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A big screen is desirable for editing photos, but sometimes you want to correct or embellish a picture while you’re on the go. You might be surprised at just how much image editing you can do from your phone. Even advanced functions, such as blemish correction, gradients, HSL color correction, masking, overlays, and tone curve adjustments, are no longer the exclusive domain of desktop programs. We’ve been testing photo software for more than 30 years, so you can rely on our expertise in selecting the best mobile photo editing apps below. Some also add cloud storage, tools for organizing your pictures, and even social media spaces to showcase your photos. We don’t include gimmicky apps that perform only one type of editing, such as face beautifying or collage creation. Our favorite of the bunch is Google Photos, but take a closer look to find the one that suits you best.
Our Top Tested Picks
Best for Professionals and Serious Amateurs
Available
at Adobe
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Best for Glitzy Effects on iPhones
$23.99 Per Year
at Afterlight Collective
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Best Overall for iPhones
$0.00
at Apple App Store
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Bottom Line
4.0
Excellent
What Our Ratings Mean
- 5.0 – Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 – Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 – Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 – Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 – Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 – Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 – Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 – Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 – Dismal: Don’t even think about buying this product
Read Our
Editorial Mission Statement
and
Testing Methodologies.
Apple Photos combines powerful AI-powered editing, professional-grade tools, and seamless ecosystem integration, making it the best free photo editor for most Apple users.
Jump To See More DetailsApple Photos Review
- Slick interface
- Useful face recognition tools
- Capable auto-corrections
- Supports plug-ins and raw files
- AI object removal and search
- Available only for Apple devices
- Nearly impossible to uninstall on macOS
- Weak web interface
Best for Editing and Organizing Photos on Any Platform
$0.00
at Google Photos
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Bottom Line
Editors’ Choice
4.5
Outstanding
What Our Ratings Mean
- 5.0 – Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 – Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 – Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 – Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 – Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 – Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 – Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 – Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 – Dismal: Don’t even think about buying this product
Read Our
Editorial Mission Statement
and
Testing Methodologies.
Google Photos offers excellent search capabilities, terrific adjustment tools, and smart AI features, making it a fantastic option for managing and manipulating photos on your phone and the web.
Jump To See More DetailsGoogle Photos Review
- Attractive, ad-free interface
- Impressive facial recognition
- AI tools for photo cleanup, creativity, and search
- Low-cost photo books and wall art are available to order
- Automatic suggestions for photo creations
- Lacks step-by-step undo for editing
- No blemish or red-eye removal tools
$7.50 Per Month
at Photoroom
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Best for Rich Tools and Social Sharing
Starts with Free Plan
at Picsart
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Best for Effects and Community
$0.00
at Polarr
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Best Free Mobile Photo Editing App
$0.00
at Apple App Store
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Best for Film Looks and Social Community
Available
at VSCO
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Bottom Line
3.5
Good
What Our Ratings Mean
- 5.0 – Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 – Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 – Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 – Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 – Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 – Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 – Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 – Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 – Dismal: Don’t even think about buying this product
Read Our
Editorial Mission Statement
and
Testing Methodologies.
VSCO is a photo editing and sharing app that’s more artsy and low-pressure than Instagram, which has become a war for the most likes.
Jump To See More DetailsVSCO Review
- Attractive, simple design.
- Good editing tools for exposure and color.
- The lack of like counts and comments staves off trolls and competition.
- Most filters require a paid account.
- No dark-mode support.
- No web editing or desktop apps.
- No commenting.
Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks
EDITORS’ NOTE
May 18, 2026: With this update, our lineup of recommended mobile photo editing apps remains unchanged. We have vetted the existing picks for currency and availability.
Best for Professionals and Serious Amateurs
Lightroom’s mobile app allows for in-depth post-shot editing and shooting in raw format on the iPhone (Android phones can achieve this within their native camera app) for greater flexibility in correcting exposure, white balance, and other aspects. You can also take photos with filters, such as a black-and-white one. Otherwise, adaptive presets for portraits and skies, auto people and object selection, content-aware object removal, and basic video tools are all at your disposal. The free version offers a decent selection of editing tools and filters, while a paid subscription adds cloud storage and additional effects, including healing, masking, and suggested presets.
Platforms:Android, iOS, iPadOS, web
Desktop Lightroom users: If you rely on the desktop version of Lightroom, this app lets you access and edit all your synced photos.
Mobile photographers: If you primarily shoot photos on your Android phone or iPhone, the Lightroom mobile app provides access to top-notch photo correction and editing tools.
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(Credit: Afterlight/PCMag)
Best for Glitzy Effects on iPhones
Afterlight is an impressively powerful and feature-rich mobile photo app that emphasizes creative filters, including film, vintage looks, textures, and overlays. The free version also offers a good set of basic editing features—such as contrast, cropping, exposure, and saturation—but many of the app’s best tools are available only in the paid version. Paid account perks include advanced HSL filters, gradients, material and text overlays, sharpness tools, and tone curve editing. The company periodically adds new filters and effects.
Platforms: Android, iOS, iPadOS
Artistic photo enthusiasts: If you like to make your pictures look unique with film-like filters and such, Afterlight is a good choice. Just prepare to pay to access them.
Social posters: Whether you’re a marketer or an influencer, Afterlight helps you make your images stand out on Instagram and other social networks.
