Photoshop Express

Photoshop Express is the mobile and lightweight version of Photoshop: it lacks the depth of the desktop application, but for retouching a photo, removing objects, correcting colors and applying effects directly from your smartphone it's fast, free and better than many competitors.

Photoshop Express is Adobe's mobile photo editing application, freely available for iOS and Android. Compared to the Photoshop desktop application, it's significantly simpler and oriented toward quick smartphone use. Core features include light, contrast and saturation correction, noise reduction, skin and eye retouching, perspective correction, cropping at various ratios and AI-based unwanted object removal. Over 100 photographic effects, borders and looks applicable with a tap are available, along with Photoshop Camera filters. Collages let you combine multiple photos into one image with pre-set layouts. The app integrates with Creative Cloud: those with an Adobe subscription access additional premium features, fonts and extra templates. It's also available as a web app for browsers. The quality of the object removal and perspective correction algorithm, inherited from the Adobe ecosystem, is a strength over alternatives like BeFunky or Fotor.

For amateur photographers, social media managers and anyone wanting to quickly retouch photos from mobile with Adobe processing quality, without opening desktop Photoshop.

Photoshop Express is downloadable and usable for free with basic features, without a subscription. Premium features — more presets, some advanced filters, unlimited AI object removal — are accessible with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (the Photography plan, which also includes Photoshop and Lightroom, starts at around $9.99 per month). There's no standalone paid Express plan: premium is always part of the broader CC ecosystem.