The Best Free Photo Editors: 8 Tools Tried and Tested (2025)

Improve the standard of photography and imagery across your business using the best free photo editing software. Whether you want to up the quality of your product photos for your website or produce dynamic, eye-catching images for social media, these are the apps and programs that will help you do it.

Free photo editing tools have improved significantly in terms of both proliferation and quality, partly thanks to advancements in AI. There are many options for editing your photos at zero cost, with automated editing features radically better than they were 10, or even five years ago. Remove the background from an image or erase marks and blemishes. What once may have taken hours can now be accomplished in seconds.

Good photo editing software allows you to polish your images without costing you hours of productivity. I tested a range of free photo editing tools to help you accomplish just that.

Why you should trust this review

As a photographer who writes about photography and has used photo-editing software for more than a decade, I have used and tested all of the programs featured in this guide.

I judge these tools on how easy they are to use for common photo-editing tasks like cropping and resizing, background removal, and general “punching up” of photos—that means adjusting values like brightness, contrast, and saturation.

As AI becomes an integral part of photo editing, I’ve assessed the AI tools offered by these photo tools and have included a separate section with AI-specific recommendations.

8 best free photo editing tools

1. Canva
2. GIMP
3. Apple Photos
4. Google Photos
5. Adobe Express/Photoshop Express
6. Snapseed
7. Lensa
8. Photoroom

1. Canva

Canva is free for basic and advanced edits and works entirely inside your internet browser, so it’s a good option for beginner photo editors.

While Canva is marketed to designers, it has a well laid-out photo editing console with tools clearly labelled. Of note, the Crop menu offers a handy range of pre-made aspect ratios. If you need to crop the same image for different uses, you can create a 9:16 version of an image for mobile viewing, a 1:1 square version for a menu icon, etc. 

Canva also offers a range of pre-made filters, which change the saturation, warmth and contrast of an image, with an Intensity slider allowing you to fine-tune the strength of the effect. For more precise editing, the Adjust menu is used to edit values like brightness, contrast and saturation, either on the image as a whole or on specific parts. It also automatically picks out the key color tones in your image and lets you edit them individually. All of this is included in Canva’s free account.

If you upgrade to Canva’s paid tools for $120, you’ll get more advanced features. This gives you access to Canva’s Magic Studio, an umbrella term for its AI tools. These tools include generative features like Text to Image and Text to Video for producing visual content via prompts. 

Other features such as Grab Text, for instance can save photo editors and designers time. It recognizes text in a photograph (i.e., street signs and graphic tees), allowing you to edit and replace that text in the same style as it was originally written. You can also tweak, rotate, and resize the text if the AI doesn’t get it quite right. 

Photo editors are likely to find Canva’s Magic Eraser and one-click background removal the most useful on offer. In my testing, the Magic Eraser was fast and effective at removing small dust motes and other blemishes. And, the one-click background removal worked as advertised, even with visually complicated images.

Canva is likely to be the best free photo editing tool for most users, particularly those running a business or ecommerce website. It doesn’t offer the same level of depth of control as others on this list, but for simplicity and ease, it is unrivaled.

Canva pros:

• Intuitive interface
• Easy to fine-tune colours 
• Pre-made filters genuinely look good
• AI tools are powerful and effective

Canva cons:

• More robust features require a subscription
• Does not offer ability to adjust brightness and contrast

2. GIMP

GIMP is a highly capable open-source image editor, maintained by a community of volunteers, completely free to download for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. The updated GIMP 3.0 with an overhauled and updated user-friendly interface has been long-awaited, (early versions of GIMP were known to be obtuse and difficult to grasp).

While GIMP’s Photoshop-like interface is not as intuitive as Canva’s, its photo editing tools are more capable. The Curves tool for instance, allows you to precisely modulate the tones, contrast, and colors in an image. A time-honored editing technique is the classic “S” curve, which increases contrast in an image by manipulating its highlights and shadows.

GIMP can also work with basically any type of image file, useful if you’re sourcing images from different places. A high-resolution scanner, for instance, might save images as a high-quality TIFF; photos you source online may come as AVIF or WebP files; a photo someone else has worked on already may have been saved as a PSD (a Photoshop file). GIMP will handle all of these without a problem. As a test, I tried to edit a 283.6 megabyte TIFF file using all of the software on this list. None of them were able to edit the TIFF without converting, except for GIMP.

GIMP is somewhat unique among modern photo editors in that it does not yet offer AI-powered tools. To duplicate AI workflows, such as removing a background from images, your best bet is to use its Fuzzy Select tool. A feature that works by selecting areas of an image based on color similarity. It can identify a completely uniform background, but anything more complex requires more work. You will also need to manually add the alpha channel, which is the transparent layer that replaces the background. This step is unnecessary in programs like Canva.

If you’re interested in the principles behind photo editing and want to perfect the craft, GIMP is made for you. Whereas, if you simply want to get your photos in a publish-worthy state quickly, other tools on this list with their AI-enhanced features may be a better fit.

GIMP pros:

• Powerful, free suite of Photoshop-like editing tools
• GIMP 3.0 interface is user-friendly
• Can work with basically any type of image

GIMP cons:

• Requires patience to learn
• Lacks AI-powered features

3. Apple Photos

If you use a Mac, it’s possible you already have the photo editor you need. Apple’s Photos app, pre-installed on all Mac computers, offers a mix of automated functions and in-depth photo-editing tools. To use it when viewing an image in your Apple Photos library, click Edit in the top-right corner and it will open the image in the editing console.

Like other Apple products, the UI is straightforward and easy to navigate. One feature I particularly like is the radial wheel for straightening an image—as you turn the wheel, the image automatically crops, and the guidelines are automatically overlaid so you can see when the subject is straight.

There’s also a selection of pre-made filters for giving your image a specific look, and you can modulate the intensity of that effect. In the main Adjust panel, you manipulate the tones and colors of your image. You can eyeball these yourself, or you can use the AI-powered Auto button to have the software edit using that function. This level of automation shows its work a bit more than Canva, making it easier for a photo editor to understand what is happening to an image. 

If you want to remove spots and blemishes from images, there’s a retouch function. It’s easy to use via a simple point-and-click interface, and the program intelligently fills in the gaps. However, the desktop version of Apple Photos doesn’t offer background removal, so you’ll need different software if that’s a priority.

Apple Photos pros:

• Pre-downloaded on Mac
• Auto modes with optional manual fine-tuning
• Intuitive UI for cropping and straightening

Apple Photos cons:

• iOS only
• Desktop version has no background removal feature

4. Google Photos

If you’re already using Google’s ecosystem for image storage, Google Photos could be your best choice. It’s an entirely browser-based photo editor that seamlessly pairs with your existing Google Photos library, making it well-indexed and searchable. For instance, you can search for a specific geolocation and locate all the images GPS-tagged to that place.

Google Photos offers a decent suite of manual controls. It’s all run via sliders—there are no granular curves adjustments, but it does accommodate values like brightness, contrast, and saturation. 

It also offers AI features, powered by Gemini. When you open a photo in the editing console, the first thing it will do is generate a bespoke list of AI enhancements you can make. These will vary by image, and you may notice the console offers a lot more options for one image than another—if an image contains portions of the sky, for example, Google will offer a lot of AI-powered options for altering that sky.

In practice, the resulting image didn’t bear much resemblance to the adjective you clicked to create it. For instance, clicking Luminous resulted in a surprisingly muted and dour image, which seemed counterintuitive.

Other Google Photos AI-powered features are more useful, like Photo Unblur, which uses AI to recover detail in blurred photos. Accessing it via the mobile app, the tool did a decent job of sharpening blurred elements in images—however I wasn’t able to manually select where the desired plane of focus was in the image, and consequently, the tool focused its sharpening efforts in areas of the image I didn’t want it to.

Overall, Google Photos makes sense to try out if you are already using the Google ecosystem for image storage and management. Be warned that the AI tools are currently underwhelming, and the slider-based interface is less capable than GIMP’s and less user-friendly than Canva’s. But for simple photo editing, it gets the job done.

Google Photos pros:

• Integrates well with Google ecosystem
• Well-indexed searchable archive
• Decent editing console, that’s easy to use

Google Photos cons:

• AI features need further refinement to be useful
• Slider-based interface is not the most user-friendly

5. Adobe Express/Photoshop Express

If you want to use Adobe tools for photo editing but don’t want to pay for a Creative Cloud subscription to get Photoshop and Lightroom, you have two options—Adobe Express and Photoshop Express. 

Adobe Express is a design tool, and it looks and feels very similar to Canva. It works in your browser, allowing you to quickly and easily import your photos. There’s a simple slider-based editing panel that allows you to adjust many of the usual values—brightness, contrast, saturation, white balance (described as Warmth), etc. 

There’s a background removal feature available, and it will cut out the desired subject from the background in seconds, even in complex images. However, this feature, like many, is limited in the freemium version and requires you to upgrade to the premium subscription to be useful. 

Of these two, Photoshop Express is a far better tool for photo editing. The reason it isn’t listed as the only option is because the desktop version is currently available only for Windows. Mac owners are out of luck. If you’re happy to work on mobile, however, Photoshop Express is an impressive app.

For quick, one-touch edits, there are a number of pre-made filters. If you prefer to get more hands-on with your editing, you can open the Adjust panel to access additional editing features. 

Since this is Adobe, it has a number of generative AI features. Adobe has its own version of “Generative Expand” (much like Canva’s Magic Expand) which allows you to enlarge an image by generating new content around the edges. It works well enough on very simple images, but has trouble with complex patterns and straight lines.

Adobe Express and Photoshop Express are good tools to use if you want to get used to using the industry-standard Photoshop because you intend to upgrade in the future. 

Adobe Express/Photoshop Express pros:

• Adobe Express background removal works well
• Photoshop Express offers huge range of adjustment parameters
• Generative Expand works on simple tasks

Adobe Express/Photoshop Express cons:

• Photoshop Express desktop version unavailable for Mac
• Adobe Express offers basic editing tools
• Near-constant reminders to upgrade

6. Snapseed

Snapseed is a capable photo editing app for iOS and Android—and best of all, it’s absolutely free. No hidden upsells, no features locked behind a premium version, no intrusive ads clogging up the interface. Unless you have no desire to edit images on your phone, you really have nothing to lose by downloading Snapseed and giving it a try. 

Snapseed offers a range of pre-set filters and effects. You select a filter with a name like Drama or Retrolux to apply and you can see which values have been altered to create it. After it renders, you can further refine each image individually. This gives you more flexibility than the single Intensity sliders offered by the likes of Canva or Apple Photos.

For granular changes, there’s a Curves panel with individual RGB and luminance adjustments—as with Apple Photos, you can select the effect you want (e.g., Hard Contrast) and then see in the Curves interface what is adjusted.

You can also use the “Tuning” menu to adjust individual values like brightness and contrast, with an interface that feels very natural and smooth. There are also cropping and straightening options for correcting any mis-framed images, with intuitive touch gestures.

Snapseed offers a corrective tool for getting rid of any unwanted blemishes or spots on images. A phone’s touchscreen isn’t really the most precise vector for using a tool like this, but you can achieve results good enough for Instagram or for displaying fairly small images on a website.

There’s no downside to spinning up Snapseed and giving it a try. I always keep Snapseed on my phone for when I want to quickly touch up an image on the go, and it’s absolutely brilliant for that.

Snapseed pros:

• Completely free, no ads or premium paywall
• Beautifully simple and minimal interface
• Powerful editing tools

Snapseed cons:

• Mobile only
• Touchscreen interface can be imprecise

Best AI photo editing tools

Many of the tools we’ve already examined incorporate AI-powered photo editing features. However, if you’re looking for photo-editing software built around AI, these are the ones worth investing in.

7. Lensa

Lensa is an AI photo editing app available for iOS and Android. It made a name for itself with its generative AI “Magic Avatars,” but it’s also one of the most impressive AI editing apps for portraiture. If your photo editing involves a lot of pictures of people, I would recommend giving Lensa a try.

While it provides a familiar slider-based interface that allows for fine-tuning of values like exposure, color saturation, etc., where Lensa really shines is in its automated portrait-tuning features. The app’s AI intelligently recognizes the human subject in the frame, and offers a powerful series of functions for adjusting skin tone, cleaning up blemishes, and fine-tuning facial features. Simply slide the Face Flawless value and watch spots magically disappear. I can’t think of another retouching app this fast and easy to use.

The more prominent in the frame your portrait subject is, the better Lensa’s AI tools will work. For instance, I found the automated eye bag removal function worked well on a headshot-style portrait with a clean background. However, on an environmental portrait with a complex background, it struggled, misidentifying unrelated shadows as eye bags.

In the main editing console, the AI’s ability to delineate between subject and background allows you to make adjustments to one without compromising the other. 

If your business has a heavy social media presence and you find yourself in need of a quick touch-up tool, Lensa is the best AI photo editing app you can download. Even if you’re not interested in AI generation, the app’s fine-tuning features are fast, slick, and effective.

Lensa pros:

• Intelligent face-tuning features make portrait editing easy
• Easy to separately edit subjects and backgrounds

Lensa cons:

• Mobile only
• AI features can struggle with visually complex images

8. Photoroom

Photoroom is the best AI photo editing software for product photos. It is specifically tailored to product photos, much the same way that Lensa is to portraits.

Photoroom offers what you could describe as “no-click” background removal. Import a photo, and Photoroom’s AI will whip out the background without you even asking it to, replacing it with a plain white background. 

You can then sub this out for another color if you prefer, and then save that color to your brand kit to use on future images. This function is achieved in seconds, and costs nothing. Of course, if you don’t want to remove the background of an image, then Photoroom doesn’t have much to offer you.

There are a range of cropping and resizing options, with preset templates for not only popular social media formats like Instagram Stories, but also for online selling platforms like eBay, Etsy, Vinted—and, of course, Shopify.

There’s also an Adjust panel with standard slider-based editing available for the usual values like brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. I found that adjusting certain values like highlights and shadows caused image glitches that couldn’t be removed even by resetting the values back to zero and could only be made to disappear by using the Undo button.

While Photoroom is a freemium software, this version has limits. At the free tier, export resolution is capped at 720 by 550 pixels—resolution only appropriate for social media or basic product images. You’re also restricted to 250 exports per month before Photoroom starts adding a watermark.

Upgrade to the paid tier (starting at $89.99 per year) and these issues go away. At that paid tier you will unlock AI-powered background generation, which you may or may not find useful. However, what you will find is useful is your paid subscription access to batch-editing.

Upload up to 50 different product photos and watch as the backgrounds are auto-removed. From there, you can make background adjustments like simultaneously swapping in background colors to all your images, as you resize them to preferred dimensions and aspect ratios. This will get them all ready for batch uploading. 

It’s a time-saver, and cements Photoroom’s status as the best AI photo editor for product images. Nothing else beats it for sheer efficiency.

Photoroom pros:

• Instant AI-powered background removal
• Efficient for standardizing and resizing product images
• Can import brand website assets
• Batch editing works brilliantly

Photoroom cons:

• Resolution and export limits on free tier
• Some bugs in editing console

Choose the best free photo editor for you

I’ve selected eight free photo editors for this guide, and you may be wondering which to pick. It will depend on your specific needs, though my recommendation of the best free photo editor for most users is Canva, which is intuitive, offers flexibility, and works in your browser. If you’re new to editing and not sure what to pick, I’d say start there.

If you want a more powerful photo editor and don’t mind a learning curve, try GIMP. Alternatively Google Photos, Apple Photos, and Adobe’s tools will work well for anyone who is using (or wants to use) those companies’ tools for photo storage/management. If you want a free editing mobile app for quick touch-ups before sharing, Snapseed is the best. And for harnessing the power of AI, I recommend Lensa for portraits and people photos, and Photoroom for product images—these two offer features others on this list can’t touch (yet). 

Ultimately though, one thing all these programs have in common is that there is no cost to trying them out. So, don’t be afraid to experiment and figure out which is the best free photo-editing tool for you.