7+ Best AI Photo Editors in June 2023 [Free and Paid Tools]

While it’s true that technology advances and new, more powerful cameras come out, photo editing will always be a vital part of photography.

Photo editing helps turn a good picture into a complete one by playing with things like saturation, contrast, and filters to help push the photo to its full potential.

And while doing such things required a professional photo editor before, now, artificial intelligence can take care of most of the editing process for you. Most AI photo editors have an intuitive interface, as well. This way, even photo editing beginners won’t face problems trying to edit their photos.

So how do you get started with using an AI-powered photo editor? And since there are so many, which one should you choose? That’s what we’ll answer in this article.

What Are the Best AI Photo Editors?

We reviewed some of the most popular AI photo editing software to try and find the AI tools on the market. We tested these on multiple samples and used our own experience to create this list. So let’s see how each of them fares!

1. Topaz Labs Photo AI

Overview  

Topaz Labs is a software solution company that gives its users the best result with as little effort as possible, and their AI photo editor, called Photo AI, follows the same suit.

Photo AI offers many advanced features that you’d find in programs like Photoshop but with a much smaller barrier to entry, as its powerful AI technology can create amazing edits quickly.

Topaz Labs trained Photo AI to detect objects in photos automatically with near-human precision. Combine that with its creative features, and you get stunning photos to enjoy.

And thanks to its intuitive interface, the learning curve on this AI photo editor is minimal.

Top Features

• Can work as a plugin for Adobe Photoshop or function as a standalone application
• Can upscale images and add high-quality details
• Upsamples low-quality photos to higher resolution
• Unifies multiple tools into one for convenience

Pricing  

Topaz Photo AI doesn’t use a subscription model. Instead, you can buy the program directly for $199, and that’s for a lifetime, including a year of unlimited upgrades.

Unfortunately, there’s no free version of Topaz Photo AI, though you can try out the app for free using the demo version that lets you play around with the features without being able to save your results.

After you buy the license, you get a 30-day money-back guarantee if there’s something you don’t like, no questions asked.

You can also get a discount if you’ve already purchased one of Topaz Labs’ other programs.

Bottom Line  

If you want well-rounded and balanced AI photo editing software at a fair price, then Topaz Photo AI is an excellent choice.

---

2. Skylum Luminar Neo AI

Overview  

Skylum’s Luminar AI is another excellent AI photo editor with a terrific editing style and a stellar editing workflow.

Luminar AI has a straightforward interface that makes image editing a fun activity with a great result, especially since it allows you to add your finishing touches after it produces the edited image.

Some of its trademark features, such as Aurora HDR and sky replacement, can also give life to your photos in ways that even Photoshop and Lightroom couldn’t.

Speaking of which, if you’d like to use Adobe’s suite still, you can integrate Luminar AI with them.

Top Features

• Has an easy-to-learn user interface
• Uses AI capabilities to edit photos in a few seconds
• Advanced AI features such as sky replacement and Aurora HDR
• Can be installed as a plugin for Adobe Photoshop

Pricing  

Luminar Neo AI offers three plans: Explore, Pro, and Lifetime.

The Explore plan is the most basic and cheapest one, costing just $9.95 per month when billed monthly or $8.25 per month when billed annually. It offers all the features you want, but with some missing benefits.

The Pro plan allows you to use the app on up to two computers and grants you access to the extensions pack and future extensions. You also get a 10% discount on marketplace purchases. This comes at a higher price of $14.95 per month (monthly billing) or $9.92 per month (annual billing).

The Lifetime plan is an option to buy the app permanently, and it costs $149 without the extensions pack and $299 with it. However, the main features in this plan are comparable to the ones in the Explore plan.

Bottom Line  

Skylum Luminar AI barely misses out on the top spot, but it’s still one of the best and most convenient AI-powered editing tools, and it’s worth a shot if you prefer its subscription model over Photo AI’s lifetime license.

---

3. Adobe Photoshop

Overview  

Adobe Photoshop CC is a tool that needs no introduction to most people. It’s been among the best in the field for decades, and its name has become synonymous with photo editing tools. But despite its age, it’s been keeping up with the new AI players with its recent updates.

Photoshop now has AI-powered tools to help you with tedious tasks such as selecting objects, subjects, and skies, automated colorization, sky replacement, and content fill.

Despite these brilliant additions to Photoshop, it retains its classic interface, which old users will be familiar with, but new ones may struggle to adapt.

