Want to make your pictures pop but don't have the time or money to invest in a photo-editing tool? If you have a Mac, you're in luck. With the latest version of OS X Yosemite, Apple is including the new Photos app, which packs effective, comprehensive image-editing tools to help you enhance your shots. The free app is installed when you upgrade to OS X 10.3.3 (by going to the App Store program and clicking OS X Yosemite on the right). Photos is easy enough for beginners to learn but also offers more-advanced editors the ability to fine-tune details.

The program supports a wide range of image file types, including JPG, RAW, TIFF, PNG and GIF. You can make changes and undo them in Photos (by pressing Command-Z) until you settle on something you like. Also, the edits are 'nondestructive,' which means you can always revert to the original version of the photo.

MORE: How to Take Great Photos with a DSLR or Mirrorless Camera

Pixlr Editor was once available as a downloadable desktop app for Windows and Mac, but earlier this year its developer announced that the free photo editor would be going online-only.

We'll help you learn some key maneuvers, such as how to crop, straighten, adjust exposure and use filters tastefully so you can make your pictures better with Photos for OS X.

Crop and straighten for better composition

Photographers often talk about the rule of thirds: Place your picture's subject along the vertical and horizontal thirds of the frame for a more interesting and pleasing composition. If you weren't able to frame your shot perfectly, you can still adjust it by using the crop tool in Photos.

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Open your image; then click Edit on the top right of the program window.

Select the Crop button (third from the top) on the toolbar at the right.

Drag the brackets at the corners of your image, and use the grid lines on the screen to help compose your picture.

Turn the wheel on the right of the picture to tilt or rotate your shot. Again, use the grid lines on the screen to help make sure your picture is straight. When you're satisfied, hit the yellow Done button on the top right to save your changes.

Here's a before (left) and after (right) comparison:

Adjust lighting and exposure to recover detail

Sometimes, a photo that you snapped in a hurry turns out darker or lighter than you expected. You can recover details by tweaking values in the Light section of Photos. Be warned, though, that this tool can't fix pics that have been burned out. If part of an image looks completely white and is close to a light source, it's probably overexposed beyond rescue. But you still may be able to save enough of the picture to make it worthwhile.

To brighten an image, tap the Adjust button (fourth from the top) on the toolbar.

You can either drag the slider on the Light spectrum next to the picture, or click the down arrow next to the word 'Light' for more-precise controls, such as exposure, brightness and contrast.

Pull the sliders to adjust what you think is lacking. Moving a slider to the right increases the strength of that setting. For example, sliding right on Brightness makes the picture lighter, and doing the same on Highlights lightens up the brightest parts. If you want more precise control, you can double-click the number at the end of each row to type in a specific value (0 to 1 in two-decimal-place increments).

Mac Os Image Editor

As you are setting the brightness or exposure values, keep an eye on the live preview, especially the lightest and darkest parts, to ensure that you're not blowing out the brighter parts of your picture or making the dark parts turn grayish and grainy-looking.

Increase color saturation, fix white balance

A dull-looking image can get some oomph with a boost in saturation, making colors more vibrant and eye-catching. In the Colors area, you can edit saturation (richness of color), contrast and cast (white balance, or overall color cast).

I found the picture I took from a helicopter of the Manhattan skyline at dusk was too blue, especially in the foreground, so I opened it in Photos. When I clicked the magic-wand icon (first on the toolbar) for auto enhancement, Photos actually made the image even bluer.

So I went to adjust the Color settings myself. Dragging the Cast slider to the right, I managed to get a warmer (less-blue) white balance, bringing out the yellow, orange and red neon lights.

Before-and-after comparison:

Smooth away imperfections with the healing brush

One of my favorite new features in the Photos app is the healing brush (represented by a bandage on the toolbar). This baby makes imperfections — such as zits, scars or food stuck in your teeth — go away.

After clicking the bandage icon (last on the toolbar), select a brush size by dragging up and down on the vertical slider next to your image. You should set a size that's slightly larger than the offending mark and simply click on that spot. For smaller blemishes, I recommend zooming into the picture (pinch gesture on the touchpad) for a more natural-looking result.

Before-and-after comparison:

In one click, I got rid of a scar on my upper arm. Whenever possible, avoid dragging the healing brush on the picture, as that can create a smudged, artificial look.

If you're trying to get the blemish to blend in with a specific part of the picture, hold down the Option button, and click the point you want it to look like.

Add filters for an artsy feel

Give your memories a vintage look, or make them stand out, with one of Photos' eight filters. Filters work best when you want to evoke a specific mood, such as nostalgia for a Throwback Thursday portrait, or reverence with black-and-white for a memorial picture.

Select the Filters button from the toolbar, and apply one of the effects to your picture. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to adjust the intensity of the filter, as you can on Instagram.

Before-and-after comparison:

Be careful when applying a filter, though. A bad time to use filters is when your picture is supposed to depict exactly what a scene looked like. Apple's range of filters are Fade, Chrome, Process, Transfer, Instant and three monochrome (black and white) ones, Mono, Tonal and Noir.

