Being a content creator is not just a business idea, in fact, everyone is a content creator in some way! Whether you are a professional who is curating content for the target audience of a business, or you are simply sharing your private life with your private friends and family, you are a content creator. (Of course, feel free to call yourself a photographer or videographer, if you prefer.)
The thing is, you shouldn’t need professional training, or expensive pro tools, to create any type of content. Many of us are better off with an easy, quick workflow, because otherwise we might not even get around to sharing our imagery! If you’ve ever felt bad for letting photos sit on your phone, camera, or computer, and never sharing them with the world, then this article is for you.
Thankfully, in recent years the advent of AI has made photo editing significantly easier. You don’t need years of experience, or a complicated workflow. Which is what we are here to talk about today, in this Movavi Photo Editor Review.
If you want to do everything from basic color correction and colorizing to advanced edits such as retouching and background removal, read on! Movavi Photo Editor is easy and quick to use, powerful, and a good value. So, let’s dive in!
Movavi Photo Editor Review | Software Features
Let’s be honest, almost everything these days is integrating AI into it. Not just software, but all sorts of everyday life things can now be assisted by AI. Hopefully it’s saving you a lot of time and helping you be productive already!
However, it’s fair to ask, “what’s special about Movavi Photo Editor?” We’ll answer this valid question, plus we’ll also answer the equally important question, “does it work?” (The answer is yes!)
Movavi is a popular imaging software company in the world of content creation, both for professionals and hobbyists alike. They offer a suite of programs for photo and video editing. If all you do is edit a few photos here and there for your social media, or for private sharing, then the only application you might need could be Movavi Photo Editor. It can perform color correction, as well as advanced edits. We’ll get into them next, and discuss which of them use AI to automatically enhance your imagery.
Movavi Photo Editor Software Specifications
Operating Systems: PC, Windows 7/8/10/11 64-bit, Mac OSX 10.15+
RAM: 2 GB minimum
Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 2000, NVIDIA® GeForce® series 8 and 8M, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX 5600, AMD Radeon™ R600 Mobility Radeon™ HD 4330, Mobility FirePro™ series, Radeon™ R5 M230 or higher
Compatible File Types: JPG/JPEG, TIF/TIFF, GIF, (not animated) BMP, DPX, JPEG 2000, PBM, PGM, PCX, PIC, PNG, PIX, PPM, Sun Rasterfile, TARGA, WebP
Raw Compatible FIle Types:* ARW, CR2, NEF, DNG, 3FR, ARW, BAY, BMQ, CINE, CRW, CS1, DC2, DCR, ERF, FFF, HDR, IA, K25, KC2, KDC, MDC, MEF, MOS, MRW, NRW, ORF, PEF, PXN, QTK, RAF, RAW, RW2, RDC, RWL, SR2, SRF, SRW, STI, X3F
Output File Types: JPG/JPEG, TIFF, BMP, DPX, JPEG, PCX, PBM, PNG, PGM, PPM
* Raw files are not fully compatible with Movavi Photo Editor, it can open raw files but edits are applied in a “destructive environment”.
Movavi Photo Editor Review | Color Correction
This might be the key highlight and selling point for many content creators. Color-correction can seem like a very simple task, and yet, it’s actually very advanced, and it gets very time-consuming, fast. Would you be surprised to know that the above before & after edit was completed using just one automatic, AI-based automatic adjustment? It really is that simple and effortless, indeed.
The two flagship features of the automatic adjustment function are likely to be the “Auto Correction” and “Image Enhancement” auto adjustments, and they work very well. All of the adjustments have an intensity slider that allows you to quickly turn down the effect, which is perfect for images that may already have good contrast, whereas others may require just a bit more help…
Additionally, there are dozens of other automatic adjustments, some of which are made for color-correcting difficult images, such as HDR lighting, and others are more stylized, such as “Warm Evening”…
There are also additional Effects, for even more stylized editing, such as the “Warm Bokeh” preset seen below:
For most content creators, these main tools will be more than worth the investment in Movavi Photo Editor. Of course, there is a lot more it can do…
Presets
One of the most powerful, time-saving tools that a photographer can have is an editing preset. These can cut your editing time down to a fraction of the usual time required. Sometimes you can hit just one preset and be completely done with editing, or of course sometimes the presets may simply be a starting point. Still, time is saved either way.
Movavi Photo Editor includes 34 editing presets that are built-in, plus, you can also save new presets by going into the Manual Editing interface.
AI-Based Retouching
One of the most time-consuming things in photo editing is, of course, advanced retouching. Whether you are removing a distraction from a background, or especially a blemish from the skin in a portrait, the skill required to get it right is immense, and the process can be very tedious and time-consuming…
This is another area where, thankfully, AI has come to the rescue. And, I must say, we tried the earliest versions of AI based retouching, and they just didn’t work! So, it is absolutely refreshing to see how good of a job Movavi Photo Editor does! It’s incredible. Once in a while you might have to hit “undo” and try something a little differently, however, the overall process is still years ahead of what used to be required.
