The best AI photo editors in 2024

The best AI photo editors

1. Adobe Photoshop for a full-featured photo editing and design app

Adobe Photoshop has been the industry standard image editing app for more than three decades now, but instead of showing its age like a lot of other 30-something-year-old software, it still feels fresh and cutting edge. Its AI features even made Time's Best Innovations of 2023 list.

I was going to make the joke that it's easier to list the photo editing tasks that Photoshop can't do than the ones it can—until I realized I legitimately could not come up with a list of things it can't do. In short, Photoshop is the best full-featured image editor around.

And that extends to AI features. Take the Remove Tool that got introduced last year. While Photoshop has always made it possible to remove unwanted objects, people, and artifacts from your images—and features like the Patch Tool and Spot Removal Tool have done their best to blend in with your image—the Remove Tool takes it to another level. Of all the apps I tested, this one was by far the best at removing something from an image and replacing it with generated content that blended in. There's also a text-to-image generator called Generative Fill that allows you to add or replace specific elements using Adobe's Firefly AI model. While it's not quite good enough to add foreground elements, I've found it's really good at replacing backgrounds.

You can see both of these things in action in the screenshot above. The original image is in the center. I was able to replace Gunther with grass that matches the rest of the image—including the depth of field blur—just by painting over him once. I was also able to replace the background with a different forest—again, matching the depth of field—just by selecting it and typing "a dark forest." I even got three variations to choose from.

Photoshop has plenty of other AI-powered tools, too. Generative Expand uses Firefly to extend your images with AI-generated content. There are also Neural Filters that can do things like intelligently adjust your subject's facial expression, transfer the color palette from one image to another, and remove compression artifacts. The automatic subject and background selection is excellent, and the automatic tone, color, and contrast adjustment all work as you'd expect.

Best of all, Photoshop is still the fully-featured app it's always been. For most AI features, you get plenty of control, and you can always manually edit them and integrate them into your image. If the AI messes up, you have all the tools you need to fix it—even if it takes you a bit longer.

Adobe Photoshop pricing: From $19.99/month as part of the Photography Plan including Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and 500 generative credits. (Lightroom is another great image editor in its own right, but it just doesn't have the same deep AI feature set as Photoshop. Still definitely worth checking out if you just want to edit photos.)

2. Luminar Neo for an AI-powered photo editor

Luminar Neo was one of the first photo-editing apps to go all in on AI. And of all the apps on this list, it has the deepest AI integration across the whole app. Of course there are the headline features, like the AI-powered enhance (which automatically adjusts tone, contrast, and color), the AI sky replacement (which really works, especially with blown-out or boring gray skies), GenErase (which intelligently removes objects and distractions from your images), and GenExpand (which allows you extend your image as you crop it).

But then there are all the smaller touches. Luminar Neo automatically detects the subject of your image and suggests appropriate presets as a starting point. The AI crop generally does a good job of cutting out extraneous elements without going too close to your subject. And features like the AI face and skin adjustments focus in on the relevant areas of the image, and quickly allow you to do things like brighten your subject's eyes to draw more attention to them or tone down shiny skin.

Luminar Neo is almost exclusively an app for photographers, or people who really, really care about taking high-quality selfies. As a result, you get a huge amount of control over how the various effects are applied. There isn't really any one-click magic here: for every tool, you get a slider, so you can control how strongly any edits are made to be sure your photos look how you want. It makes for a great, balanced workflow: the AI lets you work quickly, without pushing things too far.

Strangely, Luminar Neo is the only app on this list that couldn't exist without its AI features. They're so integral to the whole experience. While you can make simple edits, and often will to make final tweaks, it's almost impossible to edit a photo without heavily relying on the AI at some point.

Luminar Neo pricing: From $9.95/month; Luminar Neo is also available through Setapp from $9.99/month, but it doesn't have all the same features, including GenErase.

