1. The list in brief ↴
2. Best photo editing app for astro
3. Best editing app overall
4. Best for large projects
5. Best for powerful editing tools
6. Best for speedy editing
7. Best for amateurs
8. Best for noise reduction
9. Best for beginners
10. Best for learning techniques
11. Best for organization
12. Best photo editing apps FAQs
13. How we test
The best photo editing apps for astrophotography can take ordinary images of the stars and turn them into stunning works of art. Every style of photography can benefit from good image editing software, but astrophotography is especially reliant on it.
Editing apps are essential for astrophotographers because the subjects they capture are often very faint and challenging to see with the naked eye. These photographers depend on editing apps to improve their images and bring out intricate details that might be overlooked otherwise. Even NASA utilizes image editing software to enhance its astronomical images, showcasing the importance of editing tools in revealing the beauty of the cosmos.
When we look up into the night sky with the naked eye, we can make out light sources of light from distant stars, see the bright light from the moon and possibly, on a clear night, see a nearby planet or two. But with the help of the best cameras for astrophotography, we can see the much fainter glows of nebulas and galaxies. Even the best telescopes and best binoculars can't reveal all the subtle colors and intricate patterns that post-shoot editing using photo editing apps can.
Photo editing software has the power to enhance colors and bring out hidden details, especially when working with astrophotographs captured in RAW format. RAW images can often look dull and lackluster straight out of the camera, but with the help of the best photo editing apps, astrophotographers can refine and elevate their astro images to new heights.
The quick list
Best photo editing app for astro
Has an impressive astrophotography stack persona that enables you to stack various types of calibration frames and has powerful AI editing tools — the only thing it lacks is a library.
Best editing app overall
With extensive image editing and organization features, everyone you know and their dog uses Lightroom.
Best for large projects
An incredibly powerful image editor that can do almost anything you want to do with it — but it has a famously steep learning curve.
Best for powerful editing tools
A powerful app aimed primarily at professionals, it's specialty is tethering — although the mobile app is a more accessible option for non-pros.
Best for speedy editing
For quick edits, this reasonably priced software will do the job nicely. Neo features many one-click editing features that increase the speed of your workflow, in part thanks to its powerful AI tools.
Best for amateurs
For an introduction to Photoshop with just the basic features, this is a good option for beginners — but there's no subscription option.
Load the next 4 products ↴
Best for noise reduction
We thought the DeepPrime XD was the best noise-removal tool we've tested — but other apps are hot on their heels and offer other features besides that.
Best for beginners
User-friendly software packs in lots of social media friendly features — but not much to entice seasoned astrophotographers.
Best for learning techniques
Great for beginners working at a slower pace, it has AI tools that allow for easy, one-click edits — but it's only available on Windows.
Best for organization
It has fast processing times and offers all-in-one editing for batch and layer edits, but it's let down by the interface and price.
Best photo editing apps for astrophotography 2023
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Best photo editing app for astro
✅ You specialize in astrophotography: Overall we were really impressed with the extensive astrophotography stacking persona, and there are a ton of astro macros to speed up your workflow.
✅ You like to own the software: There's no option to subscribe to Affinity Photo, so once you buy the software, you own it.
❌ You want in-built organization: We'd love to see them adopt some kind of library system, as currently it relies on the folders on your computer.
🔎 Affinity Photo 2 The best app for astrophotography, its astrophotography stack persona is like no other, although it has a way to go in other areas to live up to Adobe. That said, it's affordable and fairly user-friendly, and has a bunch of useful features once you delve in. ★★★★½
Serif Software's alternative to Photoshop is divided into five distinct 'personas.' Each persona serves a unique purpose within the software, namely Photo, Liquify, Develop, Tone Mapping, and Export. Think of these personas as separate workstations in a photo studio, each designed to handle specific tasks.
Develop and Photo is where you make initial edits, much like in Lightroom or Photoshop's Camera Raw. Liquify is to warp or distort your images, Tone Mapping is most typically used for 32-bit HDR files, and the Export persona is self-explanatory. During our Affinity Photo 2 review, we spent most of our time in the Develop and Photo Personas.
There is a dedicated 'Astrophotography Stack' function and we were very intrigued to see how it compared to Adobe Photoshop 2023, which we found wanting in this department.