Staff writer Cherlynn Low edits pictures on Photoshop, but also loves the simplicity of Photos. Follow her @cherlynnlow. Follow Tom's Guide at @tomsguide on Facebook.

When you think of image editors on any platform, your mind goes straight to Photoshop. For most of us, paying Adobe’s high costs will get us an app that does more than we really need or care to do. As a result, we feel Pixelmator will win the hearts of most users on the Mac. It handles just about every image editing task you’d think to throw at it, and for less than the cost of two months of a Photoshop subscription.

Pixelmator

Platform: OS X
Price: $30
Download Page

Features

• Layer-based workflow allows for flexible adjustments
• Several image adjustment tools for a variety of options
• Layer styles save time when creating common effects
• Includes a robust set of filters for image alteration and manipulation
• Supports importing and exporting several popular image formats
• Several helpful retouching tools, including a healing brush helps you easily remove unwanted blemishes and even objects in photos
• Beautiful filters for quick image enhancements, color changes, and popular “retro” looks
• Support for OS X Mavericks features like tags, multiple displays, and App Napp
• Excellent brushes and painting tools
• Over 160 awesome effects
• Open and save in PSD, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, and many other popular formats
• Save images in iCloud for automatic syncing across all your Macs
• Share photos directly from Pixelmator via email and to popular social networks
• Works seamlessly with existing Photoshop documents

Note: This doesn’t even begin to dive into the features in Photoshop, which are too long to name here. You can visit Adobe’s official Photoshop page to learn more, but even they don’t detail every single feature. Your best bet is to make use of their 30-day trial and explore for yourself.

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Where It Excels

Pixelmator does so much for such a low price. Thanks to Adobe, we’ve come to expect powerful image editing tools to cost at least a few hundred dollars. You can buy Pixelmator for only $30 and it’ll do most everything you need. Cost-efficiency doesn’t make an app worth buying, of course, but you can do so much with this one that it’s hard to believe the price is so low.

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If you take a look at the feature set you’ll notice it looks a lot like Photoshop’s. You won’t find some things (more on that later), but it can do the tasks most of us care about. You can repair photos with the healing brush, manipulate the structure of an image with the liquify tool, make all sorts of color adjustments with common tools like curves and levels but also employ filters for quick edits, save to a variety of formats (including Photoshop), and a ton more. Pixelmator has shapes and drawing tools, too, in case you’re creating images that aren’t just photos. You can add styles to those shapes, photos, or other elements quickly. The same works for layers. Pixelmator works a lot like Photoshop but with a more user-friendly and attractive interface. If you don’t feel like paying for Adobe software anymore, a small learning curve will have casual Photoshop users working well in Pixelmator very quickly.

Another huge advantage? Pixelmator is very fast. You don’t have to wait for much of anything. It utilizes a lot of OS X core technologies to stay optimized, and in version 3.0 FX the developers rebuilt its engine with speed enhancements in mind. The software just runs very quickly. For those with older hardware who feel Photoshop chugs along at too leisurely of a pace, Pixelmator will operate with less lag.

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Where It Falls Short

You’ll realize Pixelmator isn’t Photoshop in several areas if they pertain to you. It doesn’t have a Camera RAW plug-in, which is immensely useful for those who shoot in RAW. It’s practically an application in itself. Pixelmator also can’t handle HDR (only through artificial means) animation, 3D rendering, color management, fine-grained space-efficient web image export, and a variety of other specific tasks that you may or may not need. For most, these shortcomings will not matter. To photographers and designers, however, they might. Of course, if you focus on photography and require complex editing you may prefer using Photoshop Lightroom anyway, and can use Pixelmator for your other image editing needs. Regardless, if you don’t need anything mentioned here you won’t feel Pixelmator falls short at all.

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The Competition

If you don’t want to pay the hefty cost of Photoshop, you’ve come to the right section. Here are a few options that can help you do some of what Photoshop can do for a much lower price.

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Adobe Photoshop ($19 per month) still reigns king as the image editor of the “elite” but not of the people. If you need to handle more complex tasks or have every feature imaginable at your disposal, you want Photoshop. Of course, you’ll have to pay for that privilege. Photoshop, as many of us know, doesn’t come cheap.

GIMP (Free) has been the go-to open source image editor for awhile, and it can do many things Photoshop can do. If you prefer Photoshop’s interface, however, you might want to check out GIMPshop (Free) instead, as it is basically the same program made to emulate the style of Photoshop.

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Picture Editor For Mac Desktop

Seashore (Free) is another image editor based on the GIMP’s technology, but has an interface that fits more with Mac OS X. It also focuses on providing basic image editing tools for most users rather than acting as a full replacement for Photoshop (or other expensive image editing software). If you just need to make basic edits, it is worth a look.

Photoshop For Mac

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LiveQuartz ($2) is another simple image editor. It comes with layer support, brushes and other tools, plus a few basic filters. It’s another decent option for basic edits.

Pixen (Free) is a more specialized image editor for pixel artists. It’s worth mentioning here because Photoshop’s tools for low-resolution artwork are pretty bad and Pixen makes for a good supplement (if you need one).

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Picture Edit Mac Os

Lifehacker’s App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.

Photo Editor For Mac Osx Free Download

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