Top Features  

• Full of robust editing tools and resources
• Continued extensive support from Adobe
• Support for virtually all image formats
• New AI tools to do a lot of the grunt work

Pricing  

Adobe Photoshop has three pricing plans: Photoshop, Photography, and All Apps.

The Photoshop plan costs $27.99/mo and includes Adobe Express, Adobe Fresco, and 100GB of cloud storage.

The Photography plan costs $25.99/mo and includes Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and 1TB of cloud storage.

Lastly, the All Apps plan costs $71.99/mo and includes 100GB of cloud storage. It also has all the other extra features that the Photoshop and Photography plan has, with an added 20+ Creative Cloud apps.

All plans have a 7-day free trial available.

Bottom Line  

Adobe Photoshop is one of the oldest photo editing programs. Some people need to learn it to work, and if you’re one of them, or if you don’t mind the learning curve, then you’ll adore those new features along with its preexisting capabilities.

---

4. Corel PaintShop Pro Ultimate

Overview  

Corel PaintShop Pro Ultimate is often dubbed as a reliable and more affordable Photoshop alternative, thanks to the similar features between the two programs.

Unlike Photoshop’s subscription model, Corel PaintShop Pro Ultimate offers a relatively affordable lifetime license, especially if you plan to use the AI photo editor for a long time.

Although it lacks some AI features like facial recognition, it makes up for it with others, like keyword tagging and smart corrections that produce wonderful images.

Top Features  

• Contains most of the features of Photoshop
• AI-backed tools like background removal, upsampling, denoising, and more
• Plenty of vector tools

Pricing  

PaintShop Pro Ultimate costs $99.99 for a lifetime license. And if you’re upgrading from an older version, you can get it for $79.99.

They also have a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Bottom Line  

If you’re looking for a Photoshop alternative at an affordable price, then Corel PaintShop Pro Ultimate should be on your list. You can even try it risk-free for 30 days.

---

5. Movavi Photo Editor

Overview  

The Movavi Photo Editor is designed with convenience in mind above all. And its ability to produce professional-quality photos in mere minutes earns it a spot on our list.

Firstly, the Movavi AI Photo Editor interface can get you right on track in no time with features ranging from auto-enhancing to background removal and old photo restoration to smart filters.

However, its AI does tend to struggle a bit with some photos.

Top Features  

• AI photo enhancer
• Old photo restoration
• Object and photo background removal
• Robust filters and other editing tools

Pricing  

Movavi Photo Editor costs $49.95 for a lifetime license on Windows or Mac. You can also try the trial version for free with some restrictions, but this version lets you test the program before committing to it.

For the Movavi AI Photo Editor, the trial restricts you to only three days of use, and you can only save up to ten photos with a watermark.

Bottom Line  

Movavi Photo Editor is an excellent program despite its few shortcomings. Professional photographers looking for a tool that allows their creativity to shine should consider a different program with more varied and powerful features.

---

6. Retouch Pro Panel

Overview  

Retouch Pro isn’t intended to be used as a standalone software but as a panel for Adobe Photoshop that specializes in retouching photos.

Retouch Pro Panel’s AI caters specifically to portrait editing. So if you work in a studio or elsewhere where you need to refine people’s faces, you’ll find its rich features quite a catch.

These features include changing the eye size and position, adding eyeliner, removing or minimizing shadows, and lip and teeth editing.

Top Features  

• Skin retouching
• Eye size and position
• Editing lips and teeth
• Additional features for editing the ambiance in photos

Pricing  

Retouch Pro Panel has an interesting pricing model, as you can either choose to pay €19.90 (about $21.25) per year for the subscription plan or the same amount for the lifetime license.

The catch is that, with the lifetime version, you don’t get access to future updates or high-quality presets. But with the yearly subscription plan, you’ll have them.

But whichever option suits you best, Retouch Pro Panel is a fairly affordable app.

Bottom Line  

Retouch Pro is a Photoshop panel that adds AI technology to take your portraits to the next level. From skin retouching to adjusting facial features and fixing tooth gaps, this software is worth a shot if you edit faces.

---

7. autoRetouch

Overview  

We’re finishing our list with a more “lite” AI photo editor in autoRetouch.

Features like background removal, skin correction, retouching, and its trademark ghost mannequin give autoRetouch a solid entry to our list.

The intuitive interface allows you to edit multiple photos simultaneously, making bulk editing much quicker and hassle-free.