Simply put, stacking in Affinity Photo is a convenient way to combine calibration and light frames effortlessly. With just one click, you can import these frames and let the software automatically stack them. During our test, Affinity Photo 2 pleasantly surprised us with its performance. It excels in aligning stars, resulting in perfectly lined-up stars throughout the image. However, we did notice a slight misalignment in the foreground, which is different from what we found in Photoshop. This isn't an issue if you're focusing solely on capturing images of the sky, like nebulas or constellations, without including the foreground. Many astrophotographers often replace the foreground entirely. When it comes to stacking capabilities, Affinity Photo 2 outperforms Adobe Photoshop 2023.
Another Astro-friendly function we enjoyed is the 'Remove Background' filter. AI helps to restore the dark sky around the stars back to its original dark color and removes color casts that may have crept into your images.
In late 2022, Serif launched this latest version of Affinity Photo, packed with fantastic new photo editing and manipulation tools. Some of our favorite additions include masks, which now rival the functionality you'd find in Lightroom and Photoshop. Additionally, they introduced non-destructive RAW development, ensuring your original photos remain safe no matter how you edit them. The live mesh warping feature and layers panel also boost the software's impressive capabilities.
While these updates may not be specifically designed for astrophotography, they significantly enhance Affinity Photo's overall capabilities and user-friendliness. We strongly recommend upgrading to this version, as these improvements benefit photographers of all specialties.
Affinity Photo 2 is now available as part of their universal license — you pay a one-off fee of $164.99 for Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher, and Affinity Designer. If you don't need these, you can still purchase Affinity Photo 2 individually for a one-off payment of $69.99.
- Read our full Affinity Photo 2 review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Pricing | Subscription free |
| User interface | Split into five different personas |
| Key features | Non destructive RAW editing |
| Astro features | Impressive astrophotography stacking tools |
Best editing app overall
✅ You want an all-in-one image editor and catalog: Lightroom excels in both image editing and organization, making it hard for many other editing apps to beat.
❌ You want to stack or create composites: One feature lacking is the ability to blend layers and create composites which are often used in astrophotography.
🔎 Adobe Lightroom If you're looking for image editing software to rule them all, you won't be disappointed with Lightroom. It has unrivaled catalog organization and all the editing tools you need to create stunning images. ★★★★★
Lightroom is primarily designed for professionals, but it has gained significant popularity among casual photographers too. This versatile software serves as a comprehensive tool for organizing, cataloging, and enhancing RAW images, making it suitable for a wide range of users.
After a photo shoot, you can easily transfer your images to Lightroom, creating a database of all the shots taken that day, complete with geotags and facial recognition. You can then use flags, stars, and colors to search and rate files, selecting the best photos and discarding the ones you don't need. This excellent organization feature sets Lightroom apart from many other editing apps (although many are now following suit), and it's especially helpful for photographers who often shoot weddings or events, as they might end up with thousands of images to sort through.
Lightroom also has an extensive editing toolset. When editing in Lightroom, the user has complete creative control over contrast, brightness, texture and clarity, color hue and saturation; and the option to smooth out any distortion and lens idiosyncrasies. You can also create presets of your own edits, edit with masks and heal any unwanted dust spots in your images. Then, once you've finished editing, a high-quality JPEG image can be watermarked, exported and shared, all while keeping your original RAW file intact. To read more about Lightroom's extensive list of functions, check out our Adobe Lightroom 2023 review.
Lightroom's workflow is completely non-destructive, ensuring the preservation of your original files without any risk of overwriting them. It's only when you choose to export an edited image that any changes become permanent, and even in that case, your original RAW image remains untouched.
Although you don't necessarily have to work with RAW files in Lightroom, we do recommend shooting your images (in particular, your astro images) in RAW because of the increased detail and color depth. Lightroom also excels at batch processing photos so you can import all 300 of your star trail images at once, batch edit (essentially copying and pasting the same editing settings onto each image), then export them to another app for stacking. Lightroom is a powerful app with many features and tips that can speed up your workflow and make post-processing quicker and easier, so it's no surprise that it's said to be the most widely used and best-rated image-processing software.
