Top 13 Video Editing Software for Mac 1. Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Verdict: Adobe Premiere is the most popular video editor for all the platforms. Verdict: Lightworks can be downloaded for free without a time limit. The program has multi-channel input. The BEST video editing software for Mac in 2020! Here’s our review of the leading options, and our top picks for both free and paid Mac Video Editors right n.

• January 02, 2020
• 18 min to read

Most free photo editors available on the App Store are quite basic, offering just a limited number of filters and allowing you to easily and quickly liven up your photos before posting them on social media.

But if you’re an aspiring or professional photographer, you probably need a more powerful app with a broader set of tools to use your creativity to the fullest. Besides, you probably use your Mac for photo editing because working on a large screen makes it possible to adjust the slightest details.

1. Apple’s Photos (Built-in app)

Apple’s Photos app is included for free on all recently released Macs. It does a good job at organizing your photos, but its collection of photo enhancement tools leaves much to be desired. Hopefully, our selection of the best free programs for photo editing on Mac will help you choose the right app to suit all your creative needs.

2. Luminar (7 days trial)

Luminar is another full-featured photo editor that’s popular with both Mac and Windows users. It can work as a standalone app as well as a plugin for such popular programs as Apple Photos.

Luminar uses Artificial Intelligence to enable sophisticated yet quick photo enhancements. Among these AI features are Sky Enhancer, which adds more depth and detail to the sky in your photos while leaving other areas untouched; Accent AI, which analyzes a photo and automatically applies the best combination of different effects to enhance your image; and Sun Rays, which allows you to place an artificial sun and adjust the lighting to your liking or make the sun rays already in your photo look even more incredible.

Luminar has over 60 filters you can apply to your photos to enhance them in a moment. Luminar also provides a set of powerful tools for cropping, transforming, cloning, erasing, and stamping, along with layers, brushes, and many more incredible features. Luminar supports the Touch Bar on the latest MacBook Pro, making photo editing even more effortless and pleasing.

3. Photolemur 3 (Free Version with watermark)

Photolemur is a relative newcomer on the photo editing market but it has all the chances to win the favor of beginner photographers and hobbyists. Running on Artificial Intelligence, Photolemur is a completely automatic photo enhancer, meaning that it does all the editing for you in no time. It has the simplest interface, with only a few buttons and sliders to adjust the enhancement to your liking and view the before and after results.

All you need to do is choose a photo (or a few) that you want to improve, drag and drop or import them using the Import button, and let the program make enhancements. After it’s done, you can compare the edited version with the original image by using the before–after slider and, if you want, adjust the skin tone or even enlarge the eyes using additional sliders. Pretty easy, huh?

Photolemur also offers a number of impressive styles to touch up your photos and give them a sophisticated and professional look. With this app, you don’t need to stuff your head with photo editing nuances and terms. Just run Photolemur and watch the magic happen!

4. Aurora HDR (14 days trial)

As you probably can tell from the name, Aurora HDR is designed to help photographers enhance their HDR photos, making them even more detailed and beautiful. It’s an ideal tool for editing your photos, with an extensive collection of more than 20 tools including details, tone, mapping, color, glow, and vignette. Each tool has its unique selection of controls to adjust its effects.

Aurora HDR enables you to work with brushes, layers, and masks, and provides a number of automatic AI tools for recognizing and removing noise, enhancing colors, lighting, and details, improving clarity, and adding contrast to dull areas while leaving other areas untouched.

Aurora HDR does a great job dealing with difficult lighting situations and creating full-of-life images while being easy to use.

5. Pixelmator (Trial 30 Days)

Pixelmator is a photo enhancer beloved by many Mac users, as it offers a good combination of a modern and simple interface, the ability to work on multiple layers, and powerful features that take photo editing to a whole new level. With so many editing tools, brushes, and effects, you can enhance your photos to your liking. You can choose between two versions of Pixelmator – standard and pro – depending on your needs. The standard version is great for basic photo editing with its selection of essential tools and filters, while the pro version is packed with extra brushes, tools, and effects that let you push your creativity to new boundaries. You can decide which version is suitable for you according to what features you’re looking for in a photo editing app.

6. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 (Trial link)

Photoshop Elements isn’t as affordable as other photo enhancers for beginner photographers. But luckily there’s a trial version available, so you can check it out before deciding whether this app is worthy of your money. Photoshop Elements acquired many powerful features from Photoshop, only Elements is simplified for amateur photographers and enthusiasts. It includes a good number of effects and filters, plus automated editing options for improving lighting, color balance, and exposure, and even opening closed eyes and reducing the effects of camera shake.

