16 Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac | 2024 Review

As a photographer, you go to great lengths to capture the perfect shot. Finding the right setting, waiting for that time of day when the light is perfect, and composing your shot will go a long way toward creating great photographs, but these steps alone are not enough.

The best free photo editing software for Mac can erase grain and blur, fix bad lighting, swap backgrounds, add text, erase distracting objects, and much more. 

We have done the testing and research to bring you the 16 best free photo editing software for Mac. This guide takes an in-depth look at each one, from key features to pros and cons, so you can make an informed decision about which free Mac photo editor is best for you.

• Snapshot of Our Top 3 Free Photo Editing Software for Mac
• How to Choose the Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac
• How We Test the Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac
• Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac Comparison Chart
• Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac - Ranked
• What is the Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac?
• Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac FAQ

Snapshot of Our Top 3 Free Photo Editing Software for Mac

How to Choose the Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac

Compatibility - Always check the system requirements of any free Mac photo editor before downloading. Besides making sure the software you choose will edit photos on Mac, make sure it is optimized for your particular model, and that your computer has enough hard drive space. 

Skill-Level - The best free photo editing software for Macs vary greatly when it comes to ease of use. If you have little editing experience, don’t over-extend yourself and edit photos with software meant for advanced users. The best free photo editing software for Mac will have options for both beginners and pros, so you don’t need to learn a new system as your skill level changes. 

Features - Write a list of the tools you will need in a free Mac photo editor. Are you a professional photographer who needs an option with tethered shooting, or simply cropping photos for Instagram? Do you prefer one-click options or the control of precise manual edits? With so many options, you are sure to find the best free photo editing software for Mac for your needs.  

How We Test the Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac

Read below to find out how we tested and ranked the best free photo editing software for Mac on our list. 

Compare Similar Features - We edit photos with the same basic features found in all of the best free photo editing software for Mac so we can compare apples with apples.  

Compare Overall Features - Next, we edit photos with the features that make each free Mac photo editor unique. We take into consideration the overall number of features and how well they work. 

Rate Ease of Use - For our “Beginner-Friendly Tools” rating, we weigh both the number of tools found in each free Apple photo editor with how many are easy to use.  

Analyze Outside Reviews - To help us remain impartial in our rankings, we use an outside reviewer score and average it with the “Beginner-Friendly Tools” rating. We also read outside reviews to help make sure our findings line up with others. This helps us eliminate user errors or technical difficulties when testing the best free photo editing software for Mac on our end. 

Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac Comparison Chart

Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac - Ranked

1. PhotoDirector Essential

Best For: Users of any skill level to edit photos easily with Photoshop-like tools

PhotoDirector Essential is a free Apple photo editor that offers a comprehensive range of features for both professional and amateur photographers. It is the best free photo editing software for Mac available because you get the advanced image editing features of Photoshop and the image management features of Lightroom in a single, easy-to-use application. This free Mac photo editor comes with unique video-to-photo and photo animation tools. It supports layer editing options and other powerful tools like advanced color replacement, panorama photo merge, and dispersion effects. You also get easy adjustment tools like tone, white balance, level, curve, split toning, and HDR effects. 

There are millions of royalty-free stock images, backgrounds, overlays, frames, and other design elements to help you create stunning social media posts. If you can’t find what you need, the newly added generative AI tools use the power of AI to create high-quality content from a text prompt. Using the latest AI models, you can generate images and stickers with the highest degree of accuracy. There are also separate background generators for products and people - perfect for online selling.  

PhotoDirector Essential is the best free photo editing software for Mac that is suitable for professional use but easy enough for beginners. Using the software's guided edits, you can add effects and create professional-level images in seconds. This free Mac photo editor also includes photo management and efficient workflow features, including tethered shooting, soft proofing, GPS photo logs, and AI facial recognition.

