There are tons of photography editing apps in Google Play store and Apple AppStore. When there are so many options, making a choice can often become difficult. Many of these apps are Medicare, some are good, and a few of them are exceptional.
With over 17 years of content creation for my websites and for social media use, I have found that three apps cover 99% my usage scenarios. I rarely ever have to look for another app outside of these three to get my photo editing done when I am on my phone.
Between the three of them, any photos I take for work or professional use can be manipulated to my satisfaction. Let’s have a look at these solid photography editing mobile tools.
My choice of professional photography editing apps
Photo Editor
Photo Editor by Dev.Macgyver is perhaps the most comprehensive image editor available on mobile phones. I am able to resize, crop, fit, rotate, add text, add shapes, add effects, add images, watermark, correct, adjust colours, and more, all with Photo Editor.
This app is available for free, with ads, but I found it so good and have used it, with satisfaction, for so long that I paid for it to support the developer. I really cannot imagine what editing photographs on my mobile phone would be like without Photo Editor.
It does not require an Internet connection for use, as all the processing is done on the device. This is unlike many other apps that have the processing done in the cloud. This is a true 100% offline image editor. I am able to use it in the most remote locations where Internet access does not exist or is crappy.
Photo Editor does not require the user to sign into any account or service. Consider this application the modern mobile equivalent of CorelDraw or PhotoShop. Manipulating photos taken to get the right sizes and appearance is a great forte of Photo Editor.
Photo Editor is so good and so comprehensive that 95% of my photography editing starts and ends in this app. In the occasional scenario that it doesn’t deliver the exact results I want, after doing most of the editing in Photo Editor, I add the extra manipulations in one or more of the following apps.
Adobe Lightroom Photo Editor
Speaking of PhotoShop, Lightroom by Adobe is a solid photography editing app that leverages on cloud processing. Sometimes, I am not getting the final results that I want after working with Photo Editor by Dev.MacGyver. I turn to Lightroom to help fix those things.
Lightroom has pretty much similar feature set to the other app. It lets me fine-tune the tones and appearances of photos after I have achieved most of my needs in Photo Editor. Like I already mentioned, the feature set is similar, but not as comprehensive.
I have tried to use Lightroom as my primary photography editing app, and that didn’t get me the best results. But it serves great as a backup for final photo quality tweaks.
PhotoRoom Studio Photo Editor
PhotoRoom is a new discovery of mine that I use for one purpose only – background removal and manipulation. The app is really good at this and it is one area that Photo Editor is not great at. When I need to remove the background in a photo, or blur the background, I turn to PhotoRoom.
There is another service that I use for background removal, a web app called Remove.bg. That is the website URL too. However, that imposes a size limit on the image results, which is not great for your professional use.
PhotoRoom does not require you to sign in to use it. It is available free, but that imposes a watermark on your finished products. To get rid of the watermark, get the Pro version for a small annual (or monthly) subscription.
Sometimes, PhotoRoom doesn’t remove everything in the background, depending on the tones and colours. Then I export the results to Photo Editor, where I can manually paint the rogue spots away.
Between these three mobile apps, I have a great time editing photographs for use on my blogs and websites, as well as for social media posts. Take some time to play with them to see what works for you. For example, it is possible that Lightroom can serve you well as your primary photography editor, different from my case. But one thing is sure: these three apps are among the very best photography editing tools available on mobile phones.
If you are wondering why Canva is not on this list, that is because while Canva is a great graphics design app (for creating banners and fliers, etc), I hardly ever need it for photography editing. The two are related, but they are not the same thing. If you do need graphics design, you definitely should try Canva. It makes design simple and breezy and is what I use for that purpose when I am working on my smartphone.
While I use these three photography editing apps for websites and social media, you can put them to use for your own specific purposes – for work or recreation. They are top notch and get the work done. All of them are available on Google Play Store for Android smartphones and tablets, and all but Photo Editor are available in Apple AppStore for iPhones and iPads.
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