5 Best Photo Retouching Software For Windows and Mac

Photo retouching software also called photo editing software can give a completely new look to existing photos. Once you gain expertise in these software you can do wonders with editing and produce a mind-boggling output.

Here in this article, I am going to list the 5 best photo retouching software for Windows and Mac to easily edit photos.

5 Best Photo Retouching Software 2023

1. Adobe Photoshop
2. Skylum Luminar AI
3. Adobe Lightroom
4. Serif Affinity Photo
5. GIMP

1. Adobe Photoshop

Developer: Adobe Inc

Compatible OS: Windows, macOS, iOS (For iPad only)

Price: $239.88/yr

Note: If you don’t like the software you can cancel the payment within 14 days of purchase and get a full refund. 

Ratings:

• G2: 4.6/5
• GetApp: 4.8/5
• PCMag: 5/5
• TrustRadius: 9.1/10

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular retouching software. Developed by Adobe the software is available for Windows and Mac computers. If you want to edit photos on a mobile device then it provides a version for iPad too.

The reason that Adobe Photoshop acquired the first place on the list is the collection of retouching tools it consists. It has useful retouching tools i.e. Stamp tool, Pattern Stamp tool, Healing tool, Patch tool, Spot Healing tool, and Redeye tool.

The software has features that no one can compete with. Also, it is still the first choice of users because of its AI-powered tools. It has numerous features but my favorite feature of this tool is the “Photo Restoration Neural Filter”. 

Using this feature anyone can restore old, blurry, and damaged photos. This is only one example of the wonders that the software can do. After gaining some experience and expertise with the software you can do things that are impossible for normal people.

Here are the main features of Photoshop photo retouching software-

• Excellent retouching tools.
• You will get 100 GB of free cloud storage.
• It creates raster-based images.
• Robust tool to create animations.
• Frequently used and popular software to create social media images.
• Photoshop is able to provide professional color grading.
• You can add extra functions by adding professional plug-ins.
• Amazing selection tools to easily select any element of the images.
• It has a huge collection of pen tools.

These are the most popular and important features of this software. It contains a huge amount of features that require a separate long article to cover. So, I am ending the software here and moving to the next retouching program.

2. Skylum Luminar AI:

Developer: Skylum

Compatible OS: Windows, macOS

Price: $47 one-time payment

Ratings:

• TechRadar: 4/5
• GetApp: 4.4/5
• Capterra: 4.5/5
• Software Advice: 4.5/5

Skylum Luminar is a very popular tool among photographers worldwide. Also, you can find it as an efficient plugin with Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and Apple Photos.

If you have learned Adobe Lightroom then using Skylum will be easier for you also, it uses the same keyboard shortcuts as Lightroom and Photoshop. Luminar also works as an efficient photo management tool for PC. 

Skylum provides a number of presets which makes photo editing a seamless process.

Here are the main features of this image-retouching program

• Powerful AI slider.
• Automatically apply basic improvements to images with the AI slider.
• It consists of a number of amazing filters.
• Change skies.
• Exclusive portrait retouching facility.
• Using this software you can apply 20 different types of unique filters.
• It has skin and Face AI to make your photo look better.
• In this tool, you will find AI templates.
• It will suggest templates for your images.
• Luminar performs the basic tasks so you can focus more on your creativity. 

As we can see that Luminar AI is an AI-powered tool that will automatically perform most of your tasks and save you from a lot of hard work.

3. Adobe Lightroom

Developer: Adobe Inc

Compatible OS: Windows, macOS, iPad

Price: $239.88/yr

Note: If you don’t like the software you can cancel the payment within 14 days of purchase and get a full refund. 

Ratings:

• PCMag: 5/4
• G2: 4.6/5
• Tom’s Guide: 4.5/5
• TechRadar: 4.5/5

Lightroom is another popular tool by Adobe. Photoshop and Lightroom both are efficient tools but there is a difference between them. Lightroom is an easy-to-use tool for photo retouching. 

The Develop Module in the software contains basic editing features i.e. photo correction, effects, split toning, etc.

Along with being one of the best photo retouching software, this is also an efficient tool to organize photos on a PC.

Here are the main features of this picture retouching tool:

• Lense-based photo correction facility.
• It has tools for blurring.
• It has multiple filters that will give your photos professional editing. 
• Using this software you can easily manage your photo library.
• Adobe Lightroom has a huge collection of Adjustment Brushes.
• You can batch-process multiple photos at once in Lightroom.
• The software lets you easily search for photos with amazing library filters.
• Using the smart collection feature will do a lot of work automatically.
• It has a lot of painting tools.

As we can see that Adobe Lightroom has just the features that a photo editing professional could ask for. Using this software you can perform different photo retouching tasks easily.

4. Serif Affinity Photo

Developer: Serif

Compatible OS: Windows, macOS

Price: 54.99 one-time fee for Windows and macOS and for iPad it costs $19.99

Ratings:

• PCMag: 3/5
• Creative Bloq: 10/10

• G2: 4.6/5
• Techradar: 5/5

Serif Affinity is one of the best software for photo retouching. This is a very prevalent tool among photographers and designers all over the world. The best thing about this software is you don’t have to pay monthly or yearly like Photoshop and Lightroom. It just charges a one time fee which is very affordable 

Here are the main features of this software:

• Raw Editing. 
• HDR Merge.
• Panorama Stitching.
• Focus Stacking.
• Batch processing.
• 360 Image Editing.
• Smart Object Support.
• Good collection of paint tools.

The software contains a lot of image editing tools. Also, the software is known for effective image retouching.

5. GIMP

Developer: Spencer Kimball, Peter Mattis

Compatible OS: Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, Solaris, AmigaOS 4

Price: Free

Ratings:

• G2: 4.3/5
• TechRadar: 5/5
• Capterra: 4.4/5
• TrustRadius: 8.2/10

Full for of GIMP is GNU Image Manipulation. It is a cross-platform open source software that is available for free. This is one of the best photo retouching software which is capable of effective photo restoring. 

Here are the main features of this software:

• It has a nice list of painting tools.
• You can use it as a blending tool.
• GIMP has a very nice gradient editing function.
• You can open multiple images at once.
• GIMP has advanced selection tools.
• It has more than 100 plugins to increase the usability of the tool.
• The retouching program supports almost every type of popular image format.

GIMP is the only free software available on the list. Even after being a free tool, it has a good number of useful features and it has very nice ratings on authority websites.

Conclusion:

These are the best photo retouching software available for Windows and macOS. If you have Linux then GIMP is a go-to choice for you. The other 4 software on the list are paid but they also have a nice refund policy.

 

Frequently Asked Questions:

What is the best program to fix photos?

Answer: You can choose any of the tools from the list but Photoshop is my favorite tool.

What program do professional photographers use to edit photos?

Answer: All of the programs on the list are widely used by professionals.

What is the best free photo retouching software?

Answer: GIMP is free software that you can use for photo retouching.

Do professional photographers use Lightroom?

Answer: Lightroom is the go-to choice for most photographers for photo editing because it has plenty of tools and is easy to use.