Review of Photomator and why I switched to it from Lightroom Mobile
Photomator is an excellent alternative to Adobe Lightroom Mobile. I say this confidently because I switched to Photomator after using Lightroom Mobile since it was released. In this Photomator review, I’ll provide an overview of its features, where it excels and which features are missing compared to Lightroom Mobile.
- Why I switched from Adobe Lightroom Mobile to Photomator
- Features of Photomator
- Beyond the Features of Photomator
- The verdict: Would I switch from Lightroom Mobile to Photomator again?
Why I switched from Adobe Lightroom Mobile to Photomator
I switched from Lightroom to Photomator in June 2025 mainly because of the new and more expensive pricing model announced by Adobe.
I took this opportunity to re-evaluate Photomator for editing my iPhone travel photos. For the evaluation, I re-edited around 50 photos I previously edited with Lightroom Mobile. As of June 2025, Photomator has almost all the features I need. For the missing features I need, I can use other photo editing apps.
As a context, please mind, I exclusively edit travel photos. I don’t do e.g. portrait photos.
Features of Photomator
In the following list, I cover the relevant features of Photomator for my travel photography.
Available on All Major Apple Platforms
Photomator is available on iOS, iPadOS, on macOS and even on VisionOS for Apple’s Vision Pro. I use it exclusively on iPhone and iPad, so I can’t say much about how well it works on the other platforms.
As of June 2025, a yearly subscription for Photomator costs either 34.99 USD per year or is available for a one-time purchase of 119 USD for lifetime. With the new Adobe pricing, even the lifetime purchase is chapter than a full-year subscription of Adobe Lightroom Mobile. The cheapest Lightroom Plan is 11.99 per Month, totalling 143.88 USD.
Excellent iOS integration
The excellent iOS Integration is the first feature I’d like to highlight. Instead of its own library, Photomator uses the iOS Photo Library and all of its features. For example, if you add a photo to your favorites in Photomator, it also becomes a favorite in the iOS photo library and vice versa.
Moreover, you can also “accept” or “decline” a photo in Photomator and add a star rating to it. But as the iOS Photo Library does not support that feature, Photomator simply adds accepted, declined or rated photos to a dedicated album.
Photomator also supports nested iOS albums. That helps you to keep your photos organized. This is a helpful feature because Photomator does not support tags like Lightroom Mobile does. So I solve that problem by adding a photo to one or more albums to simulate tags.
For example, I have a “Best of” Folder. It contains an additional folder for each photo topic, which can be e.g. “landscapes”, “cityscapes” or “lost places”.
Inside the “lost places” folder, I generate an album with the name of e.g. the lost place. In the “landscape” folder I have a folder for each country like e.g. “Ireland” and in the “cityscape” folder I have an album for each city.
A photo can be in multiple albums in the iOS Photo App. For example, a photo of the abandoned “Teufelsberg” in Berlin can be in the album “Berlin” in the “cityscape” folder and the “Teufelsberg” album in the “lost places” folder.
Edits in Photomator are non-destructive because it saves the edited photo as a new version, just like the iOS Photo App does. This way, you can easily revert to the original capture.
However, Photomator does not support multiple versions of photo edits like Lightroom does. I see that as a minor issue for me.
Clean User-Interface
One of the main reasons I turned to Photomator instead of other Lightroom alternatives is its extremely clean user interface on all platforms. I really love that. You basically have 5 main menus, which are:
- Apply recommended settings based on machine learning
- Cropping and perspective correction settings
- Remove objects
- Display Adjustments
- Additional ML-based adjustments like “Super Resolution” and “Denoise”, that you can apply to your entire photo.
You can see these main menu items in the following screenshot. I’ve added a dashed line around them.
Photomator User Interface
At the bottom (on iPhone) or on the right side (on iPad) you get the adjustment panels once you tap the proper main menu item. You can simply turn them on if you want to use them or turn them off. If you turn them off, they’re collapsed and do not consume much screen real estate.
Supported file formats
Photomator by Pixelmator supports many photo formats. I've successfully tested importing old RAWs from my Nikon, DNG RAW files shot with ProCamera, JPGs and photos that I took in HEIF format.
Of course, Photomator supports Apple ProRAW, too.
Selective Masks
One of the most important features for me is to be able to use a “selective mask”. With such a selective mask, I select a certain part of the photo and apply adjustments to it. Photomator excels here.
You can either create a selective mask using machine learning by asking Photomator to select the sky, the main subject or a color range. Here’s a screenshot illustrating how Photmator created a selective mask for the main subject of the photo. The mask is highlighted in red.
Seletive mask in Photomator
Once you’ve created a selective mask and scroll down the adjustments panel, you’ll always see a small drop-down on the left. In the screenshot above, it says “subject”. From this drop-down, you can easily select the mask or the entire image if you’ve created multiple masks. This makes switching masks and applying adjustments to different parts of the photo so easy.
Then you can refine a selective mask by adding or subtracting areas using a brush or by simply inverting the selection. I love how simple that is.
