Recommended iPhone Photo Editing Apps I use (2024)
One of the most frequent questions about my iPhone photos, I still get in 2024 is about the iPhone photo editing apps: Which is the best? The answer to this question is quite personal, but as a starting point, the best iPhone photo editing apps are the ones that support your of editing requirements.
In this blog post, I'll list my personal selection of the best iPhone photo editing apps and a few alternatives I tested. I've been using some of the apps since they were released. Please understand this list as a starting point to help you find your favorite iPhone photo editing apps.
Table of Contents:
- My requirements for iPhone photo editing apps
- Best photo editing apps iPhone (and iPad)
- Bonus Apps
- Summary
My requirements for iPhone photo editing apps
As a travel photographer, I mainly take photos of landscapes, cityscapes and lost places. For editing these photos I need photo editing apps on my iPhone and iPad that help me 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
And for these tasks I use a small set of photo editing apps on my iPhone and iPad that I’ll share with you in the next chapters.
Best photo editing apps iPhone (and iPad)
The following recommendations come from several years of using the apps and continuously trying out new apps. For your convenience, I’ve added some of the apps I tried as an alternative to my recommended apps.
Adobe Lightroom Mobile is the best overall photo editing app for iPhone and iPad
Adobe Lightroom mobile has been my main photo editing app for iPhone and iPad for years for one simple reason: it offers is the most complete package of editing features I need.
Adobe Lightroom Mobile on iPhone and iPad
Let’s see, how good Lightroom Mobile fulfills my five photo editing requirements:
I can remove simple objects from photos. As of 2024, Adobe added an AI-based feature for removing objects which works okayish.
I can fix all kinds of perspective distortions if they’re not too heavy.
Lightroom Mobile is the king of selective adjustments. I can select different parts of an image either manually or with AI support and apply selective adjustments.
Of course, Lightroom Mobile can open and edit classic RAW and Apple ProRAW photos.
Lightroom Mobile allows very fine granular settings to denoise photos-
In addition to the above five key features I need, Adobe Lightroom offers some fascinating features:
- It allows you to blur the background of a photo, simulating depth of field using AI
- Color grading shadows, mid-tones, and highlights
- Applying and creating presets
Sure, you'll need to purchase a subscription to use all the features of Lightroom Mobile. In my Lightroom Mobile Premium review I’ve outlined what's included in a subscription and why a subscription is worth the money.
So in my opinion, Lightroom Mobile is the best iPhone photo editing app if you’re looking for a complete set of editing features. But beware: Lightroom Mobile is not a photo editing app for filter enthusiasts - though you can create your filters (aka presets) in Lightroom.
Alternatives for Lightroom Mobile
Honestly, it’s difficult to provide an alternative for Lightroom mobile that offers the same feature set and that is either free or available for a one-time payment.
However, if you don’t need all the fancy features of Lightroom, you may want to consider looking at Photomator. I’ve posted a review of Photomator in my blog. Photomater is centered around filters with some editing features, but one feature I really miss in Photomator is the ability to apply selective adjustments.
Another interesting alternative may be Adobe Photoshop Express which I reviewed in my blog. It offers many features similar to Lightroom, like masking and applying selective adjustments, but in a slightly stripped down version. Still, these features may still be interesting and valuable for you.
Touch Retouch is the best photo editing app for removing objects from photos
Touch Retouch is another evergreen and recommended photo editing app on this list. It survived many spring cleanings on my iPhone, and I've used it since it was released in 2011.
TouchRetouch on iPad and iPhone
Touch Retouch is the best app for retouching photos, from removing blemishes to removing people to removing fences and even entire structures. Given how many great iPhone photo editing apps were abandoned by their developers, I appreciate the developers of Touch Retouch for having updated this recommended iPhone photo editing app regularly during the past few years. Thanks!
Touch Retouch is one of the recommended photo editing apps I mentioned in the introduction. It does one thing and does it extremely well.
Touch Retouch works on iPhones and iPads. On iPad, it even supports the Apple Pencil. Of course, I have an extensive Touch Retouch review for you in the blog.