Key Features:

• Guided edits and AI-powered tools for beginners
• AI photo retouching for face, skin, and body
• AI Image, Sticker and Background Generators create images from a text prompt
• Thousands of creative assets including templates, photo animations, and stickers

Compatibility: Mac, Windows

Shotkit Rating: 5/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 5/5

Price: Free
*Premium subscription available for $3.75/month

To give your photos a unique and engaging edge, download the best free photo editing software for Mac today by clicking the link below.

Check out these related topics for editing:

• How to Make a Video Collage for Free
• The Best Free Photo Editing Software for Windows PC
• Best AI Photo Editors

2. MyEdit

Best For: Users who want a quick and easy way to edit photos online

MyEdit is our pick for the best free photo editing software for Mac found online. Its powerful AI tools are simple enough for first-time users, but the accuracy and quality of the tools make it a great option for any skill level. This free Mac photo editor has a large selection of AI-powered text-to-image tools such as an AI Avatar Generator, AI Image Generator, AI Product Background, and AI Scenes, a unique tool that can turn your home into a LEGO house, or your yard into a tropical jungle.  

We found the background removal tool in this free Mac photo editor was highly accurate, and the content-aware fill after removing objects left no sign of residue. There are also a handful of highly effective image restoration tools, including an image enhancer, image upscaler, deblur, and denoise tools.  

Edit pictures with all of MyEdit’s impressive tools for free. Most free Mac photo editors found online don’t offer the quality or advanced features of downloadable software, but MyEdit is a welcome exception. Easy to use, fast, and affordable, we recommend it as one of the best free photo editing software for Mac for any skill level.

Key Features:

• Cartoonizer effect with 11 cartoon style presets
• Crop, flip, rotate, and resize images with basic editing tools
• Select and replace parts of your image using text prompts with AI Replace
• Use one image to generate professional headshots dozens of professional headshots in minutes

Compatibility: Web Browser

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 5/5

Price: Free
*Premium subscriptions available for $4/month for Image and $7/month for Image + Enhancer

3. Photoscape X

Best For: Batch editing and converting images

If you often need to apply quick edits to multiple photos at once, then Photoscape X is the best free photo editing software for Mac for you. Photoscape X has multiple tabs dedicated to batch edits, such as Batch Resize, Batch Rename, and Batch Format Change. Merge, crop, combine, and resize photos, then add stickers, filters, or textext to a single image or an entire album.

The free Mac photo editor also has some impressive color tools, such as Point Color (choose one color to highlight and make the rest of the photo back and white), Selective Color (change vibrancy up or down of each color you choose), and Replace Color (replace one color with another throughout the photo).

Photoscape X has an unusual interface that differs significantly from other software and may take some getting used to. However, despite the confusing layout, the program remains beginner-friendly. It has many outstanding editing tools, but it lags behind our top two best free editing software for Mac due to format support and export quality. Photoscape X lacks HDR and EXIF information support and tends to freeze if editing multiple RAW files.

Key Features:

• Over 100 light leaks/effects
• Slice a photo into several pieces using the photo splitter tool
• Spot healing brush for fixing small imperfections

Compatibility: Mac, Windows

Capterra Rating: 4.6/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 4.5/5

Price: Free

4. Picsart

Best For: Creating custom photo collages

Picsart is one of the best free photo editing software for Mac for making your photos look more professional and playful. It has an emphasis on creative features that are great for social media, like frames, templates, and graphical elements. We especially enjoyed using Picsart’s free collage maker to design posts and motivational boards. Choose a college template from a library of professionally-designed grids, or create your own. Then edit your collage with effects, stickers, text, and more.

This free Mac photo editor has a social network within it, where you can explore other users' work, follow them, and share your own artwork. It also has quite a few AI-powered editing tools such as AI Restore, AI Enhance, and AI Unblur. There are also text-to-image AI tools for generating art, faces, logos, GIFs, and more.

Overall,Picsartis one of the best free photo editing software for Mac with excellent social media features and tools powered by AI. However, if you want to use the background remover, animation maker, or premium stock images, you’ll need to purchase a subscription. It also lacks features for professional users like RAW image support found in our choice of best free photo editing software for Mac, PhotoDirector.  

