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The AI photo-editing tools that are actually useful
AI photo editing is one of those things that sounds more exciting than it actually is, especially when it comes to the blatantly fake posts you find on social media apps like Instagram and X.
Yes, your phone can turn you into a medieval knight, a Barbie doll, or whatever trend is doing the rounds this week, but is that really useful? I don’t think so.
What is handy, though, are the growing number of apps that use AI in a more subtle way to achieve your photo-editing goals. For TechRadar's Content Creator Week, I’ve picked five photo-editing apps that use AI to improve your photos, without becoming AI slop.
1. Snapseed
Snapseed doesn’t try to reinvent photo editing, and it definitely doesn’t shout about AI. But under the surface, a lot of its tools are doing some very clever things.
Take the Healing tool. You can tap unwanted objects, and more often than not, they just disappear cleanly. No weird smudging you often find on built-in tools like Apple’s Clean Up.
What really keeps me coming back to Snapseed, though, is the granular control I have over every aspect of my photos and the way AI interacts with them.
You can edit specific parts of an image, tweak lighting in just one area, and stack changes without committing to anything. It feels closer to proper editing software than most mobile apps and, crucially, it never feels like it’s doing too much.
2. Lightroom Mobile
If Snapseed is incredibly simple to pick up, Lightroom Mobile sits at the other end of the spectrum: easy to use but difficult to master.
Lightroom Mobile is best when you’re happy to spend a bit more time because you know the payoff will be worth it. The AI here is all about saving effort. Subject selection, sky masking, automatic exposure balancing, essentially an even more granular editing suite, all superpowered by AI smarts.
Adobe just added a newer wave of AI-powered tools, too, that can remove objects and fill in the gaps in a way that looks very convincing. Not perfect every time, but a long way from the obvious blur jobs we used to get.
It’s not the quickest app to jump into, and it can feel a bit heavy if you just want to tweak a selfie. But when you’ve got a photo you really like, this is the one I’d trust to finish the job properly.
3. Remini
I started using Remini very recently, but I’ve found it to be an excellent tool for taking a photo that needs a spruce up and adding just enough AI magic to fix it.
You drop in a photo, hit enhance, and it does its thing. Faces sharpen up, details come back, and suddenly something that looked unusable is pretty acceptable.
Remini is especially strong with portraits. The app can make eyes clearer and edges more defined, but the trade-off is that it’s not subtle. You can tell something’s been done, but if you hadn’t used Remini, the photo would still be a mess. It’s not for every scenario, but when you’ve only got one photo of a particular moment, and unfortunately, it’s terrible, Remini can save the day.
4. Lensa
Lensa is probably best known for its AI avatars, but that’s not really why I’d recommend it.
Where it actually earns its place on your smartphone is in everyday portrait editing where it can smooth skin, adjust lighting and refine your portrait to improve photos without that over-filtered look that used to plague social media a few years ago.
Used lightly Lensa makes you look like you were standing in better light on a better day, and that’s really all you want from a portrait editing app.
Of course, you can push it too far but I’d recommend Lensa for minor tweaks that can improve your selfie and portrait game without telling everyone you used AI to enhance your photo.
5. PhotoRoom
PhotoRoom makes this list for its background removal alone, allowing you to declutter an image simply by cutting a subject out from a background.
I’ve found it especially useful for taking photos of products before listing them on platforms like eBay or Vinted, and I recommend it to any of my friends that are looking for a quick and efficient way to remove a background.
You can keep it simple with a plain background, or go further and generate something entirely new. Either way, it’s fast and reliable, showcasing that AI can do tasks in a split second that in the past would’ve taken more than a few minutes
I really like that PhotoRoom sticks to what it’s good at and doesn’t try to do everything: If you’re looking for a quick tool for AI-powered background removal then look no further.
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