The Best AI Photo Editor

Photoshop is still the most complete AI photo editor, and the Photography plan is the cheapest way to get it. On Adobe’s US plans page, the Photography plan costs US$19.99 a month on an annual plan billed monthly and includes Photoshop on desktop, web and mobile, Lightroom, 1TB of cloud storage and 1,000 generative credits a month. The standalone Photoshop plan costs more (US$22.99 a month) and comes with only 25 credits and no Lightroom, so for photographers the bundle is the obvious choice. Both plans include Adobe Express Premium and a seven-day free trial.

The AI tools cover both kinds of editing. For everyday cleanup, Photoshop’s Remove Tool and Lightroom’s Generative Remove don’t consume generative credits at all, according to Adobe’s credits FAQ. For generative edits, Generative Fill with Adobe’s Firefly models uses one credit per generation, so 1,000 credits a month is plenty for most people. Adobe also offers partner models from Google, OpenAI and others inside Photoshop. Those count as premium features and use more credits per generation, depending on the model and output size.

Having Lightroom in the same plan matters for photographers: you can organize and adjust a whole shoot there and send individual images to Photoshop for heavier generative work. If you want those edits to be traceable, Lightroom can attach Content Credentials (based on the C2PA standard, which Adobe co-founded) to exported photos, including an overview of the edits and, if you like, your name and social accounts.

Privacy is a strength. Adobe’s content analysis FAQ says it doesn’t analyze your content to train generative AI models unless you submit it to Adobe Stock, and that its Firefly models were trained on licensed and public-domain content. You can also opt out of Adobe analyzing your content for product improvement.

Pixelmator Pro, now an Apple app, is the editor we’d point Mac owners to if they want serious tools without a monthly bill. On the Mac App Store it costs $49.99 once. Apple’s product page lists a set of AI features aimed squarely at photo cleanup: Super Resolution to upscale images, background removal, a Repair tool that removes dust, blemishes and entire objects, Intelligent Denoise, Deband, Auto Enhance, Auto Crop and smart subject selection that handles hair and fur.

Pixelmator Pro is also part of Apple Creator Studio, a subscription that costs $12.99 a month or $129 a year (with a one-month free trial) and bundles Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor and MainStage. The subscription is the only way to get Pixelmator Pro on iPad, which Apple says needs iPadOS 26 and an M1 chip or later, an iPad (A16) or an iPad mini (A17 Pro). Students and teachers pay $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year, and a standard subscription can be shared with up to five family members.

On privacy, the Mac App Store listing says the only data collected is crash data, which isn’t linked to your identity.

If your photos live on your phone, the best free AI photo editor is probably already installed. Google says its advanced AI editing tools in Google Photos are available to eligible users at no cost. The lineup includes Magic Eraser (tap or circle something to remove or move it), Photo Unblur for motion blur and camera shake, Portrait light, Portrait blur, and Auto frame, which uses AI to fill in parts of a picture or expand the background when you crop.

The newest option is conversational editing: open a photo, tap Edit and choose Ask, then describe what you want, such as “remove the glare” or “remove distractions from the background.” Google says this is available to eligible users 18 and older in the US, and that you can combine requests and follow up to fine-tune the result.

Google is fairly transparent about labeling. It says Google Photos already supports IPTC metadata for AI-edited images and SynthID for images edited with Reimagine, and in August 2025 it announced it was adding C2PA Content Credentials to Google Photos, starting with Pixel 10 and rolling out to Android and iOS. In the app you can check the AI info for edited photos.

Photoroom is a specialist. Its App Store listing focuses on what online sellers need: remove and replace photo backgrounds instantly, generate AI backgrounds, recolor products, remove wrinkles from clothing, and batch-edit hundreds of product photos at once. On the US App Store it holds a 4.8-star average from about 231,000 ratings.

For a seller who photographs products on a kitchen table, that’s a faster route to a clean marketplace listing than Photoshop. Photoroom says you can start removing backgrounds for free and upgrade for more AI tools and high-resolution exports. It runs in the browser and as iPhone, iPad and Android apps, and it offers a Shopify app and an API for shops that process large volumes.

If your edited photo is going straight into an Instagram post, a flyer or a slide, editing it inside Canva saves a step. Canva’s US pricing page lists photo editing on every plan. The free plan includes up to 20 uses a month of Canva’s Standard and Premium AI tools, and features such as Magic Layers (turning a flat image into editable layers) and image upscaling.

Canva Pro costs US$144 a year for one person. On Pro, Standard AI tools such as background removal for images and videos don’t use your AI allowance, Premium AI tools such as generated backgrounds get up to 200 uses, and storage goes from 5GB to 100GB.

Canva’s Trust Center says it won’t use your content to improve AI-powered features unless that’s consistent with your privacy settings, which you can change at any time, and that it stores your data in the United States.