How to get Photoshop for Mac – including for free!

If you want to add some quick edits to a photo or video, Apple’s free Mac apps – Photos and Preview – can do a good job, but for anything more advanced you’ll need a dedicated image editing app like Adobe’s Photoshop. For years now it has been the industry standard, due to its wide range of features and capabilities, but it does come with a substantial subscription fee that might be a bit too much for the casual user.

Here’s how to get a copy of Photoshop on your Mac, or, failing that, the next best thing. Plus, because you can’t beat free, we’ll also explain your options for getting Photoshop on Mac at no cost, as well as rounding up the Best Mac free image and photo editors.

If you’d like to get the same software on your tablet, read How to get Photoshop on iPad.

How to get Photoshop free on a Mac: Adobe Express

As Photoshop is professional-grade software, you won’t be able to get the full version for free aside from the 7-day trial that we’ll cover below. However, Adobe does offer a stripped down version that covers a lot of the same ground if your demands aren’t too high. Adobe Express is a free, online web app that offers a range of editing tools, such as the ability to crop, reshape, flip, and recolor images.

You can also add text (there are plenty of templates and fonts to choose from), make the background of an image transparent, quickly put together collages, and generally improve the style and form of your photos and videos. Adobe Express comes with access to 1 million+ royalty-free stock images you can use for posters or social media content, plus you get 5GB of storage.

If you want more advanced features, including Generative AI for instantly creating images, removing backgrounds in video, one-click resizing, a much larger selection of stock images, not to mention