Even relatively affordable phones, like the Pixel 6A or iPhone SE, can capture images that will wow your Instagram followers, but today’s best phones, like the iPhone 14 Pro, Pixel 7 Pro, and Galaxy S22 Ultra, have amazing cameras that can rival DSLRs. However, after returning from a woodland stroll or a trip to the closest outdoor food market, it’s simple to forget about the photos we took that day and allow them to accumulate dust in our phone galleries.

Enhancing your photos may be achieved via creative photo editing. Furthermore, it makes no difference whether you have an older, less expensive phone or the newest, greatest phone with the finest camera setup on the back. There are a ton of fantastic free and paid photo editing apps available on the iPhone App Store and Google Play Store for Android that can completely transform your current photos while you’re lounging in your favorite squashy chair.

Here are some of my favorite selections, so read them, get yourself a cup of tea, and get comfortable for an evening editing session. You may even create a picture book with your best photos.

If you want to shoot and edit something fresh, you may also look at these imaginative ideas to show off your photography skills at home.

1. Snapseed is free for Android and iOS.

Snapseed, which is owned by Google, provides a variety of exposure and color tools for adjusting your photos in addition to a large selection of filters, ranging from retro styles to contemporary, striking HDR appearances. You may make some intriguing modifications to your picture by layering the effects. The greatest part is that it’s completely free.

2. Adobe Lightroom for iOS and Android;

certain features are free, while full access costs $5 per month.

For professional photographers, Adobe Lightroom is still the industry standard, and the mobile version is much the same. Although there aren’t any stickers, animations, or emoticons here, you still have fine-grained control over your picture and the same set of tools as in desktop Lightroom. Because the photos sync in the cloud, allowing me to start on one device and finish on another, it’s the software I use the most to edit my own photos on my iPhone and iPad.

3. The free version of Adobe Photoshop Express for iOS and Android.

Although Photoshop Express lacks some of the pro tools and cloud synchronization, it still offers many of the same capabilities as Lightroom, such as exposure, contrast, and color tweaking choices. Most importantly, however, it does not charge a monthly fee. It’s an excellent tool for adjusting your photos to bring out the best in them, but it also has a good assortment of overlay textures and filters, as well as tools for creating eye-catching collages.

Although it doesn’t provide for as much creative freedom as other choices on our list, it’s a good editing program at a reasonable price.

4. The prism

$8 per month or $30 annually for iOS and Android.

Simple picture repairs and delicate filters are not handled by Prisma. Rather, its hallucinogenic effects will turn your photos into often surreal creative works. The effects resemble paintings, and it’s true that many filters are influenced by painters like Picasso and Salvador Dali. Although you may adjust them, the filters are powerful and not all images will benefit from them. Some filters, in my experience, were better suited for portraiture, while others were better for landscapes.

However, experimenting is a lot of fun, and once you discover a picture that works, it works.

5. The bazaar

Only iOS, $8/month or $48/year.

With the use of Bazaart’s montage and collage tools, you may layer various components, such as text, graphics, and images, to create a final piece of art. With its features, you may quickly remove the backdrop behind a portrait subject to add a new background or apply various effects (I was astonished at how effectively it worked!). Additionally, it offers a vast array of themes for making stunning collages for Instagram stories.

The only limit will be your level of creativity since there are so many various ways you might try combining different photographs. For more ideas, see Bazaart’s Instagram feed.

6. The Photofox

iOS only.

Similar to Bazaart, Photofox offers strong topic removal features that enable you to perform amazing effects or composite in new backdrops. I really like Photofox’s glitch effects, double exposure, and dispersion effect, which overlays two photographs on top of one another and gives the impression that your subject is exploding into particles.

Layering and combining many picture kinds and adding various effects to each opens up countless possibilities, much as with Bazaart.

7. VSCO

Limited features are available for free for iOS and Android, or for $20 per year with a seven-day free trial.

VSCO’s origins are evident in the app today, since it started off creating color grading presets for Lightroom. VSCO focuses on more artistic filmic color filters rather than stickers and animated GIFs for Snapchat fans. The software offers a vast selection of presets, including styles that mimic vintage Fujifilm, Kodak, and Ilford film rolls.

If you like melancholy monochrome photos, this is a terrific option to try out since it has a big assortment of black-and-white effects.

8. PicsArt for iOS and Android,

which offers limited features for free or the full suite for $48 a year.

You may use a vast array of editing tools in PicsArt, ranging from simple tweaks like exposure and contrast to dramatic filters and cinematic color grading that turn your photos into works of art. There are a ton of choices for the tone and shape of your face in selfies. I won’t discuss the morality of utilizing these tools for “beauty” objectives, but I enjoyed purposefully making my features seem strangely oversized.

If you’re interested, PicsArt also has a social sharing feature similar to Instagram. The editing possibilities piqued my curiosity the most.