- Read our full Adobe Lightroom 2023 review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Pricing | Subscription only, but included in good value Photography bundle |
| User interface | Not a very exciting layout, but simple to understand |
| Key features | Unrivalled cataloging and organization |
| Astro features | New AI-based denoise proves a hit with astrophotography |
Best for large projects
✅ You want one app that can do it all: Photoshop can do pretty much anything you want, so you won't need multiple different apps that all do different things.
❌ You need good organization: Organization and cataloging aren't what Photoshop is known for — for that, you'll want Lightroom.
❌ You're a purist: If you don't believe in manipulating images or creating composites, you likely won't make use of the majority of Photoshop's features.
🔎 Adobe Photoshop Photoshop has been the industry standard for a long time, and with the introduction of AI, we don't see that changing any time soon. Available on subscription only, but it's included in a good value Photography bundle along with Lightroom. ★★★★★
Like Lightroom, Photoshop is an image-editing app that has inspired the design of many other image-editing tools. Although Photoshop can be a bit challenging to learn, it's an amazing tool for astrophotographers and is considered the go-to photo editing app used by professionals worldwide — even NASA use Photoshop to enhance the detail in their images.
We looked at all the pros and cons of the most recent version of this powerful software in our Adobe Photoshop 2023 review. It can be pretty daunting to figure out how to use Photoshop if you're a complete beginner as it has such an extensive toolset, but there are plenty of online tutorials on how to do pretty much anything and everything in Photoshop.
Photoshop uses selections and layers in its editing process — something that Lightroom has also introduced in the last year. By creating layers, you can edit specific selections of a photo (e.g. just a fire hydrant, or just the color of someone's jumper) without affecting the rest of the image. This is great if you are doing complex edits because if you make a mistake, you can just adjust or delete that specific layer rather than have to redo the entire image.
Astrophotographers will find this feature particularly valuable as it allows them to edit the sky and foreground separately in their astro images. For instance, you can enhance the rocks or buildings in the foreground while preserving the captivating dark sky. Adobe Sensei, a cloud AI technology, even offers an option to automatically identify selections for you, simplifying the process. But if you prefer a hands-on approach, you can manually create your own selections.
Layers are another essential tool that lets you stack different elements on top of each other. This flexibility allows you to move, merge, paint, hide or even cut holes in these layers, enabling the creation of complex effects. Astrophotographers can utilize layers to produce stunning star trail images by combining multiple photos or enhance the soft glow of a nebula by layering multiple frames together. These features in Lightroom make it a powerful and convenient tool for astrophotography editing.
We mentioned in our previous Adobe Photoshop 2021 review that we'd have loved to see the ability to automatically stack and line up regular astro images rather than having to line them all up manually. This updated version does allow this in the form of Auto-Align and Auto-Blend, but during our testing when trying to stack a set of astro images, there were issues lining them up reliably and consistently regardless of the method we used — this needs work and hopefully, Adobe will address this.
Plans from Adobe are decently priced considering the variety of tools you have access to. For $19.99 a month, you can purchase a subscription to Photoshop and Lightroom together, which is an excellent deal if you regularly use both apps — especially considering Photoshop is $20.99 on its own, it's a no-brainer. If you don't want the full-fat version of Photoshop, you may find Photoshop Elements a bit easier to navigate — it's a little further down in this buying guide and might be more suited to your needs.
- Read our full Adobe Photoshop 2023 review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Pricing | Subscription only, but included in good value Photography bundle |
| User interface | Substantial learning curve, but fine once you know it |
| Key features | Great features for all skill levels |
| Astro features | Auto-align and auto-blend for astro images |
Best for powerful editing tools
✅ You're a studio professional: Capture One Pro is definitely aimed more at professional photographers who will make use of its tethering capabilities.
✅ You want to tether to a tablet/smartphone: The mobile version is actually quite affordable, so if you want to do on-location portrait photography and want to tether straight to a tablet and edit on the go, this would be a great option.
❌ You don't want to spend loads: No matter whether you pay monthly or for a one-off subscription, it's expensive software.