In addition to all of these awesome features, Photoshop also offers editing modes for beginners, intermediate users, and experts. Beginners will probably prefer Quick mode, as it focuses on essential tools to quickly enhance your photos by improving color, lighting, and other basic settings. Guided mode provides intermediate users with step-by-step guidance with more professional features like artistic effects, skin tone correction, and background replacement. Expert mode gives you full access to the app’s really powerful editing features and is ideal for creating stunning images.

7. Affinity Photo (Free Trial)

Affinity Photo’s interface may seem overwhelming at first, especially for novices, but when you come to grips with it you’ll find that the app is just what you’ve been looking for. Its numerous professional tools, effects, and filters encourage you to get creative with your photos. Among the coolest features Affinity Photo has to offer is a before and after view to compare the original photo with its edited version.

Affinity Photo works with 15 file types, including common ones like PDF, PSD, JPG, and GIF as well as some less popular ones. The app amazes with its abundance of basic and top-notch editing tools, allowing you to tweak your photos using all possible kinds of instruments. Affinity Photo allows you to edit HDR photos, apply artistic filters and effects, play with masks and layers, and create breathtaking compositions by combining several images in one. If you find its interface a bit much and are afraid of getting lost in all those advanced tools, you should probably look for something more suitable for your level. But Affinity Photo is worth mastering.

8. Google Photos

Google Photos is a popular cloud storage service for photos and videos. It can’t boast countless masterly tools like other photo enhancers that we review in this article, but it includes some fundamental features like filters, color adjustment sliders, and transformation tools.

Although Google Photos may not be that helpful when it comes to editing photos, it does a pretty good job at storing high-resolution images and videos with 15GB of free online storage, compared to iCloud’s mere 5GB (which you can upgrade to 50GB for a monthly fee). If you’re planning to go on a trip and take plenty of photos, then it might be smart to sign up for Google Photos to use that extra storage space when you come back.

9. PhotoScape X (Free)

A relatively new photo editing app, PhotoScape X has been gaining popularity with many Mac and PC users since its release in 2008. Its interface is simple but unconventional, with a number of tabs running along the top of the window. Each is responsible for a specific stage of editing. The Viewer tab allows you to browse and organize your photos. After you pick a photo, you can switch to the Editor tab, which includes a broad set of instruments, filters, and effects and a useful feature that enables you to compare the adjusted photo with the original.

The next tabs, including the Batch tab, mainly concentrate on editing and renaming multiple photos at once. The GIF tab allows you to easily create an animated GIF from a group of selected photos.

The downside of PhotoScape X is a lack of selection tools, so all changes are applied to the whole image rather than to a selected part.

10. Gimp (Free)

Gimp is a free open-source photo editing app that has been on the market for over 22 years and is available for Windows, Mac, and even Linux. Unlike many free apps, Gimp doesn’t have any ads or in-app purchases. Its grey interface might seem a little old-fashioned and it may be a bit sluggish when it comes to complex effects, though.

Gimp offers a vast collection of advanced tools that hardly any free photo editor can boast. It has numerous enhancement options such as clone and heal brushes, layers and channels, accurate selection tools, a number of transformation instruments, and, of course, color adjustment controls. Gimp is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing photos and is beloved by so many users for its price (free) and versatility. But if you can’t come to grips with Gimp’s interface, it may be worth paying some cash for a more user-friendly program.

Summary: We will discuss top 5 best video editing software for mac in this article, include each video editing software’s pros & cons, and audience for, go and get the trial version to decide which is the best one for you.

Why You Need a Best Video Editing Software for Mac

This is the age of video consumption, where people don’t only love watching and sharing video content but also actively engage in the creation of videos. Thanks to powerful video editing tools and movie-making programs, anyone with a spark of creativity and the desire to learn can turn ordinary videos into exciting content.

In fact, popular YouTubers are great examples of people who started out with nothing other than a camera in hand and now have professionally created videos watched by millions of people. If you’re in a similar boat and hope to create outstanding video content, you’ll need to try your hands on some of the best video editing softwares.

These programs offer a variety of options and features that you can use to turn ordinary videos into professionally edited content, however, since they all differ in terms of pricing, options, and functionality, you’ll need to choose which suits your needs the best. Some of the programs are great for beginners looking to step into the world of video editing while others are designed for professional users, requiring you to have a basic understanding of video editing methodologies while using them. YouTube is the best teacher so if you want to learn how to use any of the following software, simply browse through some good videos and you’re all set to kickstart your video editing journey.

Being a Mac user, you’re in for a good experience since creatives always vouch for Mac to be the best machine if you want to get good graphics work done. This review enlists the top best video editing software for Mac, so go ahead, download these and use them on trial versions to decide which is the best one for you.