Key Features:

• Turn your images into cartoons with AI cartoon filters
• Photo filters and AI-powered effects for one-click solutions
• Instantly upscale images with AI enhance

Compatibility: Web Browser

G2 Rating: 4.5/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 4.5/5

Price: Free
*Premium subscriptions available for $5/month for Plus and $7/month for Pro

5. Pixlr

Image from ThePhotoFinishes.com.

Best For: Editors of any skill level who need a quick solution

We think PIxlr is one of the best free photo editing software for Mac for anyone needing to edit photos in a hurry. Pixlr has divided its tools across several apps, so you can reach the tools you need quickly. There is Pixlr Editor, the advanced photo editor, Pixlr Express, with one-click AI-powered tools, Pixlr Designer, Remove Background, and Batch Editor for bulk photo editing. The site’s main page also offers “Quick Links” which take you directly to the most popular tools, such as cropping and object removal.

Pixlr has some professional tools like customizable brushes and a selection of cutting tools like shape, lasso, drag, and magic. There are also tools for painting and drawing, fine-tuning color tools, and support for layer editing. This free Mac photo editor features tools for different skill levels, so you can choose to make automated edits or spend some time applying manual changes to your photos.

Like many of the best free photo editing software for Mac, Pixlr has recently added a handful of generative AI tools including Generative Expand, Generative Fill, and an image generator. Its advanced features fall somewhere in the middle of other free Mac photo editors of its kind. The free version contains a lot of intrusive ads, however, for only 99 cents a month you can remove the ads and receive unlimited downloads.

Key Features:

• A collage maker with customizable grids
• Themed design templates in a wide range of aspect ratios
• Color Replace, Color Picker, and Color Fill for local color adjustments

Compatibility: Web Browser

G2 Rating: 4.4/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 4.5/5

Price: Free
*Premium subscriptions available for $.99/month for Plus, $4.90/month for Premium, and $9.91/month for Teams

6. Pixelmator Pro

Image from Pixelmator Pro Tutorials.

Best For: Using with built-in Mac apps and Apple tools

Pixelmator is a robust free Apple photo editor offering various high-end editing features. The software has complete macOS integration and allows users to easily pull photos from apps like Mail, Messages, AirDrop, Notes, FaceTime, and Photos. If you edit photos using an iPad, there is Sidecar and Apple Pencil support for painting with precision. Apple’s advanced graphics acceleration technology, Metal, ensures incredible performance. 

The pro features you get with Pixelmator include layer editing, retouching, vector, and AI tools. In addition, this free Mac photo editor offers various pens, pencils, and brushes for precision image enhancements.

Pixelmator has many professional tools but lacks quite a few found in our best free photo editing software for Mac, PhotoDirector. But like PhotoDirector, we found it easy to use, with an intuitive user interface and plenty of free tutorials. Since our last review, Pixelmator has added full HDR support, including HDR layer editing. It does not have a free version, however, we included it in our list of the best free photo editing software for Mac because it has a 7-day free trial, it is made exclusively for Mac, and the price is pretty affordable.  

Key Features:

• Supports RAW photos from over 600 digital cameras
• Instantly remove any color from photos
• Edit photos with precise clarity and texture adjustments

Compatibility: Mac

SoftwareHow Rating: 4.3/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 4.5/5

Price: 7-Day free trial, then $49.99

7. Fotor

Image from Fotor.

Best For: Beginners interested in AI text-to-image tools

Fotor is one of the best free photo editing software for Macs for beginners. The editing platform is easy to use, and navigating the menus and editing tools is quick and easy. All effects and edits are automatic, with a slider to adjust intensity. It’s also filled with generative AI tools for headshots, avatars, images, art, and faces. 

The stand-out feature of this free Apple photo editor includes support for importing and exporting various high-resolution image formats. Fotor is a RAW image converter and can be used to view EXIF data images.

Fotor is available on any device from your web browser or as a more stable download for Mac or Windows. It is an excellent free Mac photo editor for novices and offers some fun filters and effects. However, unlike our top choice PhotoDirector, it will not grow with you as your skills increase. And while PhotoDirector and MyEdit offer free daily credits for generative AI tools, Fotor gives you 5 free credits that once used are gone forever. We also found many user complaints regarding the free trial and deceptive business practices. 

