5 Mobile Photo Editing Apps to Bring Out Your Inner Picasso

Remember those days when we had to badger our graphic designer friend to retouch and modify our scanned picture so that it would look good on Facebook? Me neither. And that’s largely thanks to the easy peasy photo editing apps on our smartphones that deliver brilliant looking pictures in just a few minutes.

We take a look at 5 mobile apps that are a good fit for mobile photographers and casual users alike:

VSCO Camera (iOS, Android)

Lets start off this list with an incredibly versatile and professional-grade photo editing suite. There are so many tweaks and special effects to be applied, with many of the filters coming with adjustable strength sliders. Then there are the standard saturation, temperature, shadows, highlights and more image aspects. Though the actual camera functions bundled with VSCO Camera are a bit sparse, nonetheless the hige wealth of photo manipulation options more than makes it up for it.

VSCO Camera is free with some in-app purchases thrown in.

Instagram (iOS, Android, WP8)

Instagram – the image editing app + social network for photography enthusiasts. Instagram has come a long way from its origins as an iOs only platform. It now has a web presence and is no longer stuck with a limited number of filters. Plus the Instagram network has surpassed Twitter’s active userbase of 200 million users daily.

Instagram is free to use with all features unlocked. You can straighten your photos and adjust the filters until you get your snapshots looking exactly as you like.

FaceTune (iOS, Android)

FaceTune is, like it name implies, made for one thing alone – to make your selfies and portraits as attractive and blemish-free as possible. It doesn’t have the all-round image editing features from other photo editing apps. Rather it specializes in features that beautify your face. Teeth-whitening, red-eye reduction, colorizing greying hair, removal of pimples and blemishes from your face – these are some of the things FaceTune is exceptionally good at.

FaceTune is available for $2.99 and comes with some preset filters and common image editing features as well.

Repix (Android, iOS)

What if you needed an image editing app that unleashes a truly artistic side of you? That’s where Repix comes in. Sure the app comes with some fast image filters but amidst those basic features, Repix comes with support for selectively painting over a picture’s areas, adding your own special effects over them. For people with smarpthones with a stylus such as the Galaxy Note series, the application features fine-grained support for the S-Pen.

Repix is free to use and contains additional features as in-app purchases.

Adobe Lightroom (iPad, Android)

Adobe Lightroom, you guessed it, for serious photo editors. For those who use Adobe Lightroom on their desktops and laptops, the Adobe Lightroom Mobile companion app delivers great functionality. You can edit, organize and view your RAW files. Many more features from the desktop version of the app are also available. All changes are synced. And it works great on the iPad too.

Adobe Lightroom is a free download but only for subscribers to Lightroom and Creative Cloud.

Did we miss out any photo editing app? Tell us in the comments which mobile photo editing apps deserve a mention and why?

Samir is the Head of Entertainment at Lens by ProPakistani. You can reach out to him at samir.ya...


  • Author, where are Camera360 and PicsArt-Studio?? Seriously?
    Apps you have mentioned would find it hard to eeven go against Fotor ( except Repix which has some really nice tricks)

    • BTW its Pixlr. It is the only app I use. Pixlr leaves every other image editing app far behind a kilometer! Plus its open-source!


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