I Won't Edit Photos on Android Without These 4 Apps (2024)

I do almost all my work using my phone, personal and professional. And that includes editing photos. Unfortunately, I haven't found an app that does everything I need, so I rely on these four photo-editing apps from time to time.

1 Samsung Gallery for Cropping Subjects, Erasing, and General Edits

When the phrase AI is uttered, I'm inclined to roll my eyes, but AI features are a big part of why I use the Samsung Gallery app. A major one is the ability to hold down on an image to automatically copy a subject and paste it into another image or note.

Cropping a subject in this way is much easier than opening up an image editor in order to lasso the image by hand. The end result may not be as precise as what a skilled professional can do, but it's often better than what I can manage.

Samsung Gallery also has a feature that's equivalent to the Magic Eraser feature in Google Photos. I use it when I see a minor element I'd like to remove from a shot. It also has automatic filters that do a good job of making a photo pop.

Overall, Samsung Gallery is an impressively good traditional image editor in its own right. The interface simplifies making adjustments on a touchscreen, and I find the design choices more intuitive than the traditional sliders I've encountered on desktop apps. I start with Samsung Gallery when I need to work with images before transitioning to other apps to fill in any gaps.

Download:Samsung Gallery (Free)

2 Adobe Lightroom for Blurring Backgrounds

Adobe Lightroom is an image and video editor for creative professionals. The mobile app doesn't have all the features of its desktop counterpart, but that's not an issue for me. I primarily use it to blur the background in images, and that experience isn't much different from blurring a background using Lightroom desktop.

Most of the time, I just use portrait mode in my phone's camera app to provide photos with a nice bokeh effect. However, if, for any reason, I forget to take a shot that way or I'm using an image captured on a different camera, Lightroom allows me to apply the same effect after the fact.

Lightroom works by uploading your photo to the cloud and processing the image to pinpoint the subject and how the blur should be applied. It's far from instant, and the effect isn't perfect, but it's more than good enough for images you're sharing on social media or even publishing on a site like ours.

The app doesn't work magic. Some subjects are difficult for computers to make out. You can find weird, unsightly effects applied to strands of hair that stick up from the head, preventing a crisp outline. Smartphones also sometimes struggle with the same kind of shots. But for product photography, Lightroom tends to do a good job.

​Download:Adobe Lightroom (Free, subscription available)

3 Fossify Gallery for Cropping and Resizing Photos

Fossify Gallery is a fork of an app known as Simple Gallery, a previously open-source program that has since been acquired and injected with ads and tracking. As the name suggests, Fossify Gallery is a gallery app, first and foremost, but it also features a built-in image editor.

While Samsung Gallery can crop to specific aspect ratios, it doesn't let me designate exact sizes. Every publication I've ever written for requires certain images, to be exact. And that's where Fossify Gallery comes in. It lets you select the pixel height and width you want your images to be.

The rest of the app's photo manipulation features aren't extensive, so I often use a different app to edit an image, then turn to Fossify Gallery to make sure it's the exact size I need to publish.

Download:Fossify Gallery (Free)

I don't often have to create my own graphics, but I need a tool like Canva on standby, just in case. Surprisingly, a combination of apps made it easy for me to create banners right on my phone. I can now isolate a subject by simply holding my finger down on a photo within Samsung Gallery and then upload or paste that image into Canva.

Canva allows me to create backgrounds of exact sizes, and I can work with multiple layers. Adding text and basic shapes is straightforward. Canva also has some minor quality-of-life features that are immense time-savers, such as adding guidelines to help you tell when an image is centered vertically or horizontally.

Canva is good for everything from putting together a photo collage to creating design mockups. You can even use Canva to put together an invoice. Basically, the time you put into learning Canva isn't time wasted, and the knowledge transfers over to using Canva from a laptop as well.

Download:Canva (Free, subscription available)

I know what you're wondering. How can you possibly get so much professional work done on a phone? I work using a book-style foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 5, which provides more screen real estate to work with than you may think. I then connect my phone to a lapdock or AR glasses and use Samsung DeX when I need more space.

Android apps have come a long way, and they can scale well on a bigger screen. These aren't the best photo editing tools in the industry, but for most of us, they're good enough to get by.