Ever Wanted to Make Your Photos Look More Professional? My favorite android image editors

My friend recently asked me for a recommendation on on an image editor for android. He wanted to primarily use for improving the looks of some of his photos.

I quickly tried several editors based on other reviews. And here is my conclusion.

  1. First off I tried Bonfire.

Pros

• It has lots of great features and has nice sliders (friendly user interface) for adjusting lots of the filters
• In my opinion has all you need for improving the look of your photos
• Lots of effects

Cons

• Once it came to saving photos I was disappointed. It doesn't save the image in the original resolution, but saves them based on your settings which you can set up to 6144x6144, but who wants to save there photos in higher resolution than the original.

 You can get it from playstore here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gogoinv.bonfire.android


  2. Next I tried Fotor

Pros

• Like bonfire it has lots of filters and effects
• All you need for improving your photos

Cons

• The user interface isn't as friendly as bonfire's. It doesn't have sliders to adjust the filters.

Get it from Google play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.everimaging.photoeffectstudio


  3. Finally I tried Snapseed. My favorite of them all

Pros

• The best user interface in my opinion (No clutter at all).
• Has all the filters you need to improve your photos
• Plenty of effects
• Can edit raw photos

Cons

• May not have as many filters and effects as some other editors 

Get it form Google play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.niksoftware.snapseed 


  4. An editor that I've used a lot before I tried new/different editors is the one called Image Editor

Pros

• Supports layers
• Multiple tabs/projects
• Plenty of filters
• Can do the usual canvas or free layer manipulation

Cons

• For adjusting the filters it doesn't have the best interface (no sliders)

Get it from Google play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pcvirt.ImageEditor


Thanks for reading this short review.

Leave a comment if you have any suggestions or for other reasons.

Need a Good Free Video Editor? Shotcut video editor review

Note: This is not necessarily the best open source video editor, but it's definitely my favorite.

I have been looking around for a good video editor for quite some time before I ended up with shotcut. I won't be going into the details of shotcut as the features can be found on it's website. I'll just be describing what I think are the pros and cons of the video editor.

Pros

• Supports lots of audio, video, and image formats thanks to ffmpeg
• It's being actively developed and keeps on getting new features (see the roadmap)
• Has many video filters
• The filters are easy to use (In my opinion much easier than openshot or kdenlive's filters)
• Cross-platform (Linux, Windows, OS X)
• No need to import media - Native editing
• Very flexible UI using QT. Can be customized to your liking
• It's faster (less lag) than some other editors I've tried

Cons

• It may still crash at times although in my opinion it's fairly stable already (Just make sure you save your project frequently)
• No keyframe-able video filters although it's planned for a future release

I ended up with shotcut since the chroma key filter is really easy to use and powerful (much easier than kdenlive's chroma key filter). Another thing I like about it is the speed control of a video changes the speed of the audio as well whereas in kdenlive it'll remove the audio when modifying video speed.

The color grading feature is also really simple to use and powerful and is a must have in any video editor. I use it in about every project. It can really make your video look a lot more professional.

Here is an example of before and after applying color grading:



And a screenshot of shotcut with the color grading filter settings open:




That's it for now. I know this is a really short review, but this is my first video editor review and I'm still learning.

Feel free to leave a comment.