Review of the Top 5 Best Video Editing Software for Mac

#1. TechSmith Camtasia

Editing Programs For Mac Free

Educational, informative or instructional videos (such as tutorials, how-tos etc) need to be created using a professional screen recording and video editing software. One of the most powerful screen recording and video editing software is TechSmith Camtasia, a favorite of both Windows and Mac users alike.

Camtasia lets you record your screen, your audio as well as your headshot as needed to create effective online tutorials. This is the go-to software for most online tutors who want the combination of screen recording, audio recording along with cam recording.

What sets Camtasia apart from other Mac video editors and makes it the most preferred video editing program for online tutorials is its multiple editing features. The most useful is the annotations that you can use to mark or highlight important areas in the video. You can also use titles and multiple callout styles to create dialogues to create instructional content with the video. Moreover, you can make use of the transitions, zoom in/out and effects to give your video the professional touch it needs. Unlike other Mac video editing programs, Camtasia has all the necessary tools to help you create demonstrative video content.

Since Camtasia video editor caters to online educational content, it also gives you options to create quizzes, record and import presentations as well as pan animations to your recording screen. A powerful video editing program for Mac, Camtasia comes at a price tag of $249.00 which is a far heftier price tag than its other counterparts. The program does come with plenty of useful tutorials so if you’re planning to start an online course or tutorship, this is one of the best video editing tools to use on Mac, although it is not as professionally cut out for video editing as Premiere or Final Cut Pro X. Nevertheless, this Mac video editing software is aimed at professionals and newbies may need some time understanding and figuring out the program.

You can read the full review of Camtasia video editor, to learn detailed features of it, and how to make the professional tutorials or how-to videos with ease.

Pros:
• Screen, cam and audio recording simultaneously. Good for live tutorials.
• A range of effects and feature set you can use to create professional content.
• Direct social sharing available.

Cons:
• Some deeper features may require editing of the UI.
• Expensive price tag.

Audience:
• The best video editing software for who wants to create professional tutorials or demonstrative content on Mac.

#2. Filmora Mac Video Editor

Filmora has gained quite a popularity with users, those who are looking for an easy-to-use video editing tool for Mac that doesn’t cost them hundreds of dollars and can get basic stuff done. Sporting a more of a DIY option, Filmora is designed for the casual user. With pre-defined musical tracks, great design themes and plenty of graphical tidbits to choose from, Filmora is a great video editor for Mac if you want something to get the job done. It also allows for easy screen recording, so if you’re hoping to record a cool video and get it edited without wasting too much time, Filmora is good.

There are multiple annual plans for you to choose from starting from $44.99 to $79.99 with the last one giving unlimited downloads to stock footages from the Filmstocks library. You can also try the program with all its features in the Trial option, but your final product will have a huge watermark over it. For beginners, Filmora gives the best of both world editing and aesthetically pleasant content. You may be interested in reading the review of Filmora video editor.

Learn how to edit videos with Filmora from this video:

Pros:
• Plenty of themes and design options to choose from.
• Easy-to-use interface and requires no former training.
• Available at affordable price plans.
• Lifetime purchase available $59.99.

Cons:
• Limited features for those seeking extensive options.
• Limited stock footages in the Filmstock library.
• Not recommended for highly professional work.

Audience:
• Entrepreneurs, DIY users who want an easy-going video editing software on Mac.

#3. iMovie

iMovie is the video editing software comes along with all macOS devices. The program has a slick interface and is a great starting point for users who are absolutely new to video editing and are looking for free options before they invest in full-fledged video editing software. The iMovie can help you get basic editing done with pre-defined title designs, transition designs and backgrounds. You can add audio, maintain color balance, perform color correction, crop videos, and apply filters to videos using given options. You’re even given fourteen design themes to start from where you simply enter videos and titles letting the theme do its magic.

Best Editing Software For Mac 2020

Being a free Mac video editor, the Apple iMovie has an impressive set of tools for media organization, color and speed optimization along with professional audio options for your video. Not to mention, it also has green-screen effects and supports 4K video although it still needs to provide support for 360-degree video. With a great interface, easy-to-use designs and theme options, the iMovie program is the best entry-level video editing software for Mac users. If you’re starting out and have absolutely no budget for investing in a professional video editing program, the iMovie is a perfect choice. The only setback to the iMovie is that you cannot record a screen and will need to use another screen recording program to record the screen and then import it into iMovie for editing.

Learn iMovie video editing tutorial for beginners:

Pros:
• Highly efficient interface.
• Multiple editing options.
• Free for all Mac users.
• Plenty of audio and design tools.

