Best Mac For Photo Editing

Mac Tips

The new MacBook Pro came out in late 2019, and is the best MacBook for photo editing Apple has ever created. This is because Apple has packed it with some of the most powerful components you can find in a laptop, which means running photo editing apps like Photoshop is fast and smooth. Jun 05, 2017 Mac vs pc for photo editing – Try the Mac machines 'Apple' is the most successful IT corporation in the world. Sales of iOS devices are breaking records. IPad – the most popular tablet, iPhone – the most popular smartphone, and iPod – the most popular player. It would seem that a complete monopoly. But all these are mobile gadgets. Hopefully, our selection of the best free programs for photo editing on Mac will help you choose the right app to suit all your creative needs. Luminar (7 days trial) Luminar is another full-featured photo editor that's popular with both Mac and Windows users.

Before we start

Regardless of the device you choose, you need to keep it in perfect condition to help it cope with any large and resource-intensive apps, such as photo editing.

MacKeeper allows you to optimize your Mac's performance—it will remove any junk and ensure you experience the best use of your Mac.
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You might think that photo editing doesn't require any special hardware. However, if you're an experienced photographer, you know that not all computers can pull off the necessary software such as Adobe Photoshop.

But what about Macs? As with any other brand, some Apple computers are more fit for the purpose than others. In this article, we look at the best Macs for photographers, compare their characteristics, and discuss the most popular photo editing software.

Here's a short list of the best MacBooks for photography:

• Ultimate best:MacBook Pro 16-inch (2019) or 13-inch (2020)
• Best budget: MacBook Air (2020)
• Best desktop:27-inch iMac with 5K Retina Display (2020)

Why use a Mac for photo editing?

Apple products are well-known for their powerful hardware, loved by many creators—from photographers and filmmakers to app developers.

All of the high-end components of a MacBook are packed into a light-weight body, making it portable and easy to carry around at all times. Not to mention the exceptionally long battery life that provides the opportunity to work away from a charging port for an entire day. As for iMacs, photographers can take advantage of the large screen size, superb resolution, and powerful multi-core i7 processors of these phenomenal computers.

Recommended system requirements

We've prepared a list of key things you need to look out for when buying your best Mac for photo editing.

For the best photo editing experience, it is essential that you pick the best available display. Ideally, you need a large, high definition Retina screen. IPS technology, which is incorporated in all MacBook and iMac models post-2012, makes images brighter and bolder and guarantees accurate color reproduction. A Retina display with a substantial pixel density is what you're looking for—regardless of the size of the project you're working on.

Photo editing software is rather demanding—especially if you deal with high-resolution raw files and work with advanced effects in Photoshop or Lightroom. It's crucial that you invest in a powerful discrete graphics card—make sure your Mac has at least Intel UHD Graphics 617.

Don't forget about RAM and storage space—you'll need a lot of those. We recommend at least 8GB of RAM and 500GB of internal SSD storage minimum. The more RAM you have, the faster and smoother your editing experience will be.

As a photographer, you know that you have to connect cameras, SD cards, and other peripherals to your Mac on a regular basis. Therefore, the number and type of ports on a computer is an important aspect when making a choice. Think about the camera input and the type of cable you use for your camera when selecting a Mac, and don't forget about the SD cards.

Finally, consider the portability of your device. Whether photography is an occupation or a hobby for you, it's a dynamic activity—you'll need to move around a lot even if you have your own studio. A laptop is in advantage over a desktop computer due to its low weight combined with impressive components. Mac laptops have pixel-perfect screens with excellent color support. Additionally, the wide contrast of the Retina displays will keep highlights and shadow detail consistently visible.

You'll probably need to free up some space to install a photo editing app—they're usually pretty big.

To clean junk and useless apps from your Mac, just follow these 3 easy steps—install MacKeeper, scan your device, and delete rubbish!
Let's start right away.

