The best iPhone photo editing apps I use myself (2026 Edition)
One of the most frequent questions about my iPhone photos is about the iPhone photo editing apps I used to edit them. The answer to this question is quite personal. The best iPhone photo editing apps are the ones that support your editing style and requirements.
In this blog post, you’ll see my personal list of the best iPhone photo editing apps I use regularly and a few alternatives I tested. This year, the list changed quite a bit compared to last year. Please understand this list as an inspirational starting point to find the best iPhone photo editing app for your needs.
- My Requirements for iPhone Photo Editing Apps
- My Recommended Photo Editing Apps for iPhone and iPad
- iOS photo editing apps on my watchlist
- Summary
My Requirements for iPhone Photo Editing Apps
As a travel photographer, I mainly take photos of landscapes, cityscapes, and lost places. So I need photo editing apps on my iPhone and iPad that help me mainly with the following photo editing tasks:
- Remove objects from photos
- Fix perspective distortions that occur when I photograph buildings
- Applying selective adjustments to parts of a photo, like the sky
- Editing RAW photos
- Ability to denoise photos to a certain degree
As a minimalist, I strive to use as few photo editing apps as possible. You’ll find these apps in the following list.y Recommended Photo Editing Apps for iPhone and iPad
The following list of recommended photo editing apps comes from several years of experience using the app. For your convenience, I’ve also added some of the apps I tried as an alternative.
Photomator is the best RAW photo editing app for iOS
I’ve switched to Photomator after Adobe announced their price increases in 2025. While a Lightroom subscription costs you 143.88 USD a year, Photomator is available for 39.99 USD per year or for 119.00 USD as a one-time purchase.
Photomator is one of the best photo editing apps on iPhone and iPad
Feature-wise, Photomator has almost all the features I need for editing my travel photos on the go, like:
Selective masks for applying selective adjustments
Supports classic RAW and Adobe ProRAW
Manual and machine-learning denoise
Almost all adjustments I need compared to Lightroom Mobile.
I also liked the excellent integration into the iOS and iPadOS ecosystem and its clean and easy-to-use user interface.
Compared to Lightroom Mobile, I miss the following features in Photomator. But I can use two other apps mentioned in this blog post to overcome that limitation. These missing features are:
AI-based object removal. But I can use TouchRetouch for that.
Perspective correction is available in Photomator, but limited. However, I can use the SKRWT app instead. See below for more details.
Overall, Photomator is my choice for the photo editing app to edit my travel photos on my iPhone and iPad on the go. To learn more about its features, head to my Photomator Review or download Photomator for iOS from the App Store.
Alternatives for Photomator for iOS
For your convenience, here are some alternatives to Photomator for iOS that I looked at when I abandoned Lightroom Mobile. These are all great, but I found Photomator the most appealing.
Darkroom is quite a close contender for Photomator. But I just like Photomator's UI a bit more. And Darkroom is slightly more expensive than Photomator. Check out Darkroom at the App Store.
Luminar Mobile is an app with lots of AI based features. But the user interface is just not my kind of thing. However, it's cheaper than Photomator. You might want to check out Luminar Mobile at the App Store.
Snapseed is an excellent and free choice but lacks some features I need, like simple and AI-driven masks. So it is not a direct contender to Photomator for me, but may be sufficient for you. Check out Snapseed by downloading it from the App Store.
TouchRetouch is the best app for removing objects from photos on iOS
TouchRetouch is another evergreen and recommended photo editing app I’ve been using for years. It survived many spring cleanings on my iPhone, and I've used it since it was released in 2011.
TouchRetouch on iPad and iPhone
TouchRetouch is the best iPhone photo editing app for retouching photos. You can remove blemishes, people, and even fences and entire structures. In 2024 the developers added an AI feature that will automatically find and select people in your photos. That’s a great helper to remove dozens of people from your photos. This feature is continuously improved.
