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You have a lot of factors to consider when deciding which is the best photo editor for macOS X, and the importance of the various elements will vary from user to user. Because of that, picking a single application must involve compromises as what is right for one user may be too basic, too complicated, or too expensive for another.
Best High-End Photo Editors
Affinity Photo has long been a top seller on the Mac App Store (although you can also buy direct from Serif), as it provides a really powerful selection of photo-editing tools for just under £50/$50.
If you have a completely open budget, then your best purchase is Adobe Photoshop. It was the original image editor and has been around since the old Apple Mac operating system. It's the industry-standard image editor and with good reason.
It's a hugely useful application with a comprehensive and well-considered feature set. Photoshop is equally well suited for home editing photos and producing creative and artistic raster images. Its development, especially since the introduction of the Creative Suite versions, has been evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Each release sees it become an even more rounded and robust application that runs natively on OS X.
Other photo editors have drawn inspiration from Photoshop. However, few can match the feature set that allows for the flexibility of non-destructive adjustments, easily applied layer styles, and the powerful camera and lens-specific image corrections.
More Affordable Options for Photo Editing
If you have a limited budget, then you can't find cheaper than free, and that is what GIMP is. GIMP is a free and open-source alternative to Photoshop, though the developers deliberately discount this.
GIMP is a powerful and flexible image editor that you can expand with free plugins. However, it isn't able to match Photoshop in several ways, including the lack of adjustment layers to make non-destructive edits to images and the flexibility of layer styles. Nonetheless, many users swear by GIMP and in the right hands, it can produce creative results that can match work produced by Photoshop. Sometimes GIMP can offer tools not available elsewhere. For example, the Resynthesizer plugin gave GIMP users a powerful, content-aware fill tool long before such a feature appeared in Photoshop CS5.
If you don't mind spending a little bit of money, though, you might also want to consider Pixelmator. It's a stylish and well-featured native photo editor for OS X.
Adobe Photoshop Elements is also a good, affordable alternative to the mainline product. It offers most of the features of Photoshop at a fraction of the price. It's certainly worth considering for home users, hobbyists, and even some professional work where advanced features are not needed.
Photo Editors for the Home User
OS X comes with the Preview application pre-installed, and for many users, this will offer enough tools and features to make simple adjustments to digital photos. However, if you're looking for a little more functionality without the steep learning curve of GIMP or Photoshop, Seashore would be well worth a look. And like GIMP, it's available for free.
This attractive photo editor has a clear and intuitive interface and a user guide that will take new users with little knowledge through the concept of layers and image effects. It would be a good stepping stone for a move onto a more powerful photo editor, though it's likely to offer more than enough functionality for a large number of users.
So Which is the Best Photo Editor for Mac OS X?
Trying to decide which is the best photo editor of OS X is a matter of determining which one does the best job of reaching various compromises.
All in all, we have to conclude that GIMP offers the best overall compromise. The fact that it is free means that absolutely anyone with an internet connection can use it. While it isn't the most powerful or best-featured app, it is near the top. Despite that, though, novice users can also use GIMP for simple jobs, without having to embark on the steep learning curve to make full use of every feature. Finally, with the ability to install plugins, it is possible that if GIMP doesn't do what you want it to, someone else may have already produced a plugin that will take care of it.
Today's best Apple Photos deals
Apple Photos, a free program built into the macOS and iOS systems, is our choice for the Best Free Photo Editor for Mac users, because it lives up to the company's philosophy of fun technology that's simple to use. Compared to Corel PaintShop Pro and Adobe Photoshop Elements, Apple's application is simpler and less powerful, but it fits the Apple lifestyle. As such, it's a playful app for saving, organizing and sharing your photos, and it offers a nice set of editing tools and easy access to your entire photo library on your various Apple devices through iCloud.
A No-Nonsense Interface
Apple Photos' interface is clean, simple and direct, so that your creativity is enabled by easy, uncomplicated shortcuts rather than the deep layers of functionality found in more feature-rich programs (such as Affinity Photo or Photoshop Elements).
The iOS version has four main tabs: Photos, Shared, Albums and Memories. The desktop version adds a fifth section: Projects.
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Photos and videos are organized by years, collections or Moments (individual days), and can come from a variety of sources: your phone or camera, your iCloud account, other people's iCloud accounts (shared with you) or your computer (synced via iTunes). Because iCloud works with Windows, Apple Photos can even access photos and videos stored on a PC.
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In Memories, the app uses various algorithms to create 'surprise' collections or movies of images that are related by date, place, people and so forth. Periodically, the auto-created Memories offer a pleasant visual recollection; other times, they combine a hodgepodge of images that are not very meaningful.