The best MacBooks for photographers in 2020

We talked to professional photographers to our team, analyzed all the specs and evaluated reviews to compile a list of the most preferred choices for photo editing. Here's what we've got:

MacBook Pro for photo editing

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro 2020 is one of the best Apple creations yet, featuring the Magic Keyboard, a Touch Bar, and Touch ID for utmost efficiency and productivity. With the Touch Bar innovation that came in 2018, it got easier to work in Photoshop as there are a number of useful shortcuts you won't find on any other laptop. These include a selection of your favorite photos, quick addition to albums, and editing straight in the Photos app, among other handy functions.

The baseline dual-core laptop can be equipped with a 4.5GHz 10th generation quad-core i7 processor and 32GB of RAM, which is twice the usual amount for a 13-inch MacBook Pro. This makes editing in Photoshop a seamless process with up to 50% speed improvement. The Iris Plus graphics card delivers 80% faster processing of threaded filters.

The display of the MacBook uses True Tone technology with 500 nits brightness and as much as 25% more colours than sRGB, which is ideal for accurate image representation. You can incorporate up to 4TB of SSD storage—an incredible space to store your photographs. Finally, four Thunderbolt 3 ports are available to connect your peripherals. All of these components are packed in just 1.4 kilos.

In addition to the 13-inch model, photographers must consider the 16-inch MacBook that came out in 2019 and is due to be updated soon. It's a larger, more powerful and more expensive device that will fit those hungry for better components and a larger screen, still packed in a relatively small frame.

MacBook Air for photo editing

MacBook Air is the cheapest among all Apple laptops with Retina display. It can become your favorite photo editing assistant. Being the most portable Mac laptop with the longest battery life, MacBook Air is a great option for photographers who are always on the run.

The base model costs as little as $999, although the specs of such a laptop won't satisfy the needs for bigger projects. The processor is 10th Gen Core i3—we recommend at least i5. RAM of 8GB is substantial with 256GB of SSD storage on top of it. Finally, the laptop is equipped with Intel Iris Plus Graphics. All of this is packed in just 1.27 kilos.

The computer can have several upgrades. The first would increase the cost to $1,299, but the specs are much better: 1.1GHz quad-core i5 CPU and 512GB of SSD storage among the ones that are different. The most customized MacBook Air would come at $2,249 with a 10th Gen core i7 CPU, 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. One would argue that it's easier to just buy a MacBook Pro.

The slim laptop doesn't allow a lot of room for ports—you'll only find two Thunderbolt 3 ports as opposed to four in a 13-inch MacBook Pro. Thus, if you want to connect more than just a camera and a pair of headphones, you might need to invest in a USB hub.

The display of an Air is quite rewarding. The 13.3-inch 2560x2600 panel does create size limitations, but it reaches 113% of the sRGB gamut and outstands the nit average, having an impressive 382 nits.

The best iMac for photo editing

If you're one of those people who prefer a desktop computer to a light and portable laptop, a 27-inch iMac with a 5K Retina display is your best bet for Mac photo editing. The new 2020 release equips the technological giant with a nano-texture glass, bringing the photo editing experience up to a new level.

The powerful Coffee Lake processor of up to 10 cores can handle pretty much anything you throw its way. You're also presented with up to 126GB of on-board RAM and terabytes of SSD storage space.

How to Optimize your Mac for Photo Editing?

Photo editing is an intricate art and it's also one of the most resource-consuming tasks you can do on a Mac. Lack of free space, plenty of duplicated photos scattered all over the folders may hamper your photo editing process.

Whenever you get the beach ball icon on your screen, it's high time to clean up your RAM memory. The Memory Cleaner feature in MacKeeper will easily do that for you. Simply run this tool when working on your photos to enhance the performance of your photo-editing software. And speaking about such software, Update Tracker will keep your photo editing apps updated at all times.