Cons:
• Has limited video track options.
• Needs additional flexibility.
• Animation options would have been great.

Audience:
• Entry-level novices experimenting with video editing on Mac.

#4. Apple Final Cut Pro X

Apple’s very own professional Final Cut Pro X is a powerful video editing software designed for professionals, and boasts of premium features such as 360-degree video support, face analysis, multi-cam support and many others that make it a worthy purchase at $299. Along with the price, you may also have to invest some money in purchasing various plugins (that is if you’re at a professional level requiring more effects). According to many experts, Final Cut Pro X is to Apple as Adobe Premiere is to Windows which essentially means the program is designed for providing cutting edge video editing functionalities, turning your normal video shoots into professional content fit for online distribution. Some have even gone ahead to place the Final Cut Pro X above the Premiere in terms of its easy-to-use interface and sleek design.

Since it’s a full-fledged video editing tool, it might not come easy for novice users which is why it’s highly recommended that you look up some tutorials online and try out the trial version before making a full purchase. The Apple Final Cut Pro X has an exciting interface that lets you do some pretty amazing things with its multiple editing features. The latest version of the Final Cut Pro is the most appealing as it allows you to dabble in 360-degree VR content and provides support for HDR and HEVC video forms. Since the Final Cut Pro X is a product of Apple, you’ll find it quite similar to the iMovie functioning in the same manner with of course the only difference being one is for novice users while the other is for professionals. If you’re ready to take on video editing as a regular activity and want to truly master the process, Final Cut Pro X could be your best video editing software on Mac.

Final Cut Pro X full tutorial may do help for you:

Pros:
• Support for 360-degree videos and VR Content.
• Dozens of features and options to choose from.
• Support for the latest Mac Touchbar.

Cons:
• Lack of timeline tracking.
• Maybe a bit complicated for new users.
• An expensive price tag.
• Additional purchase for plugins.
• You will need to invest in learning about the program before using it.

Audience:
• Professional editors who can make maximum use of the software’s features.
• Those who want to take up video editing as a professional skill.

#5. Movavi Video Editor for Mac

Video editors like Camtasia, Final Cut Pro X may be difficult to master for new users which is why it is often seen to be used by professionals who are able to dig into all the important features of the tools. For the average user though, an easy option like Filmora and Movavi are good enough. Similar to Filmora, Movavi Mac video editor has almost the same features with just one or two minor differences (such as Filmora’s lack of support for keyframe animation or lack of instructions within the program itself). Other than that, the price tag is the same with Movavi Video Editor Plus having a price tag of $59.95.

The plus side to the Movavi Video Editor Plus is you can captures video from TV tuners and VHS which is a great deal for people who want to digitize old video cassettes and TV programs.

Learn how to edit video on Mac with MOVAVI video editor

Pros:
• Multiple effects and options to choose from.
• Support for older OS.
• Sound normalization.
• Allows for VHS capture.

Best Editing Software For Macbook Air

Cons:
• No social integration options.
• Not recommended for highly professional work.

Best Editing Software For Macbook

Audience:
• Casual users, bloggers, and beginners who want an easy video-editing option.

Best Editing Software For Mac For Videos

Conclusion

Video editing is an exciting field and one that thousands of aspiring YouTubers, bloggers, entrepreneurs, and artists are enthusiastic about. When choosing the best video editing application for Mac, it’s essential to understand what your goals are and what you expect out of the program. If you’re someone who’s just starting out and wants to dabble in video content at a rapid scale then options like Filmora or Movavi are great to use. They don’t require any pre-understanding or experience with video editing and can easily get the job done. With cool effects, music and footage library etc, you can get most of your task done.

On the other hand, if you want to take up video editing as a skill or a profession, then you must turn towards professional programs for video editing like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro which are tools professionals use. To master these tools though, you will need to invest time in online tutorials and experiment with multiple options. You also need to have a strong system that can hold these programs especially since video editing consumes RAM heavily. You will also need to invest money in buying these programs and they don’t come cheap which is why it’s advised that you need to be very clear on what you want and then spend your money accordingly.

To know which program suits you best, download the trial version, play around and see what features you want the most for your particular project. The trial version may have limited options and may even have watermarks at the end product, so it might be useless if you want to use it for a rare/one-time project. In that case, the iMovie makes the best choice! To record your screen for free, you can use other programs like Loom which you can download and then edit in iMovie.

Best Editing Software For Mac Youtube

Remember to always identify your needs, check and compare the video editing programs through trial versions before you make a purchase. You can also invest some time in reading user experience, reviews and suggestions by experts to see which Mac video editing software meets your expectations and goals.