In the desktop app's Projects section, you can create photo books, greeting cards, calendars and prints. The options for these projects are very limited compared with those offered by other photo print services. (To find out what we liked and disliked about Apple's print services, check out our reviews of Apple Calendars, Apple Photo Books and Apple Photo Cards).
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Organizing and Finding Your Photos and Videos
Apple Photos gives you some control over organizing your photos, videos and albums. Specifically, you can create, name, rearrange and delete albums; add or remove individual photos or groups of photos and videos to or from an album; mark favorites; and hide photos or videos. On the desktop version (but not the mobile version), you can also add a description and keywords, which then can be used as search criteria on all devices.
The search engine is nice, but it doesn't extend to full object recognition. For instance, when I searched for 'dog,' it found most, but not all, of my dog pictures. When I searched for 'tree,' it found none of my tree pictures.
As on Google Photos, Apple Photos has a map view that shows where your images were captured (if you had geolocation features enabled when you took them). A very nice extra feature of Apple's geolocation is that when looking at the map detail for a specific photo or video, you can click to view nearby images, too.
Apple Photos did a pretty good job of recognizing faces, but it was no better or worse than every other app we've tested. More useful is its People album and functionality, which make it easy to find, identify and group specific individuals in all of the pictures of people in your library.
Memories
The most significant recent addition to the app is the new Memories section. Apple Photos scans through your library of photos and videos to create a collage card or slideshow movie of images that the app thinks are related (based on location, event, scene categories or people). These Memories pop up almost as surprise gifts, and after Photos is installed, it can take days for any to be displayed (even if your iCloud library is already quite extensive). If you like what you see, you can save the Memory to your Favorite Memories album and share it. You can also create your own memories from an Album or Collection.
A handful of Memory options let you choose a different 'mood' from 11 styles that define the title font, soundtrack and transitions. If you save the Memory, you have access to more meaningful custom options: change the title, choose a font style, select different music, set its duration, and add or delete images.
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Photo & Video Editing
Apple Photos' editing tools don't require much skill or time, but they are deeper and richer than what Google Photos offers.
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In addition to tools for auto-enhance, red-eye removal and crop/rotate, the Apple Photos mobile app has thumbnail sliders to easily alter multiple aspects of a picture. For instance, under Adjust, you can simply slide an indicator over a thumbnail variation to alter the lightness or color intensity of a picture. The one-click filters are coarse, but they can create some nice effects. You can also trim a video and save it as a new clip, adjust the slow-motion section of a video and mark up a photo by typing text or using your finger on the screen.
The desktop version of Photos adds sharpen, white balance, levels and a clone-like retouch tool to the mix. There are also Apple and third-party extensions that can plug into Apple Photos.
Sharing & Compatibility
Sharing is as simple as can be. With just a couple of taps or clicks, you can share your photos and slideshows via Message (text), Mail (email), iCloud Photo Sharing, Notes, Twitter, Facebook or Flickr, and you can even save a PDF to iBooks or share across Apple devices through AirPlay.
Apple Photos organizes, edits and shares not only photos and videos, but also Live Photos (the iPhone's burst capture of sound and movement before and after a photo is snapped on an iPhone 6s or later).
The newest version of Apple Photos is compatible only with more recent hardware that has 64-bit processors, such as the iPhone 5s or newer. Even if your older phone or laptop can update to the newest operating system, the new Memories tab will be missing from the app's interface.
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iCloud
When you set Apple Photos to use iCloud to sync your image library, any changes you make to a picture or video in the app are updated on all of your devices that use iCloud, including your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, Mac, iCloud.com and, yes, your Windows PC.
You get 5GB of iCloud storage for free, but that isn't enough for most people's image libraries. It costs 99 cents a month for an additional 50GB of storage, $2.99/month for 200GB, $9.99/month for 1TB or $19.99/month for 2TB.
The My Photo Stream feature, which doesn't count against your iCloud storage limit, uploads your newest photos to iCloud, which holds up to 1,000 Photo Stream images for 30 days. If you want to keep those pictures, you need to download them to your computer or mobile device.
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Bottom Line
For Mac and iPhone users who want to have and share the fun of their photos and videos, Apple Photos is a great choice. It's easy to use, and offers uncomplicated sharing and full access to your image library on your various devices. What's more, it provides a nice level of editing options to give you a sense of fun personalization and even some artistic satisfaction. However, for consumers who want more control over the finer details of photo editing, we recommend either Photoshop Elements or, for advanced users, Affinity Photo.
Today's best Apple Photos deals