As a photographer you do need a lot of storage space to store images after photoshoots. Not to spend extra money on additional gigabytes, you can get rid of photo duplicates. Use Duplicates Finder to scan for copies and check how much space can be reclaimed! Besides duplicates, such files as caches, logs, apps leftovers, and items sent to Trash but still not deleted from there can be the reason for lack of space. Delete these items with one simple feature—that is Safe Cleanup!

Conclusion

Macs have become exceedingly popular among photographers. Most of all it is because they are powerful machines with outstanding color accuracy. Their portability and long battery life are distinguished among all creatives. But let's not forget about the exceptionally aesthetically pleasing design of every Apple device—any photographer is strongly receptive of beauty and will definitely find them exceptionally attractive.

If you're still unsure about the device you should choose—download MacKeeper and contact our tech experts.

They'd love to help you choose the best Mac to suit you. In addition, they can share their top tips on how to keep your Mac clean and optimized.

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Apple's Photos for Mac app is amazing, but it can be limiting. For doing simple photo edits, the tool is perfect, it's loaded with photo cropper, features for lightening adjustments, setting white balance & a few more things. But if you're an aspiring photographer, you probably need a powerful Mac Photo Editing App with a wide array of editing tools and other features.

So, whether you want to brighten up your dark dull images, remove a distracting background or use your creativity to the fullest, there's a dedicated Mac photo editing app to step up your game. Best of all, most of these image editing tools are extremely affordable (& even free), so dive in to find the best tool to fit your personal/professional needs.

Top 10 Best Mac Photo Editing Apps

There are several image editing software available in the market for MacBook, so it becomes really challenging to pick up the best one. To help our readers, we've curated the ten useful photo editors (some are paid while some are free) to enhance your photo collection.

1. Movavi Photo Editor

Movavi is a full-featured photo editing tool designed for both beginners and professional users. It offers some amazing features to improve image quality, do photo restoration (remove noise from old images), perform portrait retouching (remove imperfections), erasing unwanted objects from the picture and so on. Aside from these main features, it offers tools for White Balancing, Color Correction, Makeup, Crop/Rotate/Resize, Add Texts/Images, Replace Background, and much more.

Movavi Photo Editor is available in more than 10 languages & requires merely 57.2 MB of space on your storage.

2. Lightroom

Next on our list of best photo editing software for Mac is Lightroom owned by Adobe Photoshop. Pretty much anything you want to do with your pictures can be accomplished through Lightroom. You can effortlessly blend, merge shadows, add highlights, make images sharper, crispier or even blur in a few clicks. The Mac editing app also allows users to add details & tint of colors to make the picture stand out. The MacBook photo editing tool is available in two versions: Classic (usually more preferred) & 2018 CC version.

Lightroom is offered free for thirty days to let users decide whether their editing needs are fulfilled or not. After the trial period, users can add the CC subscription for using the complete toolkit.

3. Tweak Photos

As the name suggests, Tweak Photos is one of the best batch photo editing app for Macdesigned to tweak your images in a way to bring the best out of it. The image editing software can also be your best bet for ultimate batch editing, it can alter thousands of photos in just a matter of clicks. The interface is modern and easy-to-use, users can easily pick effects & apply to the entire batch of photos, rename them or convert file formats in just one go. Aside from performing basic editing, Tweak Photos offers features for Resizing, Auto-Correction, Rotate, Flip, De-noise images, Add Watermark, and other images, enhance & control Brightness, Sharpness & more. You can even add gorgeous frames & borders to make your image more aesthetic.

Comprising all the essential editing tools & features, Tweak Photos is an ideal app to edit photos on mac. The tool automatically stamps the images with the original/modified Date/Time as per EXIF info & your choice of format.

4. Wondershare Fotophire

Fotophire by Wondershare is a popular photo editing toolkit designed for both beginners and professional users. The software is available on both the Windows and Mac platforms. The toolkit features more than 200+ effects and has strong capabilities to remove or replace the background or unwanted objects from any photo. The image editor brings a plethora of tools to create professional-looking blur & vignette effects, adjust white balance, saturation & other enhancements. Apart from it has wide file format support & bundle of filters, blend modes & textures to turn your photo into a piece of art.

