Choosing the right software isn’t easy and you often have to try quite a few different applications to find the ones that suit you. We’re all looking for different things, and quite often a single piece of software won’t do everything that we need.
So these reviews are designed not just to see whether the software out there is any good or not, but to explain exactly what it does and how it might fit into your workflow.
Choosing the best image editing software can be complicated. It all depends on what you look for most in your photo editing software. Here are 12 programs with their own distinct strengths.
Verdict: 4 stars: DxO FilmPack 6 is a powerful film simulation tool, but its main strength – technical accuracy – is offset by its lack of local adjustment tools.
Verdict: 4.5 stars Exposure X7 is a great all-in-one program for cataloguing your images, enhancing and retouching them and adding a huge range of evocative analog film effects
The name is the same, but despite the apparent similarities, these are two very different programs. So what are the key differences between Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC, and how do you choose which one to use?
Verdict: 3.5 stars Luminar AI has some spectacular AI effects, but it also has performance issues and a disappointing template AI workflow that’s less than inspiring.
Verdict: 5 stars Lutify.me is a subscription-based LUTs package for both video and stills, which includes excellent downloadable LUTs and an online LUT previewer.
Verdict: 4 stars: Pixelmator Pro is Mac only and has fairly lightweight photo editing features, but it’s very fast, unexpectedly clever, and blends in text, vector and paint tools to turn your photos into posters, illustrations and more.
Which is best for processing RAW files, DxO PhotoLab, Lightroom or Capture One? Here’s a set of eight image comparisons that aims to find out.
Verdict: 4.5 stars Perspective Efex is a really nice addition to the DxO Nik Collection 3. It offers geometric perspective, distortion and tilt-shift corrections in a simple, user-friendly interface.
Verdict: 4.5 stars Aurora HDR 2019 can create dense, wild and dramatic HDR effects, natural-looking images, and anything in between, and with out the ‘glow’ effects and other artefacts that plague other HDR tools. It also goes way further, with local adjustments, even image layers and masks. Brilliant.