Photoshop for iPhone launched earlier this year, finally bringing Adobe’s famous image editor to Apple’s smartphone. It’s an impressive feat – powerful, polished, and rich with features. Yet it also feels oddly redundant, having arrived late to a market already packed with fast, mobile-first competition.
However, the Photoshop name carries weight, and that alone will drive searches and downloads. So in this round-up, we’re going to dig into what Photoshop gets right and where it falls short, and whether alternative apps are a better fit for your mobile image editing, photo retouching, and mobile creativity.
Adobe Photoshop (free or $8/£8 per month or $70/£70 per year)
- Best for Photoshop users
Photoshop for iPhone does a solid job of translating a complex app into a streamlined mobile experience. It packs an impressive feature set into a touch-friendly interface without losing too much of what makes Photoshop, well, Photoshop.
The app is organized around core tools for layers, selections, retouching, painting, and resizing. AI can smartly isolate subjects for easy selections and clean up blemishes. And when you want to get more hands-on, extensive brush features let you build images from scratch. Adjustment and text layers add further scope for creative output.
This mix of pro-grade complexity and mobile simplicity just about works, although the interface can feel messy and fiddly, and some tools feel underbaked. Also, while the painting parts are free, much of the AI functionality sits behind a subscription. To that end, if you use Photoshop on other platforms, this is a handy companion; if not, other options might suit you better.
Photomator ($8/£8 per month or $30/£30 per year or $120/£120 lifetime)
- Best for one-tap improvements
On launch, Photomator (formerly Pixelmator Pro) made a splash with its one-tap photo enhancement tool. Trained on thousands of pro shots, it smartly adjusts lighting and color – usually with great results.
You’re not stuck with automation, though. Tap the sliders button and you’ll find a deep set of manual tools, letting you override Photomator’s settings and define your own. Everything’s neatly packed into a single scrolling panel, which is far more efficient than diving in and out of menus.
The app shines with older photos too. Denoise and ‘super resolution’ tools can revive grainy JPEGs from early digital cameras, making them print-worthy or better suited to modern high-resolution displays. Elsewhere, repair and automated cropping tools aren’t as strong, but otherwise Photomator is an excellent app for fast photo improvements. But do note Apple now owns it, making the app’s future – and the value of the lifetime license – a bit uncertain.
Photos (free)
- Best for object removal
Apple Photos comes pre-installed on every iPhone, so it’s easy to overlook. Don’t make that mistake, because it offers excellent editing tools for casual use.
It handles cropping, flipping, and basic adjustments with ease. And while its auto-enhance feature doesn’t match Photomator’s, it’s still impressive. The standout feature, though, is Clean Up, which is part of Apple Intelligence.
Circle or paint over objects you want gone. They’ll vanish instantly. In testing, Photos consistently outperformed every other iPhone app we tried for content-aware fixes of this type, including Photoshop.
With Apple’s recent acquisition of Photomator, the future for Photos could be exciting, blending the acquisition’s pro-level tools with Apple’s usual simplicity. But even today, it’s great to see that the photo editor everyone already has on their iPhone has plenty to offer.
Snapseed (free)
- Best free Photoshop alternative
Google’s free photo editor has long been a favorite – and it’s easy to see why. Despite being free, it offers features that rival those in many paid apps. You get tuning, curves, white balance, and perspective correction, and creative options like vintage filters, grainy film effects, and text layers.
The interface is distinctive yet intuitive, often inviting you to drag vertically to choose a parameter and then horizontally to adjust it. The app doesn’t feel quite like any other on iPhone, but it’s snappy, streamlined and mature in a way Photoshop doesn’t yet match.
Also, all edits are non-destructive, so you can tweak values anytime; you can even save a selection of edits as a custom ‘look’ (filter) to reuse later with a single tap. These capabilities combine to cement Snapseed’s position as one of the iPhone’s best photo editors – and biggest bargains.
Pixelmator ($10/£10)
- Best for layered images
When Pixelmator added iPhone support in 2015, it instantly became one of the iPhone’s most ambitious apps. Here was an independent developer doing ‘Photoshop for iPhone’ a decade before Adobe attempted the same.
Now that Photoshop for iPhone is available, Pixelmator still has its strengths. It lacks Adobe’s AI features and isn’t ideal for fast photo adjustments (try Photomator for that), but it’s great for building multi-layered images from scratch or for manual retouching. Its interface also feels more efficient than Photoshop’s, even if it similarly tends to feel cramped on a small screen.
Note that, like Photomator, Pixelmator is now owned by Apple, which makes its future unclear. However, its low one-off price makes it less of a risk if you fancy a Photoshop-like experience on iPhone without investing in Adobe’s app.
Affinity Photo ($19/£18)
- Best for iPad
On Mac and PC, Affinity Photo was a bold move by Serif – a high-quality Photoshop alternative that immediately posed a serious threat to Adobe’s dominance. When it arrived on iPad in 2017, it – astonishingly – wasn’t cut down at all. You still got everything from the full-fat, pro-grade desktop app, but on Apple’s tablet.
Today, it’s just as impressive. Sure, there’s a learning curve, but Affinity Photo pairs an approachable, responsive, touch-optimized interface with a wealth of tools for creativity and retouching.
Make no mistake: it will be overkill for many people. If you want to remove the odd blemish or boost a photo’s colors, other apps in this list will suffice. But for more ambitious edits, Affinity Photo offers the power of desktop software without tying you to a computer – and without the compromises or subscription model of Adobe’s iPhone and iPad app.