Key Features:

• Support for batch processing
• Remove unwanted objects with a few clicks
• Graphic design and photo collage interfaces

Compatibility: Mac, Windows, Web Browser

G2 Rating: 4.2/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 4.5/5

Price: Free
*Premium subscriptions available for $3.33/month for Pro and $7.49/month for Pro+

8. Canva

Best For: Social media influencers with no design experience

Canva is the best free photo editing software for Mac for graphic design projects. You can edit photos from a blank slate and use Canva’s many fonts, colors, backgrounds, and shapes to design your look.Users with no design experience can choose from thousands of professionally-designed templates.

This free Mac photo editor has an intuitive, user-friendly interface. We found the free version is perfect for home users and beginners. Professional content creators should spring for the paid version, which includes brand kits, scheduling posts, and team collab tools.

In our last review, we criticized Canva for a lack of AI-powered tools, however, the site has added an entire page of AI editing and generative AI features, moving it up to #8 on our list. Canva’s Magic Studio includes a design/template generator, text generator, and image generator. You can also expand and resize canvases, replace objects in images with a text prompt, and turn any item in your photos into an editable design asset. Of course, most of these tools are unavailable in the free version, and Canva doesn’t give out free credits to use for AI tools.

Key Features:

• Over 250,000 free templates in 100 categories
• Includes logo creation and brand kits
• Lighting, saturation, and deblur enhancements

Compatibility: Mac, Windows, Web Browser

PCMag Rating: 4.5/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 4/5

Price: Free
Premium subscriptions available for $119.99/year for Pro and $149.90/year for Teams

9. PhotoPad

Image from Softonic.

Best For: Resizing images with no quality loss

PhotoPad is one of the best free photo editing software for Mac for its upscaling features, which include AI-powered tools such as Super Resolution and Liquid Resize effect.You can resize your pictures to a higher resolution while maintaining image quality using advanced settings such as resize units and upscale/downscale methods.

It has some unique and helpful features like a Passport photo tool and the ability to colorize black and white photos. The free Mac photo editor also offers a good selection of clipart, fonts, frames, collage templates, and drawing tools.

PhotoPad makes it very easy to edit photos but also comes with tons of learning tools and technical support. However, it is not for advanced users, and the free version is not available for commercial use. Our pick for the best free photo editing software for Mac, PhotoDirector, is equally beginner-friendly with a plethora of learning aids but also has features for more advanced users.

Key Features:

• Touch-up tools to remove red-eye, whiten teeth, and remove blemishes
• Pre-designed collage layouts
• Apply effects and filters to only part of an image

Compatibility: Mac, Windows

G2 Rating: 4.2/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 4/5

Price: Free
*Premium versions available for $60 for Home, $70 for Pro, or $3.88/month for unlimited updates

10. Darktable

Image from Darktable.

Best For: A free alternative to Adobe Lightroom

This is one of the best free photo editing software for Mac, giving you extremely precise control when you edit photos. We think it’s a great alternative to Lightroom for budget-conscious users. Darktable has a similar layout to Lightroom, handles RAW files from 400+ cameras, and includes separate modules for editing and organizing images.

This free Mac photo editor has powerful adjustments for exposure control, white balance, sharpening, denoising, and hot pixel fixes, among others. We found it also includes some Photoshop-like tools such as masking, blending, perspective corrections, and the liquify effect. It’s an all-in-one tool for photographers, with support for tethered shooting and import/culling features for up to 10,000 images. This free Mac photo editor saves your image metadata and processing settings and comes in 21 languages.

Of the three open-source options on our list, Darktable landed on top. While they all have a learning curve, this is the best free photo editing software for Mac because of its customer support and learning tutorials. We found it extremely fast to edit photos with Darktable and didn’t experience the lag or freezing that accompanies a lot of open-source software. However, we also found the layout confusing, and the tool groupings seemed almost random.