What we like the most about Fotophire is its Batch Processing feature that efficiently processes plenty of images in a determined style. Hence, a real-time saver to edit bulk photos.

5. Pixelmator

Known as one of the greatest alternatives to Photoshop, Pixelmator offers an ideal combination of a modern and simple interface with the ability to work on multiple layers for easy editing. The software has a bunch of editing tools, brushes, effects & other textures to enhance your photo collection. Depending upon users' needs, Pixelmator offers two versions, Standard & Pro. As the name indicates, the Standard version allows users to perform basic photo editing, it proffers refined selection of tools and other filters. While the pro version is packed with extra brushes, photo effects and other editing features to push your creativity to the next level.

Similar to other Mac photo editing apps, Pixelmator allows users to adjust contrast, saturation, color, definition and much more. The software allows you to save your images in different formats like PSD, JPG, PNG, TIFF, PDF and share them directly with your friends and family.

6. PhotoScape X

Amp up your photo editing skills in no time with a little help from PhotoScape X. It features an advanced range of image-related features including Photo Viewer, Batch editing, Collage, Cut Out, Combine, GIF, Color Picker, Screen Capture and more. PhotoScape has a variety of photo filters, effects & other adjustment settings to make your collection stand out. The tool is a popular choice for removing blemishes, moles, red-eye correction, creating fake HDR, liquify, creating a miniature effect, dehaze and more.

PhotoScape X is available for both Windows & Mac OS & is a very useful tool Batch Photo Editing as well. It proffers various tools to batch format change, batch resizing, batch rename and more.

7. Affinity Photo

Restyle images for a unique look and feel on your Mac with Affinity Photo Editing Software. Its dashboard might seem overwhelming at first, especially for beginner editors. However, once you get the grip, you'll know that it's just the application you've been looking for. The image editing software features a great bunch of professional editing tools, filters, and other effects to entice the inner artist in you. The best part? The tool features a Before & After view that lets you compare the original picture with the edited one.

The mac photo editing app supports more than fifteen file types and formats, including PDF, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, RAW and some other less popular ones as well.

8. Photoshop Elements

With complete control over Image composition (from the contrast to brightness), Photoshop Elements is one of the Best Photo Editing Software for Mac. Its interface is intrusively designed while keeping users' needs & requirements in mind. The large colorful icons with comprehensive texts and graphics tips help both novices and advanced users. All the features are organized in the same way as most other Adobe products are. Apart from providing basic features for editing and adjusting image orientations, Photoshop Elements features Intelligent Selection of areas, scaling, smart cropper, restoration of damaged parts and much more.

Photoshop Elements is one of the most ideal apps to edit photos on mac, as it comes complemented by automatic tools for editing that are only available within itself & not other versions of Adobe Photoshop.

9. DxO OpticsPro for Photos

Let your photos shine with DxO OpticsPro for Photos tool. With a tagline ‘Reveal the RAW emotion' Dxo offers a simple user-friendly interface with amazing photo retouching features & deep color correction tools. The application aims to analyze your images intelligently, correct orientations, adjust balance & exposure, alter the calibration levels to enhance your collection. It's Magic photo retouching feature literary works like a charm; just select the photo(s) you want to improve in terms of color or quality & click ‘magic; button to intensify the image.

In addition to basic editing features, DxO photo processing for compatible cameras can easily be managed within the editing mode. DxO OpticsPro acts as a third-party extension for the same. It is capable of applying White Balance Correction, Smart Lightning, applying Optical corrections and so on.

10. CameraBag Photo

An easy to use, lightweight photo editor tool, CaneraBag Photo is an amazing app that brings out the best of your photos. It features a clean and easy-to-use interface, on the right side of the dashboard, you'll find the whole range of filters & customization tools. Unlike other best photo editing software for mac mentioned in the list, CameraBag Photo features 200+ Default Presets, which allows users to edit the photo(s) on the fly.

