Back in the mists of time, Adobe's Photoshop was the killer app that gave the Mac credibility in a world of Windows PCs, and established the Mac as the favoured tool of creative users. So it's apt that Adobe has just released a new native version of Photoshop designed for the new generation of M1 or 'Apple Silicon' Macs. And it gives the new Macs its seal of approval by stating that many filters and other effects run up to 50% faster on the new models.

And, of course, Photoshop's selection of filters and creative tools is unrivalled, with the ability to quickly and easily select and replace objects within an image, versatile masks and layers for creating composite images, and - following the fashion for AI technology - a number of neural filters that can alter colour within scenes, repair blemishes and even alter someone's expression or make them look older. You can even remove the sky from a scene if you don't like it and drop a new sky into the background.

Admittedly, Adobe's insistence on monthly subscription fees for using Photoshop and other Adobe software has opened the door to rivals that simply charge a one-time fee, but Photoshop still rules the roost when it comes to the sheer depth, precision and creative freedom that it provides, and with plans starting at £9.98 per month it's still pretty competitive.

Paying that monthly fee also ensures that users get instant access to new features and updates as soon as they become available, with the most recent update including a new super-resolution feature for increasing the resolution of RAW image files while maintaining clarity and detail, according to Adobe.

There are various ways to get Photoshop on your Mac. You can subscribe to Photoshop on its own, or as part of a bundle. You can pay for one year, or pay monthly. And you may be able to take advantage of a Students & Teachers or Schools & Universities deal.

The Photography Plan is the best deal. It include Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC (for web and mobile), and Lightroom Classic CC (for desktop). All that costs £9.98/$9.99 a month but you have to sign up for a year. You get 20GB storage included (there's a 1TB storage option that costs about £10/$10 more a month). Sign up on Adobe's website.

Alternatively you can get the single app for £19.97/$20.99 a month if you sign up for a year, or £30.34/$31.49 a month if you just pay on a monthly basis (which will mean you can cancel later). Sign up on Adobe's website.

There's also a Business option where you can get a single licence for £25.28 (ex VAT)/$33.99 a month. All the Adobe CC apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and Acrobat, cost £59 (ex VAT)/$79.99 a month. Sign up on Adobe's website. 

The Pixelmator range is a little confusing. There are two mobile versions - Pixelmator for iPhone, and Pixelmator Photo for the iPad - and two Mac versions. The original Mac version of Pixelmator that we reviewed a couple of years ago has now been renamed Pixelmator Classic and costs £28.99, while Pixelmator Pro sits at the top of the range, and was recently updated to v2.0.

Many of the new features in v2.0 were what you might call housekeeping updates, providing full compatibility with macOS 11 Big Sur, and improving performance with native support for the new generation of Apple Silicon Macs. However, there's no doubt that the program provides impressive editing power at a very competitive price.

There are precise tools for selecting objects and colours, and both preset and customizable brush styles, all of which are neatly arranged in a palette that runs down the right-hand side of the main editing window.

Over on the left you'll find the Layers palette, which is key to using many of the app's more powerful features. You can create both raster (bitmap) and vector layers, and use masks to isolate specific parts of a layer or image, and there are powerful and precise histograms for adjusting colour and lighting.

The program also provides a useful selection of text and vector graphics tools, so that you can design documents that go beyond pure photography.

It's not, admittedly, the most intuitive program for newcomers to get to grips with, and tends fill the screen with controls and palettes and just assume that you know what you're doing. However, the recent 2.0.6 update added some new video tooltips that can help to explain how many of the main tools work, and point you towards some online tutorials if you need a little more help.

Pixelmator Pro is a real bargain at just £38.99/$39.99, and there's a 15-day free trial available too. You can download Pixelmator Pro from the Mac App Store.

Affinity Photo provides impressive editing power for less than £50 - and, at the time of this review was on special offer for just £23.99.

The app's list of features is long and - for less experienced users - might seem somewhat intimidating, but a key feature of Affinity Photo is its use of personas that help to streamline your workflow.

There are five personas available within Affinity, selected using a simple set of icons up in the top-left corner of the main toolbar. These include Photo, Liquify, Develop, Tone Mapping and Export, and each persona provides a custom workspace that focuses on a specific set of tools.

When you import a RAW image file, the program automatically switches to the Develop persona, which displays controls for quickly adjusting exposure, lighting levels, saturation, and also metadata for each file.

