Technologies

Best free and paid photo editing apps for iPhone and Android

These apps can make your images look incredible.

With phones like the iPhone 13 Pro, Pixel 6 Pro and Galaxy S21 Ultra packing cameras that can give DSLRs a run for their money, it’s no wonder we take so many photos using just our phones. But when we get back from our day trip in the hills or our walk around town, it’s easy to just forget the images we’ve taken that day and let them gather dust further and further down our phone galleries.

Doing some creative photo editing can be a great way to get more out of your photography. And it doesn’t even matter if you have the latest, greatest phone with the best camera setup on the back or an older, cheaper phone; the iPhone App Store and Google Play Store on Android are jam-packed with great free and paid photo editing apps that can give your existing shots a whole new look, all from the comfort of your favorite squashy armchair.

I’ve rounded up a selection of my top picks, so have a read, make a cup of tea and settle down for an evening editing session. You can even turn your favorite shots into a photo book.

You can also check out these creative ideas to flex your photography muscles at home if you want to shoot and edit something new.

1. Snapseed

Free on iOS and Android.

Google-owned Snapseed offers a wide range of exposure and color tools to make tweaks to your images, but also has plenty of filter options, from vintage styles to modern, punchy HDR looks. You can layer the effects up to create some interesting edits on your image. And best of all, it’s totally free.

2. Adobe Lightroom

iOS and Android, some functions available for free, or $5 per month for full access.

Adobe Lightroom remains an industry standard for professional photographers and the mobile version is much the same. You’ll find no stickers, animations or emoji here, but you will get fine grain control over your image and the same set of tools you’d find in Lightroom on desktop. It’s the app I use the most to edit my own images on my iPhone and iPad, not least because the images sync in the cloud, letting me start on one device, and continue on another.

3. Adobe Photoshop Express

Free on iOS and Android.

Photoshop Express has many of the same features you’d find in Lightroom, including exposure, contrast and color editing options, but strips out some of the pro tools and cloud syncing and, crucially, ditches the subscription fee. It’s a great tool for tweaking your images to bring out their best, but you’ll also find a decent selection of filters and overlay textures, as well as tools for making cool collages from your images.

It’s not as open to wild creativity as other options on this list, but it’s a solid editing app at a price that’s hard to argue with.

4. Prisma

iOS and Android, $8 a month or $30 a year.

Prisma doesn’t deal with subtle filters and basic image corrections. Instead, its trippy filters will transform your images into often bizarre artistic creations. The results have a painterly effect and indeed many filters are inspired by artists such as Salvador Dali and Picasso. The filters are strong, and while you can tweak them, not every filter will work with every image. I found some to be more suited to portraits while other filters worked best with landscapes.

But it’s great fun to experiment with and when you find a photo that works, it really works.

5. Bazaart

iOS only, $8 a month or $48 a year.

Bazaart’s montage and collage tools let you combine multiple different elements — from photos, to text, to graphics — and layer them all up to create a finished work of art. It has tools that let you instantly erase the background from behind a portrait subject (I was amazed at how well it worked!) in order to put in a new background or layer up multiple effects. It also has a huge variety of templates to create gorgeous collages for Instagram stories too.

There are so many different ways you could try and composite different images together that the only boundary will come down to how creative you’re feeling. Head over to Bazaart’s Instagram page for some inspiration.

6. Photofox

iOS only.

Like Bazaart, Photofox has powerful tools for removing subjects from background that let you composite in new backgrounds, or apply awesome effects. I particularly like Photofox’s dispersion effect, which makes it look like your subject is bursting into particles (trust me, it’s cool), as well as the glitch effects and the double exposure that overlays two images on top of each other.

As with Bazaart, there are endless possibilities of what you can do by layering and compositing different types of images and applying different effects to each.

7. VSCO

iOS and Android, limited functions for free, or $20 a year with a seven-day free trial.