In addition to photo editing basics: adjust exposure, saturation, contrast, fix the noise, add blur, vignette effect. CameraBag Photo boasts other photo editing utilities like Hue Masking, HSV Mask, adding borders, watermark, fixing dead pixels, color mixer, filtered B+W, split tone and more.

There are several image editing software available in the market for MacBook, so it becomes really challenging to pick up the best one. To help our readers, we've curated the ten useful photo editors (some are paid while some are free) to enhance your photo collection.

1. Movavi Photo Editor

Movavi is a full-featured photo editing tool designed for both beginners and professional users. It offers some amazing features to improve image quality, do photo restoration (remove noise from old images), perform portrait retouching (remove imperfections), erasing unwanted objects from the picture and so on. Aside from these main features, it offers tools for White Balancing, Color Correction, Makeup, Crop/Rotate/Resize, Add Texts/Images, Replace Background, and much more.

Movavi Photo Editor is available in more than 10 languages & requires merely 57.2 MB of space on your storage.

2. Lightroom

Next on our list of best photo editing software for Mac is Lightroom owned by Adobe Photoshop. Pretty much anything you want to do with your pictures can be accomplished through Lightroom. You can effortlessly blend, merge shadows, add highlights, make images sharper, crispier or even blur in a few clicks. The Mac editing app also allows users to add details & tint of colors to make the picture stand out. The MacBook photo editing tool is available in two versions: Classic (usually more preferred) & 2018 CC version.

Lightroom is offered free for thirty days to let users decide whether their editing needs are fulfilled or not. After the trial period, users can add the CC subscription for using the complete toolkit.

3. Tweak Photos

As the name suggests, Tweak Photos is one of the best batch photo editing app for Macdesigned to tweak your images in a way to bring the best out of it. The image editing software can also be your best bet for ultimate batch editing, it can alter thousands of photos in just a matter of clicks. The interface is modern and easy-to-use, users can easily pick effects & apply to the entire batch of photos, rename them or convert file formats in just one go. Aside from performing basic editing, Tweak Photos offers features for Resizing, Auto-Correction, Rotate, Flip, De-noise images, Add Watermark, and other images, enhance & control Brightness, Sharpness & more. You can even add gorgeous frames & borders to make your image more aesthetic.

Comprising all the essential editing tools & features, Tweak Photos is an ideal app to edit photos on mac. The tool automatically stamps the images with the original/modified Date/Time as per EXIF info & your choice of format.

4. Wondershare Fotophire

Fotophire by Wondershare is a popular photo editing toolkit designed for both beginners and professional users. The software is available on both the Windows and Mac platforms. The toolkit features more than 200+ effects and has strong capabilities to remove or replace the background or unwanted objects from any photo. The image editor brings a plethora of tools to create professional-looking blur & vignette effects, adjust white balance, saturation & other enhancements. Apart from it has wide file format support & bundle of filters, blend modes & textures to turn your photo into a piece of art.

What we like the most about Fotophire is its Batch Processing feature that efficiently processes plenty of images in a determined style. Hence, a real-time saver to edit bulk photos.

5. Pixelmator

Known as one of the greatest alternatives to Photoshop, Pixelmator offers an ideal combination of a modern and simple interface with the ability to work on multiple layers for easy editing. The software has a bunch of editing tools, brushes, effects & other textures to enhance your photo collection. Depending upon users' needs, Pixelmator offers two versions, Standard & Pro. As the name indicates, the Standard version allows users to perform basic photo editing, it proffers refined selection of tools and other filters. While the pro version is packed with extra brushes, photo effects and other editing features to push your creativity to the next level.

Similar to other Mac photo editing apps, Pixelmator allows users to adjust contrast, saturation, color, definition and much more. The software allows you to save your images in different formats like PSD, JPG, PNG, TIFF, PDF and share them directly with your friends and family.