3. Canva for an AI-powered design app

Over the past two years, Canva has introduced a heap of new AI-powered features, making what was already an excellent template-based design app even better. It's always been perfect for quickly creating everything from invitations to Instagram posts, and the AI features make things even easier.

Here's a full rundown of Canva's major AI features, but I'll give you a few of the highlights from my testing:

Magic Design allows you to enter a written prompt to create a template. I used "a birthday party invite for my dog" to create the invitation above.

Magic Media is a text-to-image and text-to-video generative AI that you can use to add whatever you want (like the dog holding a balloon above) to your designs.

Magic Eraser instantly removes unwanted objects from your images. It's not quite as reliable as Photoshop's implementation, but it's good enough for simple clean-up jobs.

Magic Edit uses a generative AI to allow you to replace elements of any image. Want to change a regular cake to a way better chocolate cake? Be my guest.

Magic Write is an AI text generator that's available pretty much everywhere throughout the app.

And there are loads of other AI features built into the various parts of the app, or grouped together in the Magic Studio. Surprisingly, none of Canva's AI features ever feel shoehorned in—and it's still an incredible design app whether you use them or not. But if you want to experiment with AI-powered layout options and generating design elements with written prompts, you can do that too.

Canva pricing: Free with limited access to AI tools; from $14.99/month for Pro with more AI tools and higher usage limits.

4. Pixlr for an easy-to-use online AI editor

There are a handful of freemium photo editing and design web apps out there that all have broadly similar features. Based on my testing, Pixlr has the best AI offerings. And even without them, it's a handy, easy-to-use, and reliable image editor worth checking out.

Over the past year, Pixlr has mixed things up and moved the majority of its AI features to the rejigged Pixlr X app. And you know what? It really works. In the screenshot above, I used the AI Cutout feature to remove the original background and the generative Backdrop feature to create a new, vibrant one. It's also got a solid face swap, object removal, and generative fill tools, as well as a separate AI image generator.

If you liked the former design-focused Pixlr X, it's been rebranded as Pixlr Designer. The Photoshop-like Pixlr E is still available, as are the AI-powered Remove bg and the bulk editing Batch Editor. You can swap between them as you need and are all useful in their own way.

But the biggest thing Pixlr has going for it is the price. It's one of the cheapest AI photo editor apps out there, and you can use a limited version of most AI features on the free plan.

Pixlr pricing: Free for limited AI use and 3 image saves per day; from $1.99/month for Plus, with 80 monthly AI credits, unlimited saves, and no ads.

5. Lensa for a mobile AI photo editor

Lensa is probably best known for its Magic Avatar feature, which trains a Stable Diffusion model using a series of selfies to generate a collection of wacky AI portraits. That part of it works exactly as described, though I'm not sure it strictly counts as photo editing. Still, the rest of Lensa's AI features are more than enough to get it on this list as the best mobile photo editor.

It has a Magic Retouch tool that can automatically identify and tune up portraits with either a Morning, Day Look, Go Out look, or full-on Glam look. It works, and the results are far better than they sound, especially if you're wearing makeup. It's also got slightly less AI-driven skin, face, and makeup retouching tools that can help you fine-tune things.

As for other features: the AI-powered Suggest a Filter was a nice way to navigate the few dozen options. The AI Eraser was better than most other apps I tested, though still far short of Photoshop or Luminar Neo. The Backdrop Cutout and Sky Replacement tools both did really good jobs even with challenging images, and I actually really like the options you could drop in instead.

On top of all that, the regular image editing tools, art styles, effects, and everything else are as good as any I've used on a mobile app. It makes Lensa a pretty complete package with an interesting pricing model. On the free plan, you get every feature for free—but can only save one image per day. After that, you have to sign up for a paid subscription. If you only use the app occasionally, it's incredibly generous—otherwise, it's a very expensive mobile subscription that's probably not worth it.

Lensa pricing: Free to save one image per day; from $2.99/week or $4.99/month; Magic Avatars are a separate purchase from $3.99.