🔎 Capture One Pro 23 A professional-level editing app that specializes in color and tethering, this software is not for beginners, nor is it priced as such. The mobile app, however, is very reasonably priced and could prove useful for on-the-go shooting. Sadly, it doesn't offer any dedicated astro features. ★★★★½
Another app that follows the Lightroom model rather than Photoshop is Capture One Pro. This software excels in tethering and studio photography, making it a top choice for professionals in those fields. Capture One Pro is well-known for its exceptional RAW image decoding capabilities, ensuring high-quality results. Additionally, it supports a broad range of image formats, including the HEIC files generated by newer iPhones, further expanding its compatibility and usefulness for photographers.
There are very few things that Capture One Pro doesn't do well, and its primary focus is around perfecting color, with many editing and color grading tools at your disposal. We think this could be a fantastic tool for manipulating colors in those deep sky images of nebulae and cosmic dust clouds to really bring out those pinks and blues. When we reviewed Capture One Pro 21 back in 2021 we loved its ability to accurately color grade images and how well it manipulated colors in the image, and it seems that Capture One Pro 23 still maintains this performance — keep your eyes peeled for our review of the newest version coming very soon.
While primarily intended for professionals, Capture One Pro is an incredibly powerful software that combines the best features of Lightroom and Photoshop. It even offers a helpful 'learn' feature with in-camera tutorials, making it beginner-friendly for those who are ready to jump right in. However, if you're new to photo editing, we might not suggest starting with Capture One Pro unless you're prepared to explore its full potential.
Once you become familiar with the basics, the software provides a unique and robust set of tools that will elevate your editing skills to new heights. It's a fantastic choice for experienced photographers seeking advanced editing capabilities and a comprehensive all-in-one solution.
Although Capture One Pro is a fantastic tool for improving workflow, many of its most recent changes appear to be more focused on photo organization than editing, making it better for photographers who photograph people or events and need to sort through a high number of images quickly — taking a leaf out of Lightroom's book.
The downside? Capture One Pro is expensive whichever way you slice it. Monthly subscriptions are $24/m, annual is $179/y and a one-off payment for the license is $299. You could get two or more of the other apps for the same price so it's probably not worth it unless you are a studio pro.
- Read our Capture One Pro 23 review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Pricing | Expensive, but multiple ways to pay |
| User interface | Clean, customizable layout |
| Key features | Specializes in tethering |
| Astro features | No dedicated astro features |
Best for speedy editing
✅ You want to edit quickly: Neo features a lot of one-click editing tools that speed up workflow, especially with the use of AI tools.
❌ You want decent cataloging: Organization and cataloging aren't Luminar's strong suit, so you'd be better off opting for another editing app.
🔎 Luminar Neo This software uses a lot of AI-based tools to help create polished and professional-looking images, although it's not the best for astrophotography alone. It excels in speedy editing, although some users have reported that it can be buggy and slow. ★★★★
Previously, we recommended Luminar AI in this guide, but it was discontinued in 2022. Now, as an astrophotographer seeking traditional image-editing tools, we think you'll want to consider Luminar Neo. In our review of Luminar AI review, we found it to be excellent for applying Instagram-friendly filters and creative edits to images. However, it might not be the ideal option for astrophotography alone, as each astro image often has distinct requirements that differ greatly from other types of photography.
Neo is different, and now takes center stage as Luminar's flagship product, bringing a new editing engine and the ability to create more polished and professional-looking images. Luminar built Neo from the ground up rather than modifying the previous AI software, although Neo still offers powerful one-click AI adjustments to speed up your workflow.
Luminar Neo now allows you to incorporate layers into your editing workflow, similar to Photoshop. It also features a developer module that resembles Lightroom's functionality. However, it's worth mentioning that Luminar Neo's cataloging capabilities are relatively straightforward. You can only flag images, which means it may not be the most suitable choice if you require a comprehensive image storage and management system.
We've yet to do a full review of Luminar Neo, but keep your eyes peeled as we'll do one soon. Some users have reported the software being a little buggy, but hopefully, these will continue to be ironed out over time.
- Check out the Best cameras for astrophotography
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Pricing | You pay a one-off fee |
| User interface | Clean interface |
| Key features | Limited cataloging features |
| Astro features | Some helpful AI tools for astro editing |
Best for amateurs
✅ You're a novice: If you find the full version of Photoshop overwhelming, this could be a good introduction to all the basic tools in the software.