Alternative for Touch Retouch
Finding an alternative for the Touch Retouch photo editing app for iPhone is difficult. I haven’t found one so far. There is a retouching feature in Lightroom Mobile, that even uses AI. But I’ve been using Touch Retouch for so long that using my HI (human intelligence) with this app produces far better results.
Another app that I use increasingly for retouching photos is Adobe Photoshop on iPad, which I’ve also added as a recommended iPhone photo editing app in the bonus section.
Use SKRWT App to fix perspective distortions
SKRWT app is another recommended photo editing app that does one thing and does it very well: It allows you to fix perspective distortions on iPhone and iPad.
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
Screenshot SKRWT on iPad and iPhone showing 4PNTS and SKRWT modules
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.
Alternative for SKRWT App
If you only need to fix slight perspective distortions, you may want to try the native iOS photos app. It allows you to fix horizontal and vertical perspective distortions without loss of image resolution. Of course, you’ll also find a perspective correction feature in Lightroom Mobile that works quite well.
Other photo editing apps for iPhone I tried
I use the apps in this category occasionally. But who knows, someday one of the apps listed here may replace an app from the category above.
Adobe Photoshop Express is excellent for quickly applying adjustments to your photos
I began using Adobe Photoshop Express more extensively in 2022, mainly editing snapshots. I have no idea why Adobe calls this app Photoshop Express. Personally, I'd call it Lightroom Express. But independently of how I'd call this app, Photoshop Express offers several modules:
- A photo editor to manually adjust basic settings like lights, shadows, or colors or to apply predefined looks. You may know these looks like presets from Lightroom: a bunch of adjustments you can use with one click and then adjust them individually.
- A face retouching module for beauty retouching. With this AI-driven module, you can make people smile or add makeup.
- A photo combination module to combine two photos (a foreground and a background image) into a single photo
- A collage module to create photo collages.
From these features, I want to highlight the AI-driven masking feature that I can use to quickly select either the fore- or background and apply adjustments to the selection.
This feature may sound similar to the one in Lightroom mobile. However, the masking feature in Lightroom mobile is more sophisticated, allowing you to add or remove multiple parts of a mask. You can't do that in Photoshop Express
Moreover, you can use many editing features like the photo editing module of Adobe Photoshop Express right in the Photos App: It supports in-place editing for photos that are below 20 megapixels.
You'll need a premium subscription to use all Adobe Photoshop Express features. If you subscribe to one of the Adobe photography plans, you'll get a premium subscription of Photoshop Express as a bonus in addition to Adobe Lightroom Mobile Premium and/or Adobe Photoshop Premium (depending on the subscription).
To learn more, head to my Adobe Photoshop Express review. It works on iPhone and iPad.
Photoshop for iPad is excellent for sophisticated photo editing on iPad
After its release in 2019, Photoshop for iPad received a lot of negative press; feature-wise, it's still not even close to Photoshop on a computer.
But Adobe has added frequently requested features since then, and I've been using Photoshop for iPad more and more. Finally, In 2023, it made it to the list of recommended photo editing apps I use regularly.
Don't get me wrong: Photoshop for iPad is not even close to feature parity with Photoshop on the desktop. But as of 2023, it has almost all the features I need for editing photos on iPad:
- Great integration with Lightroom mobile on iPad: Send a photo to Photoshop on iPad, edit it, and send it back to Lightroom
- Generative AI using Adobe Firefly, like generative extend and generative fill to remove or add objects to a photo
- AI-driven background removal
- Gaussian blur (e.g., to simulate depth of field), liquifying objects, content-aware fill to remove objects from a photo, and much more.
To use all features of Photoshop on iPad, you'll need a paid subscription to a photography plan which includes Adobe Lightroom mobile premium and Adobe Photoshop Express premium.
If, you're wondering if Photoshop for iPad replaces tools like Touch Retouch and SKRthe TW app: if you're editing solely on iPad, then the answer is yes. But the answer is no, as I still edit my photos, mainly on my iPhone. I've used my iPad for more sophisticated edits in the past while I still do most of my edits on my iPhone. And I see no reason to change that anytime soon.
The verdict of the best photo editing apps for iPhone
This is a personal list of the best iPhone photo editing apps for 2024 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’d ask me to recommend just a single photo editing app for iPhone, then it would be Lightroom Mobile. 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)