6. PhotoScape X

Amp up your photo editing skills in no time with a little help from PhotoScape X. It features an advanced range of image-related features including Photo Viewer, Batch editing, Collage, Cut Out, Combine, GIF, Color Picker, Screen Capture and more. PhotoScape has a variety of photo filters, effects & other adjustment settings to make your collection stand out. The tool is a popular choice for removing blemishes, moles, red-eye correction, creating fake HDR, liquify, creating a miniature effect, dehaze and more.

PhotoScape X is available for both Windows & Mac OS & is a very useful tool Batch Photo Editing as well. It proffers various tools to batch format change, batch resizing, batch rename and more.

7. Affinity Photo

Restyle images for a unique look and feel on your Mac with Affinity Photo Editing Software. Its dashboard might seem overwhelming at first, especially for beginner editors. However, once you get the grip, you'll know that it's just the application you've been looking for. The image editing software features a great bunch of professional editing tools, filters, and other effects to entice the inner artist in you. The best part? The tool features a Before & After view that lets you compare the original picture with the edited one.

The mac photo editing app supports more than fifteen file types and formats, including PDF, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, RAW and some other less popular ones as well.

8. Photoshop Elements

With complete control over Image composition (from the contrast to brightness), Photoshop Elements is one of the Best Photo Editing Software for Mac. Its interface is intrusively designed while keeping users' needs & requirements in mind. The large colorful icons with comprehensive texts and graphics tips help both novices and advanced users. All the features are organized in the same way as most other Adobe products are. Apart from providing basic features for editing and adjusting image orientations, Photoshop Elements features Intelligent Selection of areas, scaling, smart cropper, restoration of damaged parts and much more.

Photoshop Elements is one of the most ideal apps to edit photos on mac, as it comes complemented by automatic tools for editing that are only available within itself & not other versions of Adobe Photoshop.

9. DxO OpticsPro for Photos

Let your photos shine with DxO OpticsPro for Photos tool. With a tagline ‘Reveal the RAW emotion' Dxo offers a simple user-friendly interface with amazing photo retouching features & deep color correction tools. The application aims to analyze your images intelligently, correct orientations, adjust balance & exposure, alter the calibration levels to enhance your collection. It's Magic photo retouching feature literary works like a charm; just select the photo(s) you want to improve in terms of color or quality & click ‘magic; button to intensify the image.

In addition to basic editing features, DxO photo processing for compatible cameras can easily be managed within the editing mode. DxO OpticsPro acts as a third-party extension for the same. It is capable of applying White Balance Correction, Smart Lightning, applying Optical corrections and so on.

10. CameraBag Photo

An easy to use, lightweight photo editor tool, CaneraBag Photo is an amazing app that brings out the best of your photos. It features a clean and easy-to-use interface, on the right side of the dashboard, you'll find the whole range of filters & customization tools. Unlike other best photo editing software for mac mentioned in the list, CameraBag Photo features 200+ Default Presets, which allows users to edit the photo(s) on the fly.

In addition to photo editing basics: adjust exposure, saturation, contrast, fix the noise, add blur, vignette effect. CameraBag Photo boasts other photo editing utilities like Hue Masking, HSV Mask, adding borders, watermark, fixing dead pixels, color mixer, filtered B+W, split tone and more.

Best Mac Computer For Photo Editing

How Do You Edit Your Photographs?

Best Mac For Photo Editing 2020

All the aforementioned Photo Editing tools for Mac are well-designed and great looking pieces to easily edit images. However, if you ask us, we recommend using Wondershare Fotophire & Tweak Photos that works suitable for both amateur & pro photographers. Both the photo editing tools have enticing editing feature set to make your photo collection stand out & both have strong capabilities for Batch Editing & Processing!

Best Mac Laptop For Photo Editing

Do let us know your favorite editing tips, tricks, and hacks in the comment section below. And which Mac photo editing tool is your personal favorite?