As an artist, I need to be able to take great pictures of my paintings to display in online galleries, to use for marketing purposes, and to promote my art on social media. So photos are everything.
Finding a free app to enhance your photos will elevate your online game and allow you to show your beautiful paintings to the world.
Technology came a long way and nowadays, a smartphone can be enough if you know how to use it properly. Now, you can invest in an expensive set up to take professional photographs of your art, or, if you’re like me and that’s not an option for you yet, you need some good apps to edit pictures.
Here are some free apps I recommend as an artist to edit pictures.
The Best Free Apps To Edit Pictures
Lightroom
The number one in my book for a free app to edit pictures, Lightroom is great and easy to use. You can do a lot with it but at the same time the app is simple enough.
You will find everything you need to edit light: exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks. The same can be said about colors: you can change the temperature, tint, vibrance, and saturation. It actually allows for more advanced color editing than most apps I’ve tried.
Furthermore, you can create presets, which are very useful to quickly edit photos so that they match your brand colors and feel, or for edits that you often do, such as brightening and contrasting. This feature only is a big time saver.
I absolutely love this app.
Photoshop Express
Very similar to Lightroom and made by Adobe too. Photoshop Express is good if you’re looking for automated settings, basic editing tools and standard color settings.
I’ve used this app for years before moving on to Lightroom. The main reason being that Lightroom is more professional in comparison. But for someone looking to do some basic photo editing, Photoshop Express is a great free app.
Snapseed
Another app I use on a regular basis is Snapseed. It’s very intuitive and has simple tools. What sets it apart from the rest is that this app is great to do adjustments to only part of a picture or to a specific color with the selective tool.
However, it lacks advanced photography edits. Which is why I actually use it hand-in-hand with other free picture editing apps. Typically, I will start the editing process with Lightroom (color and light correction) and I will then open snapseed to finalize it.
For instance, for my pet portraits, the pictures I take are darker on one side due to the light coming from one on my window. So, after the preliminary editing, I will open Snapseed and brighten the corners and the white of the canvas by using the selective tool. As an artist, being able to make white properly look white in a picture without over exposition is invaluable.
Default Photo App
Last but not least, some phones come loaded with a pretty good photo editing app. I can’t speak for iPhone and Android, but my Google Pixel has an edit button that’s pretty great! I can quickly make adjustments right from the photo library. Sometimes, it’s all I need.
These are my 4 favorite apps for photo editing. In fact, I use them for both my art business and my personal photos too, cause that’s how great they are.
Do you have a favorite you would like to add to the list?