AI-Based Background Replacement/Removal
With a retouching & object removal tool that works so well using AI, of course, why not allow the AI to easily remove the entire background? In this interface, Movavi Photo Editor will automatically select the entire background behind and surrounding your subject, or you can manually control the selection to only include, say, the sky.
Then, the tool brings up options for overlaying your subject on a new background. There are 20-plus backdrops included, plus the ability to use your own imagery as a new backdrop, or any solid color of course.
It’s simple, it works well, and for those who need it, the advanced controls of selecting or deselecting parts of the image are also implemented beautifully!
Additional Tools in Movavi Photo Editor (As of 2024)
- Fix Blurry Image Detail, or add blur
- Restore Old Photos
- Rotate, Resize, Combine Images
- Picture-in-Picture options (Perfect for creating streaming thumbnails, reaction video thumbnails, etc!)
Movavi Photo Editor | User Experience
You can dive right into the process of editing photos without worrying about a steep learning curve. The Movavi Photo Editor app guides you through the process, but even without the helpful tips that pop up, I must admit that the experience is truly simple and intuitive.
Also, the switch is seamless to go between automatic and AI-based photo editing and the all-manual adjustments. Either way, the process is very straightforward: simply click on an adjustment or effect, let the AI or basic tools do its thing, (it usually takes just a fraction of a second) …and then you can either accept or reject that adjustment, as well as dial a slider to reduce or increase the effect.
Performance & Results
As I hinted above, the overall performance and speed is very fast. Even with larger images, such as 40-60 megapixels, the “Processing” time was only a second or less. The image quality itself is excellent, with both JPG and TIFF outputs available. This is very impressive, considering that Movavi doesn’t even officially list the software as being compatible with such extremely high-resolution images, nor is it designed for raw editing.
If you capture raw images from a professional camera, it is important to note that Movavi Photo Editor can indeed open most raw files, however, Movavi is not a raw conversion engine, so, editing is what pros would call a “destructive” workspace.
For most folks who are planning to share web-resolution images on a mobile or social platform, or at most in a YouTube video that might reach 4K resolution, the results are going to be more than good enough!
Movavi Photo Editor Review | Who Is It For?
The vast majority of images these days are viewed (aka “consumed” as content) on social media platforms, of course. Since virtually everybody uses some form of social media to communicate with friends and family, that means we’d recommend Movavi Photo Editor to almost everyone!
Even if you’re not on social media very much, or not at all, there’s still a nearly 1-00% chance that you are at least sharing images through private platforms, such as WhatsApp/Telegram/Discord, or of course, email or TXT messaging. So, truly speaking, almost anyone is likely to find use in a program that makes editing easy.
Having said that, of course if you’re a working professional, then you likely already have an advanced raw editing workflow software, such as Lightroom or Capture One. Those applications have an extremely steep learning curve, though, and require serious commitments to learn, use, and afford. Movavi Photo Editor is indeed aimed at the hobbyist and beginner.
It is important to note, however, that Movavi Photo Editor is only available on the two main computer platforms, Windows and Mac OSX. At present, there is not an option to work on mobile devices. So for those folks who are mostly sharing images privately through their mobile devices, the process of getting photos onto your computer, editing them, and getting the edited versions back onto your phone could be a minor drawback.
Thus, it appears that the primary genre of photographers and content creators that we would recommend Movavi to in general is the folks who want to consistently share/publish content to a main social media platform. For example, Instagram and Facebook have desktop computer publishing options, making the process simpler overall.
Movavi Photo Editor Review | Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Amazing User Interface; very intuitive and fast
- High quality results with almost no learning curve
- Stability, reliability, and overall performance & speed are excellent
Cons:
- Simplified Interface may not offer enough to highly advanced users
- Manual Adjustments & presets seem to be either universal or local
- Stability or results may be compromised beyond 48 megapixels and/or with raw image files
- Limited to computer operating systems; (PC & Mac) unavailable for mobile devices (iOS & Android)
As I mentioned earlier, these cons will likely not affect you, aside from a likely preference for working on a mobile device. Other than that, the simplified interface is probably an advantage for most. Also, even when testing Movavi Photo Editor on 60-megapixel images, I still was able to get good quality results, and the app never crashed!
Conclusion | Movavi Photo Editor Review
All in all, it is very refreshing to see more affordable, practical solutions for photographers (and videographers) who want to avoid the hassle and expense of advanced, complex photo editing software.
The AI in Movavi Photo Editor works very well, and we are impressed with the results. In fact, the results are almost perfect right out of the box, and only require manual fine-tuning from time to time. Even then, the learning curve is very user-friendly and intuitive. So, if you’re any sort of content creator who is looking for a way to edit photos, especially in the sphere of social media platforms, Movavi Photo Editor deserves strong consideration.
How To Get Movavi Photo Editor
Movavi Photo Editor offers either an annual subscription or a lifetime license. These two options are what we always like to see, and we strongly recommend the lifetime license at just $69.95; it’s just a little bit more than the annual subscription which is $49.95.
If you edit both photos and videos, of course, then we would also recommend considering the Photo Editor + Video Suite, which allows you to create, capture, edit, and convert video files as well. The suite is available for $104.95 as an annual subscription.
