- Visual data stimulates our emotion-controlling hormones, which generate different feelings in us.
- Adobe Lightroom
- Adobe Photoshop
- Slazzer
- VSCO
“The essence of cinema is editing. It’s the combination of what can be extraordinary images of people during emotional moments, or images in a general sense, put together in a kind of alchemy.” – Francis Ford Coppola
Visual data stimulates our emotion-controlling hormones, which generate different feelings in us. A picture from the past triggers the memories-related part of the brain; similarly, a picture taken at a joyful moment triggers our happy hormones. That’s why images and emotions have a deep connection.
It is relatively time-consuming and demands some photography skills to take a visually appealing picture. As we all know some of us are more creative and others are better analysts. Hence, not all of us have as much time and creativity as others.
It’s not difficult to take a photograph especially when a lot of filter apps are available on phones. But, deciding which one of those apps is suitable for us is a bit difficult. We’ve tested all these applications and have selected the best ones as per their specifications so, you can select them easily according to your requirements. Some of the best photo editing softwares and applications are as follows:
Adobe Lightroom
This application is not like other fancy editing apps that offer flowery filters and ornamental emoticons to add on the images. You can download it on almost every system and synchronize it to the cloud. This application is best for professional use.
Lightroom takes things further with its smart perspective repair technology that makes minor adjustments to the selective areas and gives an overall smooth finishing to the image. Most of its tools are for free but to lay your hands on some hifi editing tools, you’ve to spend a small amount of $9.99/month to purchase its subscription with other creative cloud services.
Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop is a nice photo editing application for personal as well as commercial use but it is not as good as lightroom is. You can find a variety of filters and editing options in adobe photoshop. This application is a go to tool for setting exposure and color contrast of the images.
With photoshop, you can add various textures and can make collages of the pictures at a price of $20/month. You can tweak your images to add vibrance, change contrast, and set lighting in the overall image.
Slazzer
Slazzer is an online free background remover which uses Artificial intelligence to remove, edit, and replace background seamlessly from images and videos. Slazzer is accessible for everyone and can be used for both personal and professional purposes. It is compatible with every operating system and can be embedded in a variety of platforms with just a few code lines. You can use its extension with Photoshop
as well. You can also use the Slazzer API to process millions of images with just a single API call. Also you can get HD cutouts starting at just 0.12$ per image.
VSCO
VSCO previously known as VSCO cam started its venture from making color grading presets for Lightroom which extended to an individual mobile camera application. Unlike other camera filter applications, VSCO has natural color combinations in its filters and has a large variety of presets that can be used by photo enthusiasts.
Its presets can be emulated with Fujifilm Ilford, and Kodak’s classic rolls as well. You can enjoy the filmic filter to minimalistic monochrome filter all in one via VSCO. Its simple filters are free to use but to use high quality features, you’ve to pay $19.99/year.
Snapseed
If you’re looking for a free photo editing tool, then this one’s for you. Sanpseed is for photo enthusiasts that have an eye for visually appealing images. With this application, you can change the overall quality of your photo by using its tools like Lens Blur, Double Exposure, and a huge variety of editing brushes.
Snapseed offers a huge range of masking and editing tools which are hard to ignore especially when they are free of cost. It allows editors to edit or change anything in the mask layers by selecting them individually. You can also save the editing as a template to use on other photographs.
Photo editing applications or Desktop alternatives?
Certainly a point to ponder, but not beyond our ability to answer!!
Professional editors often claim that desktop applications are far better than their mobile version. But we believe that it depends on four main things which are as following:
Control Method:
By control method we mean the use of mouse or finger/stylus. Depending upon your comfort to use mobile or desktop, you can select which version is suitable to you.
Display Size:
It is difficult to edit images on mobile phones as you get less space and ease to zoom in/out images for proper editing. Desktops applications provide better finishes to the pictures because you can enlarge them sufficiently.
Features:
For using layers and masking tools, the desktop provides better control over tools as compared to the mobiles. So, we can say that desktop alternatives are a winner here.
Price:
Some companies are offering their desktop alternatives for free while some are offering their mobile versions for free but with limited options. That’s why it all depends on your needs at the end.
Expert’s Advice:
Generally speaking, photo editing is of two types: one for everyday users who take images for personal use, and the other for those who take images for professional use. This field is already very crowded where a lot of applications claim to be the best one. But deep down we all know, not everyone is the best.
So, to select the one which is perfect for you, select the ones that are best in their field, i.e., filters, color editing, exposure setting, background removal, and image enlargement. Another thing to consider is their subscription fee. While many of them are available for as low as $0.12/img, many are charging $30/month without cloud synchronization as well.
By /Hamza ishfaq chief editor and CEO