❌ You want the most affordable option: With the full version of Photoshop being available in the Adobe Photography bundle for a good price, you'd need a good reason to just go for Elements instead.
🔎 Adobe Photoshop Elements A good choice for beginners and enthusiasts who don't want the monthly subscription to the full version of Photoshop, but have all the essentials. It doesn't cater specifically to astrophotography, but you can do basic astro editing. ★★★★
Adobe Photoshop Elements is a fantastic choice for beginners and photography enthusiasts, offering a simplified and user-friendly version of Photoshop. While it may not cater specifically to astrophotographers, Elements does an excellent job of replicating the core features of Photoshop, including layers and selection methods. They've also introduced some impressive Sensei AI features that add a touch of innovation to your editing workflow.
Photoshop Elements enables you to perform tonal and color adjustments, replace backgrounds, and enhance your photos with automatic adjustments. The built-in guide assists you in learning and improving your editing skills as you progress. It's an excellent choice for quick and straightforward edits, and you can effortlessly create collages and slideshows too.
However, if you're a professional photographer or aiming to become one, we suggest considering the full Photoshop software. This ensures you'll have access to all the advanced features, avoiding any potential limitations in the long run. The complete version of Photoshop offers a broader range of tools and functionalities for more complex and professional-level editing tasks.
The differences between Photoshop and Elements are stark, not only in how many features they include but also in the way you pay for them. Adobe's Creative Cloud apps (Photoshop and Lightroom) are subscription software, which means you pay a fixed amount each month (currently $19.99 per month in the Photography plan, which is pretty reasonable for what you get). The benefit of a monthly subscription is that you always have access to the most recent version of the software, which is regularly updated to include various bug fixes and new features.
With Photoshop Elements, however, you just pay a one-off fee (it also has a video-editing sibling called Premiere Elements). The downside of this is that you pay for that specific version, and it's only a matter of time before there will be a new version available. So, if you want to make use of any newer features you'll have to shell out for the new version again. As Lightroom and Photoshop are available in the good-value Photographer's Bundle, you'd need a pretty good reason to purchase Elements instead. If you do think Photoshop Elements may be more suited to you, check out our Photoshop Elements review.
- Read our full Photoshop Elements review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Pricing | You pay a one-off fee |
| User interface | Simplified version, could do with updating |
| Key features | Includes basic Photoshop features |
| Astro features | Good for astro stacking |
Best for noise reduction
✅ You want good denoise features: We were very impressed by the DeepPrime XD noise removal — at the time of our review, we actually thought it was better than Lightroom's AI denoise tool.
❌ You want to stack images: There aren't any image stacking capabilities in PhotoLab, so users will need a separate app to be able to do that.
🔎 DxO PhotoLab 6 Astrophotographers will love its impressive AI noise removal features, but many other programs are hot on their heels when it comes to AI. We thought it was brilliant for organization, with a customizable layout and the ability to create projects. ★★★★
DxO PhotoLab is more like a digital darkroom than a full image editing app, but it has a fantastic feature that astrophotographers will love. The DeepPRIME XD noise reduction, powered by AI, can restore previously unseen details in your photos 'like nothing you've seen before'. Additionally, the ClearView tool helps boost contrast and color saturation in your deep-sky photographs, which is especially beneficial for astrophotography, where high ISO sensitivities can lead to unwanted noise. This software is great news for astrophotographers because it allows them to effectively remove noise and improve the quality of their images, even when dealing with challenging conditions.
We tested both of these features out in our DxO PhotoLab 6 review and we were very impressed with both of them — we even thought the DeepPRIME XD noise reduction tool outperformed Lightroom's new AI noise reduction. We'd love to see them add some kind of image-stacking functionality in the future to really make the software a big player for astrophotographers.
Although it can process compressed files like JPEG, you will need to shoot in RAW if you want the additional detail and color depth — which you'll always want when editing night-sky images.
If you like, you can even install Photolab as a Lightroom plugin, so you can spend most of your time on Lightroom, then switch over to Photolab to make use of its impressive AI tools.