Once you've developed your photos as required, you can switch into the Photo persona, which includes the program's main editing tools. These include powerful layer controls, retouching tools, and an inpainting brush that allows you to select and remove entire objects from an image.

There's an extensive selection of filters and effects, including a handy haze-removal filter, and if you really want to get creative with special effects you can delve into the Liquify persona. This superimposes a mesh grid over your images and provides a variety of tools for selecting and distorting specific parts of the image.

When you're finished you can use the Export persona to convert your work into a variety of formats, including SVG for the web or PDF for print and press.

Admittedly, Affinity Photo's sheer variety of tools can be a little daunting, but Serif offers a free trial that lasts for a full 90-days, so you can take your time getting to know the program before making up your mind.

Many people are confused about the differences between Photoshop and its younger sibling, Lightroom, so let's start by briefly outlining the key differences between the two.

Photoshop is the 900lb photo-editing gorilla, a behemoth that provides a dazzling range of precise and creative editing tools that really allow you to delve into the pixels of individual images. In contrast, Lightroom is lighter on its feet, providing a more streamlined workflow for photographers who shoot lots of photos on a daily basis and need quick tools for organizing and fine-tuning their work.

Lightroom starts by providing image management tools for storing and organizing large collections of photos. You can add ratings and flags to your photos in order to highlight the best shots, edit metadata, and use keywords to quickly search through your photo library.

Once you've located the photos that you want to work with, you can 'develop' your photos by enhancing lighting and colour, and using Lightroom's presets and filters to quickly make changes to groups of images all at once.

Lightroom does provide some more traditional editing tools - such as the ability to remove the dreaded red-eye, and a spot removal brush to remove blemishes from portrait shots - but it doesn't attempt to match Photoshop's full armoury of precision editing tools and creative effects.

Like Photoshop, Lightroom now requires a monthly subscription fee, but this is where things get a bit complicated. If you tend to work on the move with both Macs and mobile devices, then you'll probably prefer the main Lightroom Plan. This simply includes Lightroom on its own and provides 1TB of online storage so that you can share your work across all your devices, for £9.98 per month. Sign up on Adobe's website.

But, if you mainly work on a Mac and store most of your work on the Mac's own internal hard drive, then you might want to choose one of Adobe's Photography Plans instead. As we detailed in the section about Photoshop, these plans include Photoshop and Lightroom - as well as the more desktop-oriented Lightroom Classic.

The Photography Plan starts at £9.98/$9.99 a month if you sign up for a year. However, you only get 20GB of online storage with this plan, although there are more expensive subscriptions available that provide additional storage too. You get 20GB storage included with this plan (there's a 1TB storage option that costs about £10/$10 more a month). Sign up on Adobe's website.

DxO makes a number of apps that focus on specific tasks, such as processing RAW images or adjusting perspective, but PhotoLab 4 is its main general-purpose editing tool.

There are two versions available, starting at £115/$129 for PhotoLab 4 Essential, which can be activated on two separate devices - handy if you want to use it on both a laptop and desktop Mac (or maybe switch between a Mac and PC).

PhotoLab 4 Essential starts with its PhotoLibrary mode, which provides some quick tools for sorting through large collections of photos and organizing them into projects.

Once you've selected a photo you can click the Customize tab to switch into the main editing workspace. This shows metada in a palette on the left-hand side of the workspace, while the main editing tools sit over on the right-hand side.

For quick edits you can simply select one of the program's presets, such as black-and-white, HDR, or atmosphere. However, there's also a series of tabs that provide access to more precise manual controls for colour and lighting, as well as geometry controls for adjusting focal length, distance and distortion. There's also a handy option for adding text or graphics watermarks.

More experienced photographers who work with RAW files most of the time can also opt for PhotoLab Elite, which costs £179/$199 and allows you to activate the app on three different devices.

This version adds DxO's DeepPrime aritifical intelligence technology, which is used to reduce noise and mosaic effects on RAW photos, and claims to work especially well on photos taken in low light conditions.

The company also has a database of thousands of different camera and lens combinations so that DeepPrime knows how to produce the best results for your own particular camera set-up.

The app's interface is rather dense, and assumes a fair amount of photo-editing experience, but there's a 30-day trial version of PhotoLab Elite available so that you have plenty of time to try it out before buying.