Key Features:

• Support for sRGB, Adobe RGB, XYZ, and linear RGB color spaces
• RAW image processing for over 400 popular cameras
• Search images by tags, stars, color labels, and more

Compatibility: Mac, Windows, Linux

Shotkit Rating: 4.2/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 4/5

Price: Free

11. Krita

Image from The Web Factor.

Best For: Animators and illustrators on a budget

Krita is one of the best free photo editing software for Mac for photographers, artists, illustrators, graphic designers, and animators. It’s a fantastic alternative to Photoshop for professionals on a budget and even has a similar user interface. We like it best as a digital painting tool. It has drawing assistants, stabilizers, animation tools, and a huge selection of brushes, including support for custom brushes, 9 brush engines, and brush management features.

This entirely free Mac photo editor offers a huge selection of textures, vector images, word bubbles, and text tools for creating unique effects for your photos. With Krita, you can color-grade images with an advanced color selector and professional-grade color management tools.

This free Mac photo editor offers some of the most advanced tools on our list. However, Krita is not the best free photo editing software for Mac for beginners. It’s also not for anyone who just wants to edit photos and has no need for advanced graphic design or illustration tools.

Key Features:

• Includes 3 different brush stabilizers
• Create seamless patterns with Wrap-Around Mode
• Animation studio with onion-skinning, export-to-video, and stop-motion tools

Compatibility: Mac, Windows, Linux

Capterra Rating: 4.5/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 3.5/5

Price: Free

12. GIMP

Image from GIMP.

Best For: Professional photographers and graphic designers

GIMP is an open-source, cross-platform, and entirely free Mac photo editor with a library containing various effects and filters. Professional editing tools include layer masks, animation tools, precise selection tools, and transformation features, such as shear, scale, and crop. It offers photo editing tools, original artwork creation, and tools for creating graphic design elements and icons.

This is the best free photo editing software for Mac for high-quality image manipulation with retouching and restoring tools.We also like the handy split-screen that lets you preview effects before application.

This is one of the best free photo editing software for Mac due to its advanced features. However, it remains near the bottom of our free Mac photo editors because it is not user-friendly. GIMP has a bit of a learning curve, and the interface is cluttered. We also discovered that some of the advanced effects could result in lag, which doesn’t happen with software optimized for Mac-specific technologies like our top choice, PhotoDirector.  

Key Features:

• Large selection of customizable brushes
• Remove imperfections with clone/healing tools
• Create icons and graphic elements for mockups and UI components

Compatibility: Mac, Windows, Linux

G2 Rating: 4.3/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 3.5/5

Price: Free

13. Movavi Photo Editor

Best For: Restoring old or damaged photos

Movavi Photo Editor is one of the best free photo editing software for Mac for beginners. It can remove noise, blur, fold lines, stains, and colorize black-and-white photos. You can also edit photos with image retouching tools such as blemish removal, a make-up tool, and a teeth whitener.

This free Mac photo editor offers tons of AI-powered one-click tools to deliver high-quality results to those with no photo editing experience. This is especially true of Movavi’s color tools, which allow users to produce pro-quality color correction with simple sliders or automatic filters.

Although Movavi Photo Editor uses AI-powered technology, it lacks tagging and organizational tools. Also, it does not have a free version but is limited to 10 free watermarked images, which is why it remains near the bottom of our list of the best free photo editing software for Mac. However, since our last review, it has added tons of new features and improvements, including updated object removal, new presets, and AI-based retouching. As a result, we increased Movavi’s “Beginner-Friendly Tool” score, moving it ahead of Adobe Express on our list.

Key Features:

• Replace or remove backgrounds, people, and objects
• RAW image support
• Add sharpness and remove blur from images

Compatibility: Mac, Windows

Fix the Photo Rating: 3.5/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 4/5

Price: Free for the first 10 images then $49.95/year or $69.95 for a lifetime license

14. Adobe Express

Best For: Social media posts

We think the professionally-designed templates are what make Adobe Express one of the best free photo editing software for Mac. There are thousands of templates available in the free version for any kind of post/platform, including drag-and-drop video templates. You can also edit photos and add graphic design elements to create stunning social media posts in minutes using this free Mac photo editor.