- Read our full DxO PhotoLab 6 review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Pricing | No subscription, but you can spread the cost |
| User interface | Customizable layout |
| Key features | ClearView Plus to boost clarity and contrast |
| Astro features | Brilliant AI denoise feature, but no stacking options |
Best for beginners
✅ You want AI editing tools: This app makes use of a lot of AI-based editing tools, from portrait editing to sky replacements.
✅ You're a beginner: While it does feature more advanced AI tools, we thought it was good for beginners due to its simplicity and ease of use.
❌ You specifically want astro tools: We found this app to be particularly lacking in this area, so astrophotographers will want to look elsewhere.
🔎 CyberLink PhotoDirector 365 A decent editing app overall, beginners would get on well with its simplicity and ease of use, but there's little to offer astrophotographers and serious photography. ★★★½
For users on Mac-based operating systems, PhotoDirector 365 is available through a subscription model. However, if you prefer a standalone, one-off software purchase, PhotoDirector 14 Ultra is only compatible with Windows. PhotoDirector 365 and PhotoDirector 14 Ultra are essentially the exact same thing, just packaged differently based on whether you opt for the subscription model or the one-off license (365 being the yearly subscription). PhotoDirector 13, which we reviewed, didn't offer much for specific astrophotography editing and while we discovered the same in our PhotoDirector 365 review we think of it as a jack of all trades, master of none —making it suitable for beginner editors.
Many editing tools are designed for social media users, offering fun stickers and enhancements for online images. However, these tools may not be appealing to serious or professional photographers who need more advanced features. Thankfully, there are alternative image editing software options available that provide advanced capabilities at a lower cost, making them suitable for photographers who want to take their editing skills to the next level.
- Read our full CyberLink PhotoDirector 365 review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Pricing | Expensive for what it is |
| User interface | Basic but easy to navigate, good in-built library |
| Key features | Lots of AI tools |
| Astro features | Minimal astro features |
Best for learning techniques
✅ You want to own the software: This app operates on a one-time purchase basis, so once you buy it, you own the software.
❌ You want future updates: As there's no subscription option, you need to pay for future updates when they become available.
❌ You have an Apple device: This app is Windows only, so Mac users need not apply.
🔎 Corel PaintShop Pro Great for beginners working at a slower pace, it has AI tools that allow for easy, one-click edits, saving time and effort — although it's only available on Windows ★★★½
Paintshop Pro has been around for a while and is a popular choice for image editing. It takes a layer-based approach, just like Photoshop, which gives you more flexibility in your edits. It even supports RAW images and is starting to introduce AI and content-aware technologies that can greatly improve your astrophotos. While it's designed with beginners and hobbyists in mind, don't underestimate its editing capabilities.
In our Corel Paintshop Pro review, we found that although it's good for beginners, experienced users and anyone with a lot of photos to edit would likely get frustrated with its performance as even on faster machines, it can be slow and sluggish — not ideal for anyone who shoots events or weddings.
Paintshop Pro is separated into three different workspaces: Photography, which uses a full-screen environment and includes basic editing tools; Essentials, which is a stripped-back version still with good editing capabilities, and Complete; which is a more professional interface.
Paintshop Pro may not be specifically designed for astrophotography, but it does offer a variety of tools that can help enhance your astro images. However, the software shows more dedication to specialized workspaces and custom editing tools for drone and underwater photos than it does for night-sky images. Particularly, its noise reduction capabilities for astrophotography are not as robust as they should be.
Astrophotographers often need to push the ISO to high levels to capture images of the night sky, which can result in unwanted noise. To address this issue effectively, it's essential to have a noise-reduction function in the editing software that can remove noise while preserving the sharpness of the stars. While Paintshop Pro has useful features, it may not be the best choice for handling the specific needs of astrophotography in terms of noise reduction.
Corel has added focus stacking into their most recent update (Paintshop Pro 2023 which we will review soon) though, which is great for stacking astro shots with different exposures for the sky and foreground. The performance and useability have allegedly also been improved. We look forward to trying it.
- Read our full Corel PaintShop Pro 2022 review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Pricing | One-time purchase only, and future upgrades come at a cost |
| User interface | Separated into three different workspaces |
| Key features | Good list of standard photo editing tools |
| Astro features | Can stack images, but not the best for noise reduction |
Best for organization
✅ You find it on offer: We thought that its competitors brought more to the table overall, but if you find it on offer it's worth giving it a go.
