Best photo editing software in 2017

There's more to image-editing than Photoshop, and we check out some smart and affordable alternatives

 

Once upon a time, if you asked anyone which was the best photo editing software, they'd always say Photoshop. OK, so Photoshop is still the most powerful program there is at what it does, but what we want to do as photographers has changed.
Photoshop is not much good if you need creative inspiration – it can create any effect you ask of it, but you have to know what you want. If you need creative inspiration, there are better places to look.

• What better way to edit photos than with a brand-new MacBook?
• It's not much good at organising your photos, either. It does come with Adobe Bridge, but that's just a glorified folder/photo browser, not an image cataloguing tool.

And while many photography experts understand the value of shooting unprocessed raw files and processing them later on the computer, very few are aware that not all raw converters are the same and that Adobe Camera Raw – as used by Photoshop – is not necessarily the best.
So can Photoshop hang on as the best photo-editing software on the market, and which are the rival apps you should be looking at too? Read on to find out.

 

1. Adobe Photography plan

Get Photoshop and Lightroom for a single and surprisingly affordable subscription
Platform: Mac and PC | Image-editing: Yes | Cataloguing: Yes | Raw conversion: Yes
Adobe caused a storm when it moved over to a subscription system for its software, and it did initially look like a pretty pricey deal. But the price has dropped, the dust has settled and the world has carried on turning on its axis. Now, if you take out an annual subscription, you can get Photoshop and Lightroom for just £8.57/$9.99 per month.
And you do need both programs. Photoshop is sophisticated but limited. For layers, masks, selections, retouching and complex, multi-step imaging processes, it's impossible to beat, and it manages to present these tools in a remarkably clean, fast and efficient interface. On the downside, it doesn't offer a library of single-click creative effects or any way of organising a large and growing photo collection. Photoshop is like a giant box of spanners – it has all the tools you could possibly want, but it's not going to show you how to fix your car.

 That's why Lightroom is an indispensable part of the Adobe double-act. Lightroom combines an image cataloguing database with Adobe Camera Raw's 'non-destructive' editing tools in a slicker interface. It means that you can make non-permanent adjustments to an image which you can change later – and your original photos are never modified. These tools can't do everything – for selections, layers, masks and many more complex effects you'll need Photoshop. But that's OK, because you get both programs in the Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan and they complement each other really well.

 

 

2. Serif Affinity Photo

Serif shrugs off its budget background with a stunningly powerful Photoshop rival
Platform: Mac | Image-editing: Yes | Cataloguing: No | Raw conversion: Yes
Mac users who don't need Lightroom's organisational tools and who long for a Photoshop alternative on an old-school licence arrangement need to look at Serif Affinity Photo. Best-known as a developer of budget Windows creative applications like PhotoPlus, Serif has branched out into professional Mac software with its new 'Affinity' range. A few of the terms and processes are different, but if you can use Photoshop it won't take you long to get used to this. Affinity Photo's advantage (apart from the price) is that it's been built from the ground up for the latest computing hardware.

3. PhaseOne Capture One Pro 9

Capture one is a high-end rival to Lightroom and delivers high-quality results
Platform: Mac and PC | Image-editing: Limited | Cataloguing: Yes | Raw conversion: Yes
Capture One started out as a dedicated software tool for Phase One's professional medium-format cameras, but it's been developed into a very powerful raw conversion and image-editing tool for any camera owner. Like Lightroom, it can import your images into a centralised, searchable database and then apply non-destructive adjustments and preset effects. Your original images are never directly modified, and the changes are only made permanent when you export processed JPEG or TIFF versions. But there's more to this program than the bare specs suggest, because Capture One Pro's raw conversions are quite superb, often extracting visibly sharper detail, with less noise, than Adobe Camera Raw.

 

4. Adobe Photoshop Elements 15

Elements is a great image-editing tool, but version 15 brings just a handful of changes
Platform: Mac and PC | Image-editing: Yes | Cataloguing: Yes | Raw conversion: Yes
Photoshop Elements is like the 'amateur' version of Photoshop. It's a lot more novice-friendly, but you do miss out on a lot of Photoshop's more advanced features. Elements' big draw used to be the massive price differential, but you can now get a year's subscription to Photoshop CC and Lightroom for not much more than the price of an Elements licence. Elements' main strength is its ability to cater for all kinds of user, but the novice-orientated interface can grate, the editor lacks proper curves adjustments and the version of Adobe Camera Raw that's included is a bare-bones, cut-down version of the real thing. Elements is great for newbies and non-professionals, but its cost advantage has been eroded by Adobe's Creative Cloud Photoshop and Lightroom deal.

 

5. Cyberlink PhotoDirector 8 Ultra

PhotoDirector 8 is like a third-party homage to Lightroom, but with some twists of its own
Platform: Mac and PC | Image-editing: Yes| Cataloguing: Yes | Raw conversion: Yes
If you’re familiar with Lightroom you’ll notice the two programs aren't a million miles apart. The main image window offers a selection of viewing modes, allowing you to choose what’s most convenient for photo browsing or image processing. The interface is broken down into Library, Adjustment, Edit, Layers, Slideshow and Print, all of which are fairly self-explanatory and sit below the main interface menu bar. The Adjustment module is equivalent to Lightroom's Develop module, and even offers more or less the same tools, right down to its graduated and radial filter effects. But PhotoDirector takes a step further in its Edit panel, offering a whole host of effects not available in Lightroom. While the cloning tools and layers don’t quite eliminate the need for another image editor such as Photoshop or Elements, they do make it possible to go from raw to finished image entirely within PhotoDirector for many shots.

 

6. MacPhun Luminar 1.0

Luminar’s loopy-looking approach to photo editing is actually rather smart
Platform: Mac | Image-editing: Yes | Cataloguing: No | Raw conversion: Yes
Don't be fooled by that cheesy 'MacPhun' pun-making. This company makes properly powerful software that combines single-click presets that anyone can use with powerful back-end adjustments for enthusiasts and experts. Luminar is cheap, fun and rather clever. You can use it as a simple standalone photo-editing tool, as a plug-in for Lightroom, Photoshop, Aperture and Elements and even as an editing extension for Apple Photos. There's a wealth of advanced controls here and a clever adaptive interface, while there are a host of one-click presets to enjoy. Definitely worth a look for Mac users.