There is no single image except more or less edited using various photo manipulation tools. Since only photo shooting by the most featured or even costlier photography gear cannot ensure the high-end image quality, the photographers are bound to use photo editing tools. They clip paths, remove background, crop and resize, retouch for cleaning spots and blemishes and more out of the images. Different types of images require different photo editing and adjustment tweaking to get stunning looks. So it is not wise enough to use only one photo enhancing tool to have top-notch images every time. Image complexity, cost-effectiveness, and time consumption are the factors to be thought while choosing right editing equipment.
Here we have gone through details about top 5 photo editing tools keeping in mind some factors that crucial for producing quality images.
Adobe Photoshop
If we think about photo editing, what the name of the editing tool comes first in our mind is Adobe Photoshop of Adobe Systems. Regarding its tools, options, and features, worldwide uses by the professional graphic designers, regular update, and varieties of functionality, it the best photo manipulation tool so far. Where there are lots of shortcomings in the other image editing tools, in that place, Photoshop is so enriched that whatever design related works you think, the necessary tools and options for that purposes are already set out there before. Photoshop will allow you to create new graphics, edit and retouch existing photographs, enhance colors, produce GIF animation, etc. Designers can do creative graphic designs and photo fixing.
Using Photoshop, a photo editing person can do clipping path, background remove, color correction, image retouching, photo restoration, creating ghost mannequin effects, convert raster to vector image, and many other creative graphic design like banner, flyer, product brochure and catalog, web page design, and other corporate identity designs.
The power of Photoshop has changed many people’s luck. Because of its great utilization, the whole photo editing industry has developed. Its proper and actionable regular update has made one of the most essential parts of the graphic design industry, advertising agencies, individuals, and many more.
Photoshop is easy to use because of its user-friendly interface. The graphical icons of its various tool are realistic and amateur graphic retouchers easily can understand tools’ functionality. Its top menu bar, side menu, adjustment tool panel, layer panel, etc. are greatly well organized that provide the editor a professional appearance. Anyway, Photoshop is a paid photo editing software, but you can use a free trial for 30 days.
Adobe Lightroom
It is another wonderful premium photo editing tool that helps to get quick image fixing. This is also a product of the Adobe system. Lightroom is so much popular among photographers. They take thousands of photos and when they need quick image manipulation, they use Lightroom.
The very name Lightroom is itself indicating its functionality. It is basically used to fix images’ exposure and other lighting related flaws. There are numerous photo editing slides almost like Photoshop’s adjustment tools. You can do here image’s exposure correction, spot removing, red-eye related problem solving, black and white lighting, applying hue/saturation, cropping, and many more. You can create Lightroom presets that help to edit the image by one click same as like Photoshop action. This software allows busy photographers to do photo culling out of thousands of photos. In the case of travel photography and wedding photos, photo culling service in Lightroom is very crucial and it reduces the time to select the best images. However, its user interface is very easy to operate and an amateur shutterbug also can edit an image in Lightroom.
GIMP
It is a cross-platform image editor which is free and open source for editing raster images. This is a product of the GNU Image Manipulation Program available for all major operating systems except Mac. A developer can edit and distribute its source code. GIMP is very useful for the novice and professional graphic designers, photographers, Illustrators and many more. It has lots of third-party plug-ins that accelerate the photo editing process.
Like Adobe Photoshop, you can do all types of graphic designs and photo editing services in GIMP. It has numerous photo editing tools and options and by using those, the artist creates fantastic graphics. However, as it is a free photo editing tool, it has some limitations. Its interface is pretty much complicated.
Adobe Illustrator
Illustrator is also another wonderful photo editing software that produces vector graphics. Professional raster to vector conversion is done using this tool. The graphic designers use Illustrator for producing distortion-free high-quality vector images which can be extended at any range. Various types of business identities like business cards, banner, logo, poster, flyer, festoon, product catalogs, graphics for marketing, cartoon illustration, etc. are performed in Illustrator. Raster image to vector conversion, vector line drawing, artwork design, sketch to animation elements, real estate graphic designs, and more are completed in this professional software.
Illustrator is also a product of Adobe. It is easy to use and lots of tools and functionality will help you to create anything you want. Regularly updated versions are presented with new features. So, it is the best tool for creating and editing images and highly recommended to use for vector image creation. Illustrator is a paid tool.
Canva
This is a fantastic web-based photo editing tool. You can also use it in your mobile for quick photo editing. This tool is great for those who love drag-and-drop feature and you will get thousands of graphic design template, graphics, icons, and fonts. Both designers and non-designers are using it for creating graphics, presentation, print image, and more. For creating a quick banner for blog posting and quick image editing, Canva is just unparallel. You can use it for image cropping and straightening, blurring the background, adding texture, stickers, and badges, making speech bubble, enhancing photos, and many more. Canva is free, but if you use the premium version, you can have more tools and options with thousands of professional-looking templates.
A photo editing person should know about more than one photo editing tools and their features so that he can switch from one to another anytime according to his necessity. This description of the top five photo editing tools will help the graphic designers, photographers, and image illustrators to know about more photo editing tools, their functionality, and whether they are free or premium. It will help them to get the right photo editing tool for the right work and thus they can deliver their projects on time to their clients.