Searching for a new photo editor that can compete with industry standard tools such as Lightroom? Polarr makes a strong case with its online photo editor, delivering comparable capability in its free version and monthly subscription service. In this post, we’ll review the Polarr Online Photo Editor, where we’ll cover the app’s features and how you can use it to edit your photos.
What’s Polarr?
Polarr is a photo editing app accessible on both desktop and mobile platforms. This tool is similar to other photo editors like Adobe Lightroom and Skylum Luminar.
Is The Polarr App Free?
Polarr provides a free version of its app with a few feature limitations and a Polarr Pro subscription to access all available features.
How Much Does Polarr Pro Cost?
At the time of writing, Polarr Pro costs $24 per month; we’ll cover all of Polarr Pro’s extra features later in our review.
Who’s Polarr Designed For?
It would be best if you looked into Polarr.
1 – Seeking a free or low-cost option for Photoshop or other pricey editors.
2 – Need to apply special effects or enhance images quickly but need more editing experience?
3 – Instantly improve your images.
4 – Use the Polarr Pro subscription to do more advanced edits.
5 – Open a photo editor with a simple user interface and a short learning curve.
6 – Use Polarr’s extensive online lesson collection to learn basic photo editing techniques.
Polarr Pros And Cons
The Polarr app’s strengths and cons are listed below.
Pros
1 – A variety of lighting and color modification options.
2 – The ability to set and resize images.
3 – Simple and user-friendly UI.
4 – Import Raw Image – Convert to JPG Automatically.
Cons
1 – Best suited for single users since there are no organizational or sharing options.
2 – The price tag exceeds industry standards, such as Adobe Lightroom.
3 – Polarr Pro monthly subscription service.
Photo Editing With Polarr
Today we’ll cover all the fundamentals and our experience using Polarr.
Managing Photos
Importing photos is simple: the app will convert any RAW images into JPEG format for editing, enabling you to explore folders and link photo files immediately inside the app. Sadly, the organizing features inside this app need to be improved because you cannot tag or reject images you have imported. Polarr will, on the other hand, display standard meta tags for your photos, such as f-stop, shutter speed, ISO, focal length, and geotagging.
Auto Enhance Feature
The “auto” or “auto enhance” options in editing programs might help you acquire a better starting point. While you may adjust the highlights, blacks, and contrast sliders in Polarr, the Dehaze slider is strong, which helps to obscure shadows. Auto-enhance works well for smooth, fuzzy images and may provide eye-catching effects with a single click.
Tone And Color Adjustments
Polarr offers color and tone settings similar to Lightroom. Temperature and Tint sliders are available for white balance, but no auto-white-balancing option exists. It also has a Vibrance slider to aid with color correction. Polarr contains sliders for highlights, shadows, white, and black while changing color to provide a full tonal range while showing the histogram. Whites and blacks are used to modify huge portions on each side of the mid-tones. By altering the highlights and shadows, the image’s brightest and darkest regions are affected.
Curves
The curves in Polarr may be beneficial for adding some basic color to the images you’re editing, but the changes are minor compared to other photo editing software. In addition, Polarr provides a simple RGB curve for adjusting the contrast in your images.
Sharpening
Polarr has a clarity slider that sharpens mid-tones and typically adds punch to images and a very simple sharpening slider with no radius adjustment. Likewise, the sharpening tool is simple but needs to be improved.
More Features And Tools
Below are some more tools that come with Polarr in addition to the major features stated above.
1 – Crop tool.
2 – Spot Removal Tool (heal and clone modes).
3 – Correction of distortion.
4 – Text tool.
5 – Film filters.
6 – Photo effects (grain, diffuse, pixelate, fringing).
Polarr Pro Features
Today we’ll cover the additional options accessible when subscribing to Polarr Pro.
Masks
Radial, gradient, color, brush, depth, and luminance masking tools are included in Polarr Pro. The brush tool may manually choose an area for easy access. It also has an option called “Edge Aware” assist that, when used judiciously, helps avoid contrasting edges when painting regions for selection. In addition, there are other options for brush size, contrast, stiffness, flow, feathering, delete, show mask, and inverting for masks.
Overlays
You may also apply overlay effects inside Polarr, such as your background overlay or one of the Polarr presets (clouds, sky, backgrounds, etc.).
Noise Reduction
Polarr Pro has color, and luminance Denoise controls to sharpen or remove photo noise. Unfortunately, at the moment, masks cannot be combined with these edits.
Exporting Photos
When you’ve finished your edit, Polarr allows you to save, upload, or bulk export your file. In-app export enables you to save in either .JPEG or .PNG format, with a percentage of pixel size and image quality.
The Bottom Line:
For those seeking an alternative to Photoshop Elements or Lightroom, Polarr is a fantastic free photo editing app. The annual subscription of $24 per month provides capability comparable to other industry standard tools like Adobe Lightroom or Skylum Luminar, but the free version is robust.