You can apply a more meaningful name than “Subject” to the mask if you’ve created multiple masks. That helps managing and selecting the right mask during the editing process.
Adjustments
Photomator offers all the major adjustments you’d expect from an app like this e.g. exposure, shadows, lights, blackpoint, white point, clarity, structure, colors, saturation, selective color adjustments, just to name a few.
Just like in Lightroom Mobile, the adjustments are grouped. You can see the adjustment groups in the screenshot below. To use an adjustment in a group, just enable the group by flipping the switch on the right.
If you tap the “ML-Button”, Photomator will apply suggested adjustments from the adjustment group to the photo or mask (if selected). That’s a great starting point for your edits.
Adjustment groups in Photomator
There’s only one adjustment I miss a little bit, and that is the “dehaze” adjustment that’s available in Lightroom Mobile. But I’ll try to figure out another way how to simulate it and write about it here as soon as I find it.
LUTs and Presets
Photomator uses LUTs and Adjustment Presets. A LUT is basically a custom color adjustment setting for a photo that you can apply with a click. But Photmator also supports presets, which are in many forms similar to a LUT with one major difference: a LUT is a standard format for applying color correction. A LUT file with not only work in Photomator but also in other editing software from photo to video editing.
A preset is Photomator’s way of saving adjustments that you can later re-use and apply to other photos.
As I don’t do video editing and thus need no sharable color adjustments file, I mainly use the presets to save adjustments.
Super Resolution
Super Resolution is the one single feature that I’ve been using even while I used Lightroom mobile. By applying super resolution, you’ll basically upscale a photo using machine learning. The results are stunning. Here’s an old photo from a DSLR where I lost the original. I only had a 1024 pixel wide version, and Photomator created a 22 megapixel version of it. I’ve been using this in the past to upscale some older photos and some photos that I print on canvas for my apartment.
Photomator Super-Resolution
Instead of uploading the full 22 megapixel photo here, I encourage you to download Photomator from the App Store and try that feature yourself during the free trial period.
Denoise
Denoise is an important feature for me. Especially for denoising the sky in night photos or dark areas in lost places. Photomator supports two ways for denoising. The first one is via the “grain” adjustment. Slide it to the left to soften the grain a bit. From my first 50 edited photos, I didn’t need all the fine denoise adjustments I have in Lightroom Mobile.
The machine learning denoise removes the noise very well from large areas like skies and uniform color areas, while keeping the details of the rest intact.
Denoise your photos using Machine-Learning
Once you’ve applied the machine-learning based denoise from the document menu, you can adjust its intensity in %. You’ll also get a split-screen view with a slider you can use to check all the sensitive areas of your photo to see if the details are still intact.
Perspective Correction
The perspective correction options in Photomator are a bit simple compared to the ones in Lightroom Mobile. Photomator only supports horizontal and vertical perspective correction but, for example, does not support fixing barrel distortion you may get from an ultra-wide or fisheye lens. To overcome this limitation, I recommend to check out SKRWT App, which I use.
Retouching
Retouching is the one feature where Photomator is way behind Lightroom with it’s AI-features. This feature is a simple removal brush that feels a bit outdated to me.
But on the other hand, there are other alternatives that I can use. First of all I can use the eraser feature of Apple Intelligence or I use TouchRetouch (which I do most of the time).
Beyond the Features of Photomator
Pixelmator vs. Photomator
Just to avoid confusion, please note that the developers for Photomator, a company named “Pixelmator”, also sells a photo editing software named “Pixelmator”. That’s basically a replacement for Photoshop. Pixelmator ships in two versions: The simple “Pixelmator”, that’s also available on iOS and Pixemator Pro, which is only available on MacOS.
My Workflow using Photomator
My Workflow also became easier using Photomator and right now, it looks like this:
- Cull through my photos and select 15 photos to edit. I add these 15 photos to a dedicated album.
- Next, I open and edit the photos in Photomator and select 7 photos by adding them to my favorites. These are the photos you usually see in my blog posts.
- As the last step, I use third-party apps like SKRWT or TouchRetouch to add finishing touches to my photos that Photomator does not support.
Previously, when I used Lightroom Mobile, I exported the edited photo to the Photos App and hid the original photo to avoid a cluttered photo library. I don’t need that step anymore. Also, I don’t need to import my Photos into Photomator, like I needed to do with Adobe Lightroom.
The verdict: Would I switch from Lightroom Mobile to Photomator again?
Yes, I definitely would switch from Lightroom Mobile to Photomator again under the same circumstances (pricing!). Photomator is a true Lightroom alternative for mobile photo editing. I consider the limited retouching brush and limited perspective correction as minor issues because I can overcome them using other apps that I already own.
Photomator, SKRWT and TouchRetouch now are my main three apps I use for photo editing on iPhone and iPad on the go.
You can get Photomator directly from the App Store.
I recommend Photomator for everyone looking for a Lightroom-like photo editing app experience that’s extremely well integrated into the iOS and iPadOS. Specifically, if you don’t want to deal with the hassle of managing a secondary library outside the Photos App.