Adobe Express comes with basic tools to edit photos like a background remover, photo animation tools, and a crop tool. We were pleased to see that the free version offered a limited amount of Adobe stock images, videos, and music. There are also new generative AI tools, and free users are gifted 25 credits a month to use them.

Adobe Express is one of the best free photo editing software for Mac for those with no design experience to create professional-looking posts. However, it is not a free Apple photo editor for intermediate or advanced users. For one thing, it only accepts JPG format and images below 16MB. It also doesn’t support layer editing. For better format support and beginner-friendly layer editing tools, try the best free photo editing software for Mac, PhotoDirector.

Key Features:

• Basic video editing tools
• Extensive library of customizable templates
• Instant Resize for different platforms

Compatibility: Web Browser

PCMag Rating: 3.5/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 4/5

Price: Free
*Premium subscription available for $9.99/month

15. Picktorial

Best For: Color correction and photo management for photographers

Picktorial is a non-destructive free Mac photo editor that works as a standalone app or as an extension for Apple Photos. It’s the best free photo editing software for Mac for organizing your images in a way that suits you. The software includes metadata which can automatically arrange the pictures according to dates, camera models, and exposure settings. This free Apple photo editor also features an extensive range of filters that improve the overall look of your images.  

Seamlessly remove unwanted elements with the patch tool, or use smart retouching brushes to selectively smooth skin and remove blemishes. Picktorial has an array of local adjustments including luminosity masks and blending modes.

Picktorial is designed to offer a smooth and unobtrusive experience while you edit photos. It is easy to use, and its intuitive interface enables you to navigate seamlessly between various functions. However, it is not the best free photo editing software for Mac if you need complex photo retouching or layer editing. For those tools and more, try our top choice, PhotoDirector.  

Key Features:

• Sharpen features, remove blemishes, and smooth skin
• RAW image support for over 500 cameras
• Digital asset management

Compatibility: Mac

Fix the Photo Rating: 3/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 4/5

Price: Free
*Premium subscription available for $9.99/month or $69.99 for a Lifetime License

16. Apple Photos

Image from Apple.

Best For: Organizing iPhone photos

Apple Photos is a free Mac photo editor that organizes iPhone images automatically with AI-powered sorting. You can also create manual albums, store them in iCloud, and access them anytime from your Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. It stores all available metadata such as camera and lens info, date, time, and location of the photo. You also can add your own titles, locations, keywords, and tag faces.

This free Mac photo editor comes with a few built-in tools to edit photos, such as crop, rotate, and auto-enhance. There is a selection of filters and sliders to adjust lighting and color, and more advanced color tools including manual adjustment of RGB levels and selective color adjustment.

We think Apple Photos is a great place to sort, crop, delete, and organize your photos before uploading them into one of our best free photo editing software for Mac found higher on this list. While its sorting and metadata tools are excellent, you can only edit photos with the most basic of tools, which is why we recommend using it in tandem with a more comprehensive free Apple photo editor.

Key Features:

• Powerful search function that makes it easy to find photos
• Fix red-eye in one click
• iPhone-specific tools to edit photos taken in Portrait mode or Live Photos

Compatibility: Mac

PCMag Rating: 4/5

Beginner-Friendly Tools: 3/5

Price: Free

What is the Best Free Photo Editing Software for Mac?

The best free photo editing software for Mac should bring out the best aspects of your photos while removing imperfections and distracting elements. It should also be intuitive and easy to use so you can get the most out of the advanced features available.  

PhotoDirector Essential is all of the above. That's why we consider it the best free photo editing software for Mac. This product offers an extensive range of professional photo editing tools and features to streamline your workflow. If you need support for high-resolution formats, layer editing features, and precision selection tools, PhotoDirector is the free Mac photo editor you need to try.  

Download PhotoDirector Essential by clicking the link below and edit photos into studio-quality works of art today.