The world of digital imaging and photo editing is changing. Photographers don't just need image-manipulation tools any more, they also need programs that can organise, search and share an ever-growing library of photos.
And as more and more of us shoot raw files, the quality of the raw conversion process grows ever more important. All raw converters are not the same, and Adobe has some serious rivals here.
That's not all. Even though Photoshop might still be the best image-editor, an image-editor in itself may not longer be enough for the things we want to do with our photos today. We don't necessarily want to sit in front of a single image for hours on end surrounded by manuals. More often than not, we develop a personal style we want to apply with a single click, to dozens of photos at a time – and there are much better programs for this than Photoshop.
So here are our top six Mac and PC photo editing applications – programs which are genuinely cross--platform and which run on either machine. They include regular image editors like Photoshop and Elements, image cataloguing specialists like Lightroom and all-out raw converters like DxO Optics Pro.
Our verdict might not be that much of a surprise, maybe, but it has a twist. We don't think there is a single winner, and we think that Photoshop itself does not do enough on its own. Instead, we've gone for an image-editing double-act that's both integrated and affordable, thanks to Adobe's latest software subscription plans.
Subscription software is still highly controversial, but the cost calculations are compelling. You can get both our winning software tools for less than £9/US$10 per month, based on an annual subscription.
Adobe created a storm of controversy when it swapped Photoshop over from a regular 'perpetual' licence (you pay once then use the software forever) to a subscription scheme where you pay a monthly/annual fee to use it. If you stop paying the subscription, you lose the software.
In practice, the sky hasn't fallen in, it's proved a good deal financially, and although there are still questions over how you open/work with your Photoshop files when you stop your subscription, the transition has proved pretty painless.The upside is that you get automatic, free updates for as long as you subscribe – and the last one was when Adobe released Photoshop CC 2014.
Photoshop is both more sophisticated and more limited than some of the other programs in this list. For layers, masks, selections, retouching and complex, multi-step imaging processes, it's impossible to beat. It's enormously powerful, yet manages to present these tools in a remarkably clean, fast and efficient interface.
On the downside, it doesn't offer proper image cataloguing tools (Adobe Bridge is really just a glorified folder browser), so you need another tool for that. And it doesn't offer a library of single-click creative effects – for this you need extra plug-ins, such as the Google Nik Collection, OnOne Perfect Photo Suite or Topaz Effects. Photoshop is like a giant box of spanners – it has all the tools you could possibly want, but it's not going to show you how to fix your car.
Lightroom is a new kind of image-editing tool, combining an image cataloguing and management database with 'non-destructive' editing tools. It means that you can make non-permanent adjustments to an image which are visible within Lightroom but only made permanent when you export a new version of the picture with the adjustments applied – your original photos are never modified.
Lightroom's organising tools are very powerful. It uses a central image database, or 'library', so it's much faster and more flexible than a simple file browsing tool like Adobe Bridge. The larger your photo collection becomes, the more useful you'll find a database tool like this.
The image-editing tools are the same as those in Adobe Camera Raw, but presented in a different interface. They can't do everything – for selections, layers, masks and many more complex effects you'll still need a program like Photoshop – but for everyday image enhancements and picture 'styles', Lightroom is perfect.