Top Features  

• Lite AI photo editor that focuses on getting tasks done quickly
• AI-backed features like skin correction, retouching, and background removing
• Trademark ghost mannequin feature
• Makes bulk editing easier

Pricing  

autoRetouch may be a bit confusing with its pricing system, as it doesn’t use either a subscription model or a lifetime license. Instead, you deposit money into your account balance and use it to edit photos accordingly (pay-as-you-go).

For basic editing, which autoRetouch calls custom workflows, it’ll cost you €0.25 to edit one image. For more advanced features, such as the ghost mannequin, it’s €0.50 per image.

Bottom Line  

autoRetouch is a simple app that can help you achieve a lot, making it excellent for people who edit photos on the side or work on smaller projects, such as marketing managers. It’s great for fashion bloggers or marketers.

---

What Are AI Photo Editors?

An AI photo editor is a practical replacement for professional photo editors you’d hire to improve your photo quality. They study an extensive library of edited photos to understand what makes a good photo edit, what works in which scenario, and what we strive to achieve when editing photos.

And with the AI’s acquired knowledge, it will offer you the most compatible edits to your photo and helpful editing tools. Then, you only have to click a few buttons to apply the changes.

You might also be interested in AI image upscaling software programs, which allow you to increase the size and resolution of your photos using artificial intelligence!

How Do I Choose an AI Photo Editor?

However, since so much AI editing software offers many features, you might be confused about which ones you need in the editing process. So ignoring all the fancy, complicated software offering advanced photo editing tools, here are some of the most important AI-powered tools to look for when trying to enhance photos.

Auto-Enhance

You should look for the auto-enhance feature in every photo editing software you use. They automatically detect and target the problem areas in your photo and fix them all simultaneously.

Problem areas can include anything from weird lighting in some places, dark areas, red eyes, and subpar contrast and saturation.

Facial Recognition

A photo editor with facial recognition will make your life so much easier when adding filters to your photos. And by automatically recognizing and outlining the facial features of everyone in the photo, you can do things like stitching someone’s face on a new body or isolating the face as you edit the background around it.

Object Removal

When taking a photo, it’s possible that a few unwanted people or objects show up in the background. And in many cases, that could ruin a perfect image. So instead of discarding your photo because of unwanted background objects, find a photo editor with an AI object remover.

Choosing an AI object remover instead of traditionally editing it out can result in much cleaner backgrounds. This is because removing an object is not always easy to replace the empty space where it used to be.

However, artificial intelligence does it by studying the surrounding background to create a coherent and convincing replacement for your removed object. You might also be interested in using AI to remove backgrounds in videos.

Color Correction

Have you ever seen a nice view with lots of beautiful colors and decided to take a photo to capture the moment, but when you saw the photo, it didn’t look as good as you remember? That’s because human eyes and camera lenses don’t capture light similarly. Therefore, the colors don’t look the same in pictures.

However, a relatively easy fix brings your photos back to life and gives them that extra flair, and that’s color correction.

Normally, you’d need a trained photo editor to tweak, adjust, and balance the color settings to color-correct a photo properly. However, advanced AI technology can get it done for you with the click of a button.

Skin Retouching

Skin retouching is the process of removing defects from a person’s skin in photos. That could range from dirt spots and scars to moles and wrinkles.

And understandably, some might think that you need a person to perform these edits since AI tools won’t be able to tell the difference between an unwanted mole and some freckles.

However, advanced AI technology has been tested repeatedly to understand what’s unwanted and what to keep.

Common Questions About Artificial Intelligence Photo Editing Software

What Is the Best AI Photo Enhancer?

The best AI photo editor ultimately depends on what you’re looking for. We found Topaz Labs’ Photo AI and Skylum’s Luminar AI to be the most well-rounded and easy-to-learn programs, though Photoshop remains a solid contender.

What Is the Best Free AI Photo Enhancer?

None of our picks offer a fully free version, though many of them, such as the Movavi Photo Editor, offer free trials that allow you to test the app before committing to it.

Conclusion: Best AI Photo Editing Software

That will be all for our roundup of the best AI photo editors! To recap, we found Topaz Labs’ Photo AI and Skylum’s Luminar AI to be the complete AI editors on the market. Moreover, if you’re already experienced with Photoshop, you should check out its newest AI features!

If you’re interested in using AI for creative tasks, you can check out my list of the best AI video editing software here!

You may also be interested in these fantastic articles:

10+ Best AI Art Generator Tools (Reviewed for Creatives)

7+ Best AI Video Upscaling Software (Free & Paid)

What Is AI Art? How to Make Stunning Images Using AI