Deeper Dive: Our Top Tested Picks

• Adobe Lightroom

  Best for Pro Photo Workflow

  4.5 Excellent

  You're probably familiar with Adobe's top-notch photo workflow software, Lightroom (not to be confused with Lightroom Classic), but you may not realize its web version is nearly as powerful. You get all the lighting and color corrections, raw camera file support with raw profiles, noise reduction, lens profile corrections, and effects like Clarity and Texture that you get in the desktop version. You also get AI-recommended presets and a photo-sharing community. The web version requires the same $9.99-per-month subscription as the installed Lightroom.

  • Pros

    • Simple, clear interface
    • Syncs photos to cloud storage for access on other devices
    • Light, color, and detail adjustments equal to Lightroom Classic's
    • Powerful raw profiles and filters
    • Strong community features

  • Cons

    • Subscription only
    • No local printing or plug-in support
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• Colorcinch

  Best Low-Cost Online Editor

  Colorcinch sports a slick, well-designed desktop-like interface and includes Lightroom-like tools, such as Vibrance, alongside the more standard light- and color-adjustment tools. Many of these features are free, but only paying subscribers ($4.99 per month with an annual commitment) get cutting-edge features like AI background removal, color replacement, and Cartoonizer filters. The site doesn't support raw camera files or video, but you do get Photoshop-like tools, such as a fine selection of text overlays and brushes, though without the complexity of layers. You can upload photos to edit directly to Colorcinch or integrate with Google Drive to pull images from there. You can share your edited photos directly to Facebook, X, and Pinterest.

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• Fotor

  Best for AI Portrait Retouching

  3.0 Good

  Fotor has been around for more than a decade and is available both online and as downloadable installed software. The service has branched out from simple photo editing to offer portrait retouching, collages, templates, and even AI effects like those that transform images into the style of famous painters. You get fun tools like Color Splash, Lens Flare, and AI Art, which lets you mint NFTs. Other AI-powered tools include a background remover, an image enlarger, and an object remover. You do get text overlay and batch editing, but not layers and masking. There's no raw camera file support, and free accounts can't upload images over 20MB. Paid accounts remove ads and get cloud storage, effects, and stock photos.

  • Pros

    • Lots of cool photo effects
    • AI tools work well
    • Strong layout features

  • Cons

    • Disjointed interface
    • Weak raw camera file conversion
    • No photo organization
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• Google Photos

  Best for Organizing Photo Collections and Automatic Effects

  4.0 Excellent

  Google Photos gives you one of the best ways to organize and find the photos you're looking for. It also has a respectable selection of image correction and enhancement tools. The web app can handle raw camera files—including recent formats like Canon's CR3—which is impressive. It works with video files, too. But don't expect Photoshop-like image-editing features such as layers, noise reduction, brushes, and text overlays. You get nearly as many light-correction sliders as Lightroom has, though you don't get tone curves. The unique Pop slider is especially effective, and Google Photos uses AI to analyze your images and automatically create panoramas and more. The service excels at helping you find images based on location, people, and objects. You can share photos and albums either within Google Photos or to Facebook, X, or via a link. Google Photos comes with 15GB of free storage; a Google One plan starts at $1.99 per month for 100GB.

  • Pros

    • Attractive, ad-free interface
    • Impressive facial recognition
    • Well integrated with Android
    • Can buy low-cost books of your photos
    • Clever photo enhancements

  • Cons

    • No more free unlimited photo storage
    • Lacks step-by-step undo for editing
    • No blemish or red eye removal tools
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• Photopea

  Best Interface and Raw Camera File Support

  4.0 Excellent

  Photopea resembles an online version of Photoshop, or perhaps more accurately, GIMP. It includes masking (raster and vector), layers, raw camera file support, text overlays, drawing tools, and even some of Photoshop's more impressive features like Subject Select and Smart Objects. You can work with PSD and PDF, but Photopea couldn't open an HEIC file from a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. Unlike the web version of Lightroom, Photopea even takes over the browser's right-click context menus, so you can use those for editing functions rather than just for browser functions. Photopea includes templates for social image sizes like Facebook or YouTube cover pages as well as standard photo, print, screen, and mobile sizes.

  You lose some of Photoshop's cutting-edge tools like Neural AI-powered filters as well as some slickness and usability. Still, Photopea is an impressive feat of web functionality, and if you prefer a more application-like experience, you can install it as a progressive web app (PWA) and export to a choice of 16 formats, including JPG, PNG, SVG, and WebP. Photopea plays well with major online storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, but also includes its own Peadrive online storage. The web app is free to use, but a $5-per-month subscription removes a time limit on advanced features like subject selection and increases Peadrive storage from 0.5GB to 5GB, removes ads, and doubles the available history steps.

  • Pros

    • Surprising number of Photoshop features
    • No installation required
    • Clear interface and good help
    • Includes vector editing

  • Cons

    • Navigating away from page loses project
    • Some actions can be slow
    • Lacks some advanced Photoshop features
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• Pixlr-o-matic Plus

  Best Photoshop Replacement

  3.0 Good

  Pixlr is very much an online Photoshop clone, with brushes, gradients, wand selection, heal, clone, liquify, text tools, and even layers. That said, it's more like a clone of Photoshop from 10 years ago. It's one of the few online photo editors that includes noise reduction, but sadly, it doesn't accept raw camera files, making it less useful than it could be. Pixlr has some unique tools for an online photo editor, such as auto subject selection and animation. The free version comes with ads and only lets you save three edited images per month. A $1.99-per-month Plus subscription removes the ads, removes the limitation on saved images, and includes access to a mobile app.

  • Pros

    • Lots of cool photo effects.
    • Simple interface.
    • Fun effect randomizer.

  • Cons

    • No basic fixes for cropping, lighting, or color.
    • Some interface elements not relevant for mobile app.
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• Polarr

  Best for Special Effects and Face Tools

  Polarr may be best known for its mobile apps, but it also has a web-based photo editor at photoeditor.polarr.com. Free users get a good selection of lighting and color fixes, including vibrance, dehaze, and nifty toning adjusters (highlights, shadows, and so on) that work on particular color values. Pro subscribers ($7.99 monthly or $47.99 yearly) get selective adjustment, masking, detail, curve, HSL, LUTs, distortion tools, as well as a wealth of overlays such as flares, gradients, and light leaks. Everyone gets retouching, including automatic face enhancement and spot removal. There's a lot to like, but there's no support for raw camera files, and don't expect Photoshop-like layers.

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