❌ You get overwhelmed by busy interfaces: We found the interface to be rather busy and a bit dull, so if you don't know what you're doing it may be an unpleasant experience.
🔎 ACDSee Photo Studio It has fast processing times and offers all-in-one editing for batch and layer edits, but it's let down by the interface and price ★★★
ACDSee is a great choice if you're looking for a general-purpose image editor as it's a very versatile editing app — see how the 2022 version fared in our ACDSee Photo Studio review. It's organized into a number of modules (much like Affinity Photo's personas) and features a catalog management interface that's largely similar to Lightroom's. There are several tools available to help you enhance your night sky photographs between the develop module, which decodes your RAW images, and the main edit module, which operates more like Photoshop.
There are different versions of ACDSee available: Home, Professional and Ultimate. Home is the base model which is more than suitable for beginners, while Professional is for, well, professionals. Ultimate is the full-fat, beefy version that does everything. To really get the most out of your night-sky images, we'd recommend going for the Ultimate version, as it's designed to be an all-in-one solution for non-destructive editing, organizing, storing and sharing images.
When shooting RAW files (which is what most of us do), ACDSee has got you covered with its RAW image processing feature, so you don't need a separate app. In the Ultimate version, you'll find layers similar to Photoshop, making it easy to stack your night sky images seamlessly. ACDSee also offers an Advanced Lighting EQ tool that you can use selectively to enhance the delicate and subtle glows of the night sky or intensify darker night skies. The best part is that the editing process in ACDSee is non-destructive, meaning your original images remain safe throughout the editing process.
In the most recent 2023 version, like with many of the software updates in this guide, there is enhanced AI editing, allowing you to do more (such as replacing the sky in an image while maintaining the foreground image) with a single click.
- Read our ACDSee Photo Studio review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Pricing | Subscription and one-time purchase available |
| User interface | Organized into modules, but interface is quite busy |
| Key features | Enhanced AI editing |
| Astro features | Ultimate version enables you to stack your night sky images |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free photo editing app?
Cyberlink PhotoDirector 365 is the best budget photo editing app and, while not free, it's only $54.99 for an annual subscription license and is regularly discounted to around $39.99 which works out around $3.33 per month, about the price of a cup of coffee.
PhotoDirector 365 is an AI-heavy photo editing software with an in-built library and non-destructive workflow but it's not particularly suited to astrophotography.
What is the best photo editing app for Mac?
What is the best photo editing app for PC?
Affinity Photo 2 is the best photo editing app for astrophotography on Mac and on PC/Windows machines. We've rated it the best astrophotography editing software overall. That's because it has some powerful astrophotography editing features, is reasonably priced and processes quickly and efficiently. Plus, its user interface is straightforward, even for beginners.
What photo editor do most photographers use?
Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop are the photo editors of choice for many photographers around the globe. Reliable, available on multiple operating systems and mobile devices and with over 35 years of experience and development Adobe's software has become industry standard.
What is the best beginner photo editing software?
Cyberlink PhotoDirector 365 is the best beginner image editing app thanks to its affordability, strong AI-features and a good range of basic editing features.
How we test the best photo editing apps for astrophotography
To guarantee you're getting honest, up-to-date recommendations on the best photo editing apps to buy here at Space.com we make sure to put every photo editing app through a rigorous review to fully test each software. Each photo editing app is reviewed based on a multitude of aspects, from its layout and design, to how well it functions as an image editing software and its performance when processing still photos, especially astrophotography.
Each photo editing app is carefully tested by either our expert staff or knowledgeable freelance contributors who know their subject areas in depth. This ensures fair reviewing is backed by personal, hands-on experience with each editing app and is judged based on its price point, class and destined use. For example, comparing the image editing behemoth of Adobe Photoshop to a freeware image editing software wouldn’t be appropriate.
We look at how easy each image editing app is to operate, whether it contains the latest up-to-date imaging technology and file format compatibility. We'll also make suggestions if a particular image editor would benefit from any additional plug-ins to give you the best editing experience possible.
With complete editorial independence, Space.com are here to ensure you get the best buying advice on photo editing apps, whether you should purchase one or not, making our buying guides and reviews reliable and transparent.
