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Free Photo & Video Editing Apps That Rival Paid Software
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items You don't need expensive subscriptions to make professional-looking photos and videos. These are the free apps and programs I recommend to every new photographer and content creator, from Hollywood-grade colour grading to pro-level phone editing and ...
Sections
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Phone & Tablet Apps
Desktop & Web Software
Phone & Tablet Apps
Google's completely free photo editor for Android and iPhone, with no ads, subscriptions or watermarks. The selective adjust and healing brush tools are brilliant, it edits RAW files, and the ‘Stacks’ feature lets you go back and tweak any edit. If y...
Snapseed
The free version of Lightroom on your phone is more powerful than most people realise: pro-level sliders, colour grading, and free presets you can create and sync. The built-in camera app even shoots in RAW. Premium features like AI masking and gener...
Adobe Lightroom Mobile (Free Tier)
The go-to editor for Reels, TikToks and Shorts. It's fast and intuitive, with auto-captions, trending templates, beat-synced cuts, speed ramps and plenty of effects, on your phone or desktop. Perfect for turning behind-the-scenes clips from a shoot i...
CapCut
The app that made film-style presets cool on phones. Its free presets give photos a subtle, filmic look that's far more tasteful than typical filters, and it has a clean set of editing tools and a community of creative photographers to follow. The fu...
VSCO
Not an editor, but it transforms what you can shoot on a phone. This free camera app from Blackmagic gives you the same controls as their cinema cameras: manual shutter angle, ISO, white balance, focus and frame rates, plus pro recording formats. Sho...
Blackmagic Camera App
For everything around your photos: social posts, thumbnails, mood boards, price lists, pitch decks and client presentations. The free plan includes thousands of templates, simple video editing and a built-in photo editor, and it works in your browser...
Canva
Adobe's free, browser-and-phone design tool: one-click background removal, quick photo edits, social templates, simple video and animated text, all without a Creative Cloud subscription. It's Canva's biggest rival, with the bonus of Adobe Fonts and e...
Adobe Express (Free Plan)
Desktop & Web Software
The same colour-grading software used on Hollywood films and Netflix series, and the free version is astonishingly complete: full editing, world-class colour correction, Fairlight audio and Fusion visual effects in one app. It's what I'd recommend to...
DaVinci Resolve (Free Version)
Photoshop in your web browser, for free. It looks and works almost exactly like Photoshop, with layers, masks, adjustment layers, the healing brush and even support for opening PSD files, with no install or account needed. It's ad-supported, with a c...
Photopea
The original free, open-source alternative to Photoshop for Windows, Mac and Linux. Layers, masks, retouching tools, filters and a huge library of free plugins, with no subscription ever. The interface takes a little getting used to, but it's powerfu...
GIMP
A free, open-source Lightroom alternative for Windows, Mac and Linux. It handles RAW files from almost every camera and offers a catalogue, non-destructive editing, masks and serious colour tools. It's more technical than Lightroom, but incredibly ca...
darktable
A free, open-source video editor for Windows, Mac and Linux with a proper multi-track timeline, transitions, titles, keyframed effects and colour correction. It's lighter on your computer than DaVinci Resolve, which makes it a great choice for older ...
Kdenlive
Great video is half audio. This free, open-source audio editor cleans up interview and voiceover recordings with noise reduction, compression and EQ, and makes it easy to trim podcasts or music beds. Record a few seconds of room tone, use it to remov...
Audacity
Another excellent free, open-source video editor for Windows, Mac and Linux. It supports a huge range of formats (including 4K) without needing to convert anything first, and it has a clean timeline, colour and audio filters and keyframes. It's a lit...
Shotcut
A free, open-source RAW developer for Windows, Mac and Linux with some of the best demosaicing and noise reduction around, so it squeezes maximum detail out of your camera's files. It edits one image at a time rather than managing a catalogue, which ...
RawTherapee