Lightroom's mobile app lets you do deep post-shot editing and shoot in raw format on the iPhone (Android phones can do this within the native camera app) for more leeway in correcting exposure, white balance, and other aspects of your images. You can also take photos with filters, such as a black-and-white one. Otherwise, adaptive presets for portraits and skies, auto people and object selection, content-aware object removal, and basic video tools are all at your disposal. The free version gives you a decent selection of editing tools and filters, while a paid subscription adds cloud storage and more effects, such as healing, masking, and suggested presets.

Platforms: Android, iOS, web

Afterlight is an impressively powerful and feature-rich iPhone app that's nevertheless easy to use. The free version offers a good set of basic editing features—contrast, cropping, exposure, saturation, and so on—but many of its best tools are available only in the paid version. Paid account perks include advanced HSL filters, gradients, material and text overlays, sharpness tools, and tone curve editing. The company periodically adds new film and VHS-like filters.

Platforms: iOS

The mobile version of Apple Photos lets you apply especially cool edits to pictures you take on your iPhone or iPad, including Long Exposure and Bounce effects for Live Photos. With iOS 18.1 or later and an iPhone 16 or 15 Pro, you get nifty AI features like Clean Up to remove distractions from photos and Visual Look Up to get info about a place in your image. The app supports Apple’s ProRaw, which combines the advantages of raw camera formats with Apple’s computational photography wizardry. The app looks and feels slick, and features all the standard exposure and color adjustments you could want. Apple Photos also excels at organizing and finding particular photos, using on-device AI to help you search for specific objects and people. For sharing images, you have a choice of Shared Albums and iCloud links.

Platforms: iOS

Aside from letting you store photos in the cloud, Google Photos has top-notch organization features. Free users get a full set of editing tools for adjusting contrast and exposure, along with those for adding text, creating nifty collages, cropping, and drawing overlays. The app also has effective filters, including Airy, Dynamic, HDR, Luminous, and Radiant. If you sign up for the company’s Google One subscription, you get unlimited saves for the AI-based Magic Editor features, which let you remove or move objects around while recreating the background. Google Photos also offers superb search tools for finding pictures based on places, people, and objects. Finally, its Memories albums remind you of the good times, as determined by AI.

Platforms: Android, iOS, web

Picsart is a do-everything photo app. It has a seemingly endless assortment of editing and enhancement tools. On top of that, it includes a dedicated social space for sharing photos and an AI text-to-photo image generator. Members can participate in challenges, as well as follow topics and creators. You can instantly remove backgrounds from portraits and replace them with textures and whatever you like. Its best editing features require a paid account, however.

Platforms: Android, iOS, web

Like Lightroom and Picsart, Polarr has a social community and tools for editing and embellishing photos. The app is available on all major desktop platforms in addition to mobile and the web. Aside from the standard editing tools for adjusting brightness, contrast, shadows, and so on, it has a wealth of gradients, overlays, and retouching and transformation tools. You get tone curve editing, as well as LUT and raw camera file support, too. The cropping tool is strong, but there’s no auto-leveling. The Polarr community often creates and shares custom filters. A paid subscription gets you the full editing toolset, new content and styles weekly, and the company’s video-filter app called 24FPS.

Platforms: Android, iOS, web

Polish is a freemium app with impressive photo editing chops. It has Photoshop-like tools such as masking and a Prisma-type ability to transform your photo with AI-powered art style transfers. You can do plenty for free, but the most dazzling effects and tools require a Pro subscription for continuous feature updates. The Pro edition removes the plentiful ads and gives you the current crop of features.

Platforms: Android, iOS

One of the original innovators among mobile photo editing apps, Snapseed became part of Google’s portfolio in 2012. It still has some sturdy photo-improving tools, though it hasn't seen many new features in a while. Snapseed uses a unique interface in which you swipe your finger left or right to make an adjustment or up and down to choose the adjustment itself. It lets you edit raw camera files (but only in DNG format) and JPGs. Editing tools include Healing Brush, HDR, Perspective, and Structure (sharpness). One big plus is that the app is completely free with no upsells.

Platforms: Android, iOS

VSCO is a longtime maker of filters for professional photographers. Its app has film-look presets and hundreds of filters, along with all the standard correction and editing functions you expect. Like some other apps in this list, it offers a community for photographers. The app experienced a moment of notoriety several years back with what was known as the VSCO girl movement. VSCO Spaces targets just that community, letting approved participants contribute, share, and discuss posts. It also supports direct messaging between creators. VSCO's interface is modern and clear, but editing takes a backseat to the social aspect. We like that it supports raw camera files and gives you advanced tools such as Split Tone and HSL editing. Video editing capabilities have also started making their way into the app. You have to pay to unlock all of its tools, however.

Platforms: Android, iOS