In this review, we compare three photo editing programs that are available on the market and try to understand what suits best for professional and amateurs photographers. We compare InPixio and Photoshop, InPixio, and Phototheca. Hopefully, this review can help to understand what software to select – InPixio or Photoshop or Phototheca to improve photos. These programs have quite different capabilities and different targets, their purposes are well defined. It is simple to choose between them, find the right program for your needs due to the almost non-overlapping functionality.
| Photoshop | InPixio | Phototheca | |
| Photo editing tools | |||
| RAW |  | | |
| HDR | | ||
| Retouch | | ||
| Resize | | | |
| Noise removal | | | |
| Sharpening | | | |
| Non-destructive editing | | ||
| Text effects | | | |
| Layers | | ||
| Plugins | | ||
| Metadata editing | | | |
| Filters | | | |
| Frames | |
Features and Capabilities of InPixio
InPixio is a product of AvanQuest company. InPixio is a suite of several programs, and each of them has its own feature set, covering a single aspect of photo editing workflow. They are Photo Editor, Photo Focus, Photo Maximizer, Photo Cutter, and Photo Eraser. Each of these products is being sold separately, and in total the whole suite costs $150. The most useful program of the suite is Photo Editor, and we review it below in detail.
The most remarkable features of Photo Editor are:
- Light correction(exposure, brightness, contrast)
- Levels correction(curves)
- Color correction(white balance, hue, saturation, split tone)
- Special effects – blur, film grain, sharpness, noise reduction, vignette
- Frames, textures, text effects
- Instant filters
InPixio Photo Editor offers a pretty straightforward interface with a light learning curve. It gives a fast and simple way to almost immediately improve the look of a photo using predefined filters, textures, and frames.
This approach is quite convenient for the photo beginners and let you get impressive results quickly.
Levels correction tools give a more excellent way to color correction and let to get precision control of color rendering of a photo, to create sophisticated effects.
Features and Capabilities of Photoshop
Photoshop software needs no introduction. This is the grand-ma of photo editing software as it goes with its roots back to the 1990 year. Photoshop has a zillion of features, and almost no one in the world knows them all. This software is Godzilla in the photo editing software world and probably can’t be defeated by no one.
Then why to compare Photoshop to another software if the winner is obvious? Well, it’s not so simple. The answer is the purpose of usage. If someone needs an app to create an image for a fashion magazine fold, then the answer is Photoshop, and no need to read further. But what if not? What if a beginner or amateur photographer looks for a software to improve a photo a bit, to give it a more shining and brilliant look? Then other software from this review could fit the bill.
Remarkable features of Photoshop at a glance:
- Layers
- Smart objects
- Support for industrial color spaces and color proofing
- Vector objects
- Masks
- Extensible with plugins
Which is better, InPixio, or Photoshop?
InPixio vs Photoshop – who is the winner? Well, the answer – it depends!
Photoshop is the perfect solution for the publishing industry, for digital agencies, for digital art and photography professionals. Photoshop gives comprehensive toolset for image manipulation, creation of digital art. Photoshop has a steep learning curve, and basically, users have to invest a lot of time, energy, and funds to take lessons, read and watch manuals, do try-and-fail exercises to get the grip with Photoshop and understand its philosophy. In return, you get the tool to create unbeatable wow-effect images and photos, the real pieces of art. If you are an artist, then Photoshop is the right choice for you.
InPixio in the opposite is the right choice for beginner and amateur photographers. InPixio has a shallow learning curve that lets you improve photos and add a wide range of impressive effects quickly and easily. While InPixio has a sleek and straightforward interface, it is quite capable then it may look initially. It offers a wide range of instant filters and effects and a set of tools for a photo fine-tune. For instance, InPixio offers tools for levels adjustments with curves and split toning, to make advanced effects, if you skilled how to use curves and split toning sliders. Knowledge of how to use advanced tools is not necessarily to improve photos with InPixio. You may use single-click instant filters to get a unique look for a photo without diving deep in color corrections techniques.
Why Phototheca better than InPixio and Photoshop?
Both Photoshop and InPixio Photo Editor is a capable and powerful software that can do one thing pretty well – improve photos, but no more. Phototheca is more than a photo editing software. Phototheca is the all-in-one solution for your digital life. It offers plenty of tools for photos collection management, with a size of tens of thousands of digital photos and videos. With Phototheca, users can import photos from an external device, iPhone or a camera, organize a media library, tag photos with keywords, remove duplicates, and share photos online.
On top of this, Phototheca offers photo editing tools, color adjustment tools, instant photo filters, and text effects. Photo editing capabilities first time appeared in Phototheca 3, which was released in 2019. With its photo editing features, Phototheca is the alternative to InPixio, but not Photoshop.
Phototheca supports non-destructive editing, and users can safely experiment with photos without fear of loose originals.
As for costs needed to spend for these programs, Photoshop has no free version, InPixio offers free Photo Editor with limited functionality, Phototheca offers a free version with limitations as well.
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Computer programming and digital photography enthusiast. Makes programs over the last 20 years. Interested in product design, UX, images processing and digital arts. Works for Lunarship Software and improves Phototheca every day.