Given how many great iPhone photo editing apps were abandoned by their developers, I appreciate the developers of TouchRetouch for updating their app regularly. Thanks!
TouchRetouch is one of the best photo editing apps I mentioned in the introduction for one simple reason: it does one thing and does it extremely well.
TouchRetouch works on iPhones and iPads. On iPad, it even supports the Apple Pencil. Of course, I have an extensive TouchRetouch review for you in the blog, or you can download the Touch Retouch app from the App Store.
Alternatives to TouchRetouch
I'm not aware of any app that rivals TouchRetouch as a standalone app. But you'll find some retouching features in the following apps:
Photomator has a basic retouch functionality that works great if the object is surrounded by a uniform texture
Snapseed has a good retouch feature, but it does not rival the possibilities of Touch Retouch. Download Snapseed from the App Store to see if it works for you
Lightroom Mobile has a great retouching feature that requires a monthly subscription (that has become too expensive for me).
SKRWT App is the best app to fix perspective distortions
SKRWT app is another recommended photo editing app that does just one thing but does it very well. It allows you to fix perspective distortions on iPhone and iPad.
Screenshot SKRWT on iPad and iPhone showing 4PNTS and SKRWT modules
SKRWT app offers three modules:
- The SKRWT module to fix horizontal, vertical, and barrel distortion
- The 4PNTs module for freehand correction of perspective distortions
- The MRRW module for creating symmetric mirror effects
SKRWT app was the first photo editing app of its kind that didn't reduce the overall resolution of a photo when fixing perspective distortions. Many other apps did and still will reduce the overall photo resolution when correcting perspective distortions.
In January 2022, the developers released version 1.5 to lay the foundation for future updates and to fix a few annoyances with recent iOS versions. I've been looking forward to this release that I could test during the development phase, and I've published an extensive review of the SKRWT photo editing app, which works on iPhone and iPad.
Alternatives to the SKRWT App
Similar to TouchRetouch, I'm not aware of a specialized app to fix perspective distortions on iPhone. But you'll find such a feature in apps like:
Snapseed. Recently, the perspective distortion feature of Snapseed has become good. It supports horizontal and vertical perspective correction, rotation, and even freeform. You can download Snapseed from the App Store.
Photomator has a basic perspective correction feature for horizontal and vertical perspective correction. But it lacks the option for freeform perspective correction and for fixing barrel distortion.
iOS Photos app is the best and free basic photo editing app
The iOS Photos app has come a long way. It offers many great but still basic features for photo editing, like brightening or darkening, clarity, and even some basic perspective correction features.
Before you buy any other photo editing app, I'd check out the features of the Photos app and see if they're enough for you.
What I miss in the Photos app is at least a feature for masking and applying selective adjustments. Thus, I only use the Photos app for very basic editing features for snapshots.
iOS photo editing apps on my watchlist
The "watchlist" contains iOS photo editing apps I started to use recently with the goal to replace one or more apps on this list.
Snapseed is one of the best free photo editing apps on iOS
Since I've turned to iPhone photography, I've tried Snapseed many times. But until now, Snapseed did not offer the features I needed for my kind of photography. But because I've abandoned Lightroom Mobile, I'm looking into Snapseed more often.
Especially I see potential to replace the SKRWT app because the perspective correction feature now offers everything I need.
Let's see if Snapseed can replace one or more apps on this list next year. You can download Snapseed right from the App Store.
Summary
This is a personal list of the best iPhone photo editing apps I use for my kind of photography: travel photography. These photo editing apps may be suitable for you if you do the same kind of photography.
If you were to ask me to recommend just one photo editing app for iPhone, then it would be Photomator. But if you do not need all the fancy features like selective adjustments, you may want to give a photo editing app a try that you already own: Apple’s Photos App (which I rarely use to edit photos).
If you’re still looking for your perfect iPhone camera app, you may want to check my list of the best iPhone camera apps I rely on. I also have a similar list for the best iPhone photo accessories I use during my trips.
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