How and why to use the Polarr photo editor
If you’re just getting into your photography and want to use RAW images rather than Jpegs, you need an editing programme rather than the basics you might use online. On recommendation I’ve started using Polarr, and want to share what I’ve learnt about it.
Everyone seems to opt for Lightroom or Photoshop which do the job brilliantly, but in particular with Photoshop there’s a big learning curve. There’s also a big expense. With Lightroom you can pay a one off cost, but you don’t get updates with it, or a monthly subscription which is around £10 a month. It’s not a lot of money, but the thought of having to pay £120 a year for photo editing software on top of all the other blogging fees I pay, was a little horrifying. With Lightroom you have the organisation side of storage as well as editing. But do your storage properly using tags and favourites outside of your editing software, then I’ve found I can do without.
Jpeg editing options
With jpegs, I always used Picmonkey which unfortunately is now paid only (but pretty cheap, so I still use it). There’s also BeFunky which is free, and Canva – although personally I prefer that for using templates and creating pinnable images rather than actually editing photos.
RAW editing
But with RAW, you need to be able to cope with the image size and edit the details. If you don’t want to pay for subscriptions, then Polarr photo editor works for everything I’ve needed to do as part of my fine art flower photography course.
Polarr is a photo editor app which can be used online, mac, ios and android. The basic version is free. Once you start looking at spot editing that’s when the free options no longer work. It’s currently $19.99 for the pro licence, and that’s lifetime access. With my current course editing is essential. I thought I was going to have to use Lightroom (the course goes through the edits step by step for each lesson using Lightroom), but Polarr was recommended as a free option. I’d used it but got stuck at one point where I needed to use a specific edit so upgraded to access it and haven’t looked back.
How to use Polarr photo editor
To run through everything that Polarr does is impossible, because there’s a lot there and I’ve still got lots to learn. But they have a Polarr wiki area you can search on. And I signed up to get weekly email tips on how to use different edit options. There’s also lots of youtube videos if you’re more a watch and follow person.
The way I’ve learnt to use it, is from taking the lightroom steps from my course, and just translated those to try in Polarr. Generally I can replicated exactly what I want to do, although I did struggle to find the radial mask at first.
The way Polarr works is similar to Lightroom. It’s button based for each editing type and then you use a scale to increase or decrease each edit.
You can also batch your work – batch save, watermark, add meta data or copyrights, tag images, resize.
And the one things that saves time for photography editing. Ok, when you’re working on one detailed image you might want to spend ages on it. But if you’ve been for a day out or have done a photo shoot, and you want to use the same edit on each photo you can do so. And you can save the edit for next time – making it public or keeping it private. There are also presets you can use.
I’ve saved several of my own – outdoor (garden style), snow days, darker moody, and ‘real’ brighter look. If I open photos that fall under this style, I’ll click the relevant present, then bring it down if needed. I can then do smaller edits on individual photos if needed. It certainly saves time.
Key editing functionality:
- Colour – vibrance, saturation, whites/blacks etc
- Crop and rotate
- Detail – Sharpening, clarity
- Tone curves, masks and spot editing,
- HDR
- Presets – save your own or use those already available.
Do I always use Polarr?
I’m a lazy photographer. If I’m doing a specific shoot I really want to get right I’ll use the RAW images (eg flowers, or landscapes) and then use Polarr. But for snaps of N or days out for blog posts I’ll usually just use the jpegs. I prefer to get the photo as right as I want it up front, then I can just sharpen, brighten and resize the photos that need it. I’ve used Polarr for a few jpeg edits if I want to batch edit. But mostly I would continue using fotosizer to batch resize a set of photos for the blog. And then Picmonkey for a few that need slight editing.
There are niggles I have with Polarr – I’ve probably just not found the solution yet and there’s no-one I know using it to compare notes.
- Sometimes it’s temperamental when I try to move from one photo to the next, or if I want to highlight more than one photo. I have to reload it
- It’s not pretty and not as easy as picmonkey to use. But it’s not dissimilar to Lightroom, so it’s just something to get used to.
- The radial mask is hard to use accurately. This may just be a practise thing
- The export to jpg and png is quite small. When I have jpegs out of the camera they’re around 6-8mb in size. Exporting from Polarr is usually under 500kb. That’s fine for the blog, but I’m not sure how I’d manage that if I wanted to create a canvas. It doesn’t appear to compress the image, but it’s a mystery compared to Picmonkey where my files remain much larger unless I resize them.
Polarr photo editor fills an editing gap for me. It’s got me into using RAW images which can be useful for certain types of photography. If you use RAW and don’t want to spend the money on Lightroom, then try Polarr. It’s a reasonable interim solution which can save a lot of time, but still give you the flexibility in editing that you can get in more expensive programmes.
What do you use to edit?
Linking this up to Tried and Tested and Our Mini Linky Party
Why not take a look at these similar posts.
Hi Emma
Me again! I’ve found a great app on the app store RAW Power, priced £14. It can bee used within Apple Photos, by clicking the … 3 dots icon; process your photo with Raw Power and then finish additional edits with apple photos edits. A great solution for just £14; then use Polarr for that bit extra, I use Polarr as stand alone app and not within Apple Photos; I just save my files as TIFF before opening with Polarr and export/Save as TIFF. £20 Polarr + £14 Raw Power + £Free Apple Photos gives a pretty great alternative to expensive software and subscriptions for our needs.
Raw Power as good reviews, a YouTube channel for instructions and great support.
Happy editing ;o)
Carly
Won’t work for me, I’m on windows
Oh! I am sorry
Hi Emma
You may have received email from me regarding Polarr and its treatment of Raw photos. I realise receiving the news that Polarr does not support Raw other than automatically converting Raw to Jpeg to allow you to edit, may be upsetting. This is why your file output sizes are very small when you save your photo as Jpeg because Polarr as already converted it to Jpeg before you start editing.
I am so sorry to part with this news. I just wanted to help you!
Do try the other apps I mentioned; Picktorial, Pixelmator and Luminar. They have free trials and all support RAW. I find them a good alternative to expensive subscriptions like Adobe!
Best wishes from a single mum of one 9 year boy and a 12 years border collie, Louth Lincolnshire.
Carly Xx
Ah that’s good to know. I was recommended to use it by a professional photographer as an alternative, but that information was obviously wrong as it won’t be able to do the same. I will check out the others. For the amount of time I use RAW over jpegs, there’s no justification to pay adobe prices.
Oh and I didn’t get an email, but will do some digging to find out more.
I’ve just finished a similar post to this on editing going out at the weekend, except I’m a step behind you as I’ve never been on a course and don’t know how to take a photo in Raw! I really must learn and polarr sounds a good recommendation #TriedTested
RAW would be great for your landscape photos because you can really bring out the different colours in the sky etc. But for snaps and activity stuff stick with JPEGS because it’s so much faster for photos you need to get on the blog quickly. But presets are great, and you can only really get them in bigger editors like lightroom or polarr etc.
You really should do a course – sign up for Emma Davies’ a year with my camera. She’s been through the 6 weeks of getting off auto already, but you’d still have access to the weekly lessons if you signed up now, and it’s free. I never keep up, but I did a different course so hers was good for explaining and answering questions I had and practising specific tasks to understand the settings.
This looks like a great site to use. I currently use Picmonkey, but am always on the lookout for new things! Thanks for linking up with #TriedTested
I use Picmonkey too – for jpeg editing, and my dance blog pinnable images. But Polarr is the one for any RAW images for me