VSCO began life making color grading presets for Lightroom and its roots are clear in the app today. Rather than offer stickers and animated GIFs for Snapchat enthusiasts, VSCO is all about the more artful filmic color filters. The app has a huge range of presets available, including looks designed to emulate classic rolls of film from Fujifilm, Kodak and Ilford.

It’s got a great selection of black-and-white filters too, making it a great choice to experiment with if you’re into your moody monochrome shots.

8. PicsArt

iOS and Android, limited functions for free or $48 a year for the whole suite.

PicsArt has a huge range of editing tools available to you, from basic adjustments like exposure and contrast, through to cinematic color grading and dramatic filters that transform your images into painting-like pieces of art. There are loads of options for both the tone and shape of your face in selfies — I won’t go into the ethics of using these tools for «beauty» purposes, but I had fun in using the tools to intentionally transform my features into bizarre proportions.

There’s a whole Instagram-style social sharing element to PicsArt as well, if you’re interested in that. Personally I was mostly interested in the editing options.

Make sure to check out my guide on creative at-home photo projects, see our whole catalog of awesome tips and tricks for better phone photos.

Technologies

Premiere Pro for Free: How Adobe’s New iPhone App Will Let You Edit Videos at No Cost

Adobe Premiere users will only have to pay for extra AI credits and cloud storage.

Thanks to social media apps like TikTok and Instagram, everyone is an video editor these days. And soon you won’t have to sit down at a laptop to use one of the most popular video editors on the market.

Adobe announced on Thursday that it is releasing a new video editing iPhone app named Premiere on Sept. 30. You can preorder the app now in the Apple App Store, with an Android app currently in development.

The iOS app should feel familiar to Premiere users, with its multitrack timeline and preview screen. The app can be used for all your usual video editing: trimming clips, overlaying audio and adding synchronized captions. You can also use Adobe’s new voice-to-sound effects tool and record voiceovers.

Premiere should be a big upgrade for Adobe users who have only used Premiere Rush, a barebones version of its video editor. As more content creators become mobile-first, Adobe is hoping to draw them in with revamped mobile apps.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

You should be able to use the Premiere iOS app for free. Adobe says you may need to pay for generative AI credits and additional storage, like through Adobe Creative Cloud, though more pricing info is expected closer to the Sept. 30 launch. This is very different from the desktop app, which starts at $23 per month.

A truly free Premiere mobile app would be a win for content creators, especially for anyone who wants to explore editing in Premiere but doesn’t want to pay for another subscription.

In an era of mobile-first content creators, tech companies have raced to introduce user-friendly mobile editing apps. TikTok creators use the ever-popular CapCut, with Meta adding its own contribution, a new app called Edits. Adobe has long been the industry standard for professional content creation and editing, but its mobile offerings were usually less feature-packed versions of its flagship programs under different names.

That changed this year as Adobe released true mobile versions of Photoshop and Firefly AI. The new Premiere app helps Adobe make a competitive entrance in a crowded market, in addition to giving loyal Adobe users a new way to access their tools on the go.

Adobe has also been focused on integrating generative AI into its software. Premiere Pro got its first-ever AI tool, generative extend, which uses AI to add a few extra seconds to clips you upload. It’s meant to help smooth transitions between clips, particularly when you might have turned off the recording a smidge too early and need a few extra seconds of film.

AI is a contentious issue among creators, with some voicing concerns over the training and deployment of AI models. Adobe’s Firefly AI has been fully integrated into the new Premiere iOS app, though the company’s AI guidelines state that it never trains on customer data and that its AI-generated content is commercially safe.

