The best photo editing apps for your phone or tablet

Up your photo editing game

While many Android manufacturers offer basic photo editing functions in their default gallery apps, Google Photos and third-party apps tend to be more robust. The Google Play Store is filled with dozens of such apps and choosing one based on your preference can turn out to be a cumbersome experience. Here's a few of our favorite photo editing apps.

Adobe Photoshop Express – Best for Creative Cloud users

If you are already paying for a Creative Cloud subscription, you can’t go wrong with this one. Photoshop for Android allows selective editing to create striking contrast or make a cohesive photo. You can use advanced healing to remove unwanted elements, remove noise, create collages, add personalized watermark, and post it directly to your social media feed with a single tap.

The best part is, you can start editing a photo on mobile, upload it to your Adobe account, and continue editing the same with the convenience of the desktop and web.

Cost: Free / $20 - $53 per month

Google Photos – Best for Google One users

Google has been steadily improving Google Photos with new image editing add-ons. A few editing features are exclusive to Google One subscribers though. If you subscribe to a Google One plan, you'll gain acess to Google Photos' advanced features that let you add background blur, desaturate backgrounds, enhance photos with Smart suggestions, and twek HDR to enhance brightness and contrast.

Google Photos shines in automation. It will regularly suggest creating a collage, GIF, video, or panoramic image from the uploaded media library.

Cost: Free / $2 per month

PhotoDirector – Best for animating images

Don’t get envious of your friend’s smashing Instagram post with animating decorations. You can apply the same effects to your photos using the PhotoDirector app on Android. Apart from 700+ animated effects, you can glance over 100+ sky replacements to change the image mood, try amazing backgrounds, and even remove unwanted objects from the photo.

Cost: Free / $55 per year

Canva – Best for graphic design on the go

Don’t dismiss Canva as a just a graphic design tool. While it’s mostly useful for creating eye-catching social media posters with a rich template library, Canva does come with capable photo editing tools. You can apply different effects, filters, adjust saturation, brightness, and even utilize crop tools to make changes.

You can save changes to your Canva account and continue editing on the Canva web. With a Canva Pro account, you can unlock more editing tools and schedule Instagram posts as well. Neat, isn’t it?

Cost: Free / $120 per year

Photo Lab Picture Editor – Best for creating stylized images

Photo Lab Picture Editor offers a vast collection of stylish photo effects. To our pleasant surprise, the app has already adopted Google’s Material You theme engine. Developers have neatly divided filters into different categories, and you won’t have a hard time finding your preferred art style. The effects work best for portrait photos with a clean background to detect the face and apply the selected style.

Cost: Free / $30 per year

Pixlr – Best for making collages

One of the benefits of Pixlr is that it doesn’t require you to go through any lengthy set up process. Simply download the app, give relevant permissions, and start editing photos with tons of functions. Pixlr beats every rival with striking collages templates. Select a template, add images from device storage, and your collage is ready for sharing on social media platforms.

Cost: Free / $1 - $12 per item

Prisma – Best for filters

Prisma created a lot of hype whe it launched on the Google Play Store. With a single tap, you can turn your ordinary photos into memorizing paintings. Prisma’s art filters are truly next level, and you will surely stumble upon something you like. Once you apply the filter to an image, you can further fine-tune the exposure, contrast, brightness, and saturation.

With Prisma Premium, you can comfortably switch between Prisma mobile and web to complete the image editing.

Cost: Free / $1 - $50 per item

TouchRetouch – Best for removing unwanted objects

Your perfect photo might get spoiled by unwanted telephone wires, photobombers, street signs, and trash cans. Enter the TouchRetouch app to remove these objects to get a flawless result in return. With Blemish Remover, you can remove minor details such as face pimples as well. You don’t need to be precise while selecting an object, the app is smart enough to detect and erase it from memory.

Cost: $2 (one-time payment)

Instasize – Best for Instagram users

It’s time to up your Instagram game with Instasize on Android. Whether its filters, text, or photo backgrounds, Instasize's features are designed with Instagram users in mind. You can create collages, insert frames, add fun patterns like glitter, marble, holidays, color, add text, and go through dozens of filters to create the perfect photo for your next Instagram post.

Cost: Free / $1 - $21 per item

---

These mobile apps won’t give you those powerful desktop image editing tools, but they should be good enough to create an acceptable photo for social sharing on the go. Check out some of our favorite Google Photos tips and tricks if you need some help keeping all your snazzy new photos organized.