove objects from photos, tag faces, and add blur effects. If you’re editing portraits, you can use its face beautification features. You can also import Shutterstock and Getty images if you need them for background or to add some kind of effect to your photos.
All of these features are accessible in the free version. However, you can buy its one-time subscription plan to access its AI-powered features like sky replacement, GIF animation, and more.
Additionally, the software gets updated regularly and introduces new features. It offers multiple guides on how to edit your pictures in different ways. Hence, if you’re a beginner, you’re able to choose this software can to get started.
Fotor is a web-based free photo editing software that’s designed especially for beginners. It has both mobile and desktop versions, and it allows you to do basic editing. Some of the features that it’s possible to use to tweak your photos are cropping, tilting, rotating, and straightening.
You can also create collages of your photos, convert raw files, enhance your images, add filters, frames, and borders, improve photo appearance, and add blur effects.
To get access to its full HDR support, you’ll need to buy its paid version.
3.Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom has become one of the standard photo editing software as most professional photographers use and recommend it these days. All of its desktop versions are paid, but you can use its mobile app for free, which comes with some great features as well.
Adobe Lightroom has two different versions: Lightroom and Lightroom Classic. The latter one is designed for professional photographers. It allows them to invite other people to work on the photos and share them by creating a link for them. On the other hand, Lightroom is made for beginners—who are serious about learning photography—and offers all the features you need to edit your pictures.
To begin editing your photos, you could import your files from your device or cloud into the Lightroom library. It allows you to do lens correction, fix the colors and lights of the whole picture or of a selected area, and enhance the details.
It keeps a record of your original files and all the edits you make on the pictures, you can access them from the history tab andcompare the edits to the original pictureas well.
Moreover, there are a number ofpresets available in the Lightroom effects librarythat it’s possible to use to add different effects to your pictures instantly. You can also save your own editing as presets to apply similar effects on multiple images at once.
It allows you to tag photos, both manually and automatically, with the help of AI. It’s done based on location and dates. This saves you plenty of time and makes it super simple to search for your files later on.
The software is compatible with Windows 10 (64-bits) and later.
4.Luminar AI
Luminar AIis also a paid tool with no free version available. It’s entirely powered using AI.
It allows you to adjust the composition, lights, colors, and details, and evenreplace the sky. You can edit or retouch your photos to get great results without putting in much effort. It comes with composition AI, Atmosphere AI, Iris AI, and Body AI.
Moreover, it comes with several pre-made templates created by professional photographers to get instant high-quality results. The different types of effects you can add to your photos include augmented sky, sunrays, dramatic mood, toning, matte, mystical, glow, and film grain from theCreative Sectionof the dashboard.
You can also edit any specific areas of the photos in the portrait mode like face, skin, and body. Furthermore, you can fix distorted images and remove chromatic aberrations from theProfessional Section.
The software is non-destructive, which means all the changes you make in your images are reversible. If you want to add the effects Luminar AI offers, but edit your pictures yourself without the help of AI-powered features, you can use this software as a plugin for Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop.
5.Darktable
Darktable is free, open-source software, which means that it’s created by a community of photography software professionals that anyone with the right skills can edit. It’s best for beginners, students, and newbie photographers willing to learn the most without much initial investment.
The software is comparable with Adobe Lightroom as it has many similar features. Plus, it’s nondestructive, so your original image is safe.
Additionally, it comes with features like selection, metadata editor, tagging, and file export that make file management easier. You can also sort your imported files by a range of filters. These features are available under theLighttabletab.
The editing features like adjusting the curve, tone, exposure, contrast, RGB level, noise, haze, lens correction, sharpness, vignetting, masking, and more are all available under theDarktabletab; not to mention, it comes with presets too.
You can also adjust the print quality by adjusting the settings in the print option if you have a high-performance photo printer available. Although there’s a learning curve in this software, you can download the user guide to understand most of the features.
Find the Best Software for Your Photo Editing Needs
To begin editing your pictures, you need the right tool. Depending on your needs and skills level, you can decide which of the photo editing tools we discussed will work the best for you.
For instance, if you’re a beginner, you may consider choosing Darktable or PhotoDirector Essential, as these tools are comparable to the paid ones and offer some great features. Moreover, if you just need to tweak your pictures a bit, you can try Fotor. And when you’re finally ready to take your photography to the next level, you can consider investing in paid tools.
From removing backgrounds and objects in photos to turning small pictures into poster-sized prints, these image editors are easier than Photoshop.
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