For more, check out what to know about the iOS and Android Photoshop apps and good alternatives to CapCut.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, Sept. 6

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Sept. 6.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s Mini Crossword is extra-long, as usual on Saturdays. And a couple of the clues were stumpers! Need answers? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: U.S. prez who served four terms
Answer: FDR

4A clue: Hurry, in Shakespearean English
Answer: HIE

7A clue: Only country to have a musical instrument (the harp) as its national emblem
Answer: IRELAND

9A clue: Big name in rum
Answer: BACARDI

10A clue: She holds the record for most #1 Billboard hits by a female rapper (5)
Answer: CARDIB

11A clue: Ancient time-tracking device
Answer: SUNDIAL

12A clue: Ctrl-___-Del
Answer: ALT

13A clue: Opposite of SSW
Answer: NNE

14A clue: Used to be
Answer: WAS

15A clue: Jupiter or Saturn, primarily
Answer: GAS

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Small lie
Answer: FIB

2D clue: Whom Count von Count of «Sesame Street» is a parody of
Answer: DRACULA

3D clue: Takes back, as testimony
Answer: RECANTS

4D clue: 1920s U.S. president
Answer: HARDING

5D clue: Home to the W.N.B.A.’s Fever
Answer: INDIANA

6D clue: Weed gummies
Answer: EDIBLES

8D clue: Cooking grease
Answer: LARD

11D clue: Observed
Answer: SAW

Technologies

Researchers Discover 18 Popular VPNs Are Connected: Why This Matters

All are owned by 3 separate groups but CNET’s recommended VPNs are not on the list

Virtual private networks are popular ways to keep your online activity private and hide your physical location from your internet service provider and apps. But it’s obviously important to choose a safe and secure VPN.

Three university researchers have discovered that 18 of the most widely used VPNs have shared infrastructures with serious security flaws that could expose customers’ browsing activity and leave their systems vulnerable to corrupted data. These VPNs are among the top 100 most popular on the Google Play Store, comprising more than 700 million downloads.

Read more: Best VPN Service for 2025: Our Top Picks in a Tight Race

The peer-reviewed study by the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium found that these VPNs, despite calling themselves independent businesses, are actually grouped into three separate families of companies.

None of CNET’s recommended VPNs — ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Surfshark, Proton VPN and Mullvad — are on the list. (If you currently don’t have a VPN, here’s why you might want to start using one.)

According to the findings, these are the three groups that contain the 18 VPNs:

Family A: Turbo VPN, Turbo VPN Lite, VPN Monster, VPN Proxy Master, VPN Proxy Master Lite, Robot VPN, Snap VPN and SuperNet VPN
Family B: Global VPN, Inf VPN, Melon VPN, Super Z VPN, Touch VPN, VPN ProMaster, XY VPN and 3X VPN
Family C: X-VPN and Fast Potato VPN

Researchers determined that the VPNs in Family A are shared between three providers linked to Qihoo 360, a firm identified by the US Department of Defense as a Chinese military company. The VPNs in Family B use the same IP addresses from the same hosting company.

Know your VPN’s parent company

It’s a cautionary tale about why it’s important to know who’s behind the VPN you’re using, says CNET senior writer Attila Tomaschek.

«It’s also crucial to know what kinds of data the VPN provider is sharing with its parent company and affiliated entities,» Tomaschek said. «Some of these companies may even be compelled to log customer activity and share it with authorities, depending on the jurisdiction in which they operate.»

Despite the warnings, Tomaschek says it’s not so easy to figure out who controls your VPN. But he says there are measures that customers can take.

«Users can do a few things to help ensure the VPN they’re using is reputable,» Tomaschek says. «Check the privacy policy — specifically for terms like ‘logging,’ ‘data sharing’ or ‘data collection.’ A Google search of the provider can help determine whether the VPN has been involved in questionable activity. Read detailed, unbiased reviews from reputable sources. Be especially wary of signing on with a free VPN, even if it’s listed as a top choice in your app store.»

The PETS researchers examined the most downloaded VPNs on Android, looking for overlaps among business paperwork, web presence and codebase. After identifying code similarities, they were able to group the 18 VPNs into three groups. The study was initially spurred by VPN Pro’s own findings, «Who owns your VPN? 105 VPNs run by just 24 companies.»

CNET’s Tomaschek has advice for anyone who has been using one of these 18 VPNs.

«I’d recommend deleting it from your device immediately,» he said. «If you suspect that any sensitive personal data may have been compromised, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your credit report and look into services like dark web monitoring or identity theft protection.»