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(Credit: Apple/PCMag)
Best Overall for iPhones
4.0
Excellent
- Slick interface
- Useful face recognition tools
- Capable auto-corrections
- Supports plug-ins and raw files
- AI object removal and search
- Available only for Apple devices
- Nearly impossible to uninstall on macOS
- Weak web interface
The mobile version of Apple Photos allows you to apply special effects to pictures taken on your iPhone or iPad, including Long Exposure and Bounce effects for Live Photos. With iOS 18.1 or later and an iPhone 16 or 15 Pro or later, you get AI features like Clean Up to remove distractions from photos and Visual Look Up to get info about a place in your image. The app supports Apple’s ProRaw, which combines the advantages of raw camera formats with Apple’s computational photography wizardry. The app looks and feels slick and features all the standard exposure and color adjustments you could want. Apple Photos also excels at organizing and finding specific photos, utilizing on-device AI to help you search for particular objects and people. For sharing images, you have the option to use iCloud links or Shared Albums.
iPad owners:Apple Photos syncs your collection across iPads, iPhones, and Macs, allowing you to use the iPadOS version of the app to edit photos taken on any of the other devices, and vice versa. The iPad has a larger screen than the iPhone, so the editing and viewing experience might be more enjoyable on the former if you are on the go.
iPhone shooters:This is the only app iPhone owners can use to take advantage of certain proprietary Apple imagery features.
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Apple Photos
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(Credit: Google/PCMag)
Best for Editing and Organizing Photos on Any Platform
4.5
Outstanding
- Attractive, ad-free interface
- Impressive facial recognition
- AI tools for photo cleanup, creativity, and search
- Low-cost photo books and wall art are available to order
- Automatic suggestions for photo creations
- Lacks step-by-step undo for editing
- No blemish or red-eye removal tools
Aside from allowing you to store photos in the cloud, Google Photos offers top-notch organization features. Free users receive a comprehensive set of editing tools for adjusting contrast and exposure, as well as those for adding text, creating stylish collages, cropping, and applying overlays. The app also has effective filters, including Airy, Dynamic, HDR, Luminous, and Radiant. If you sign up for the company’s Google One subscription, you get unlimited saves for the AI-based Magic Editor features, which let you remove or move objects around while recreating the background. Google Photos also offers superb search tools for finding pictures based on places, people, and objects. Finally, its AI-powered Memories albums remind you of the good times.
Platforms:Android, iOS, iPadOS, web
AI photo tinkerers:The app features cutting-edge AI tools, including Magic Eraser, Nano Banana, Remix, and Unblur.
Anyone who wants a free photo app:Since it works on every major platform, anyone can use Google Photos without paying a cent.
Photo collectors:Google Photos offers some of the simplest and most effective ways to organize large photo collections, allowing you to easily find a picture based on when it was captured, where it was taken, and who is included.
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Review
(Credit: Photoroom)
Best for Companies
Photoroom is a social marketing app that’s fully stocked not only with AI features (such as automatic background removal), but also with standard photo editing tools (including color, cropping, and lighting adjustments). It also includes numerous collaboration features for teams. It’s not free, but it does offer several pricing tiers that cater to both individuals and large enterprises.
Platforms: Android, iOS, iPadOS
Companies: Photoroom offers plans for corporations that require hundreds of thousands of images annually.
Social marketers: The app offers a ton of imaging features that should appeal to marketers, including logo creation and product shot staging with AI-generated backgrounds.
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(Credit: Polarr/PCMag)
Best for Effects and Community
Like Lightroom and Picsart, Polarr has a social community and tools for editing and embellishing photos. The app is available on all major desktop platforms in addition to mobile and the web. Aside from the standard editing tools for adjusting brightness, contrast, shadows, and more, it offers a wealth of gradients, overlays, and retouching and transformation tools. You also get tone curve editing, as well as LUT and raw camera file support. The cropping tool is robust, but it lacks auto-leveling. The Polarr community often creates and shares custom filters. A paid subscription gets you the full editing toolset, new content and styles weekly, and the company’s video-filter app called 24FPS.
Platforms:Android, iOS, iPadOS, web
Community builders: If you enjoy sharing not only your visual creations but also your filters and effects with a community, Polarr provides a convenient outlet.
Mobile-exclusive photo editors:Polarr includes a comprehensive toolbox of image correction and editing tools, making it suitable for those who want to do serious photo work solely on their phone. If you decide to work on a larger screen, it offers desktop and web apps, as mentioned.
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(Credit: Snapseed/PCMag)
Best Free Mobile Photo Editing App
One of the original innovators among mobile photo editing apps, Snapseed became part of Google’s portfolio in 2012. It still features some sturdy photo improvement tools, although it hasn’t introduced many new features in a while. Snapseed features a unique interface that allows you to make adjustments by swiping your finger left or right to select an adjustment or up and down to choose the specific adjustment. It allows you to edit raw camera files (in DNG format only) and JPEGs. Editing tools include the Healing Brush, HDR, Perspective, and Structure (aka sharpness). One significant advantage is that the app is completely free with no in-app purchases or upsells.
Platforms:Android, iOS, iPadOS
Basic photo editors: If you’re looking for a free, easy-to-use app with all the standard photo tools, Snapseed is a great option. It forgoes all of the AI features that competitors are embracing.
Raw camera file shooters: Snapseed also supports raw editing, allowing you to exert more control over your photos’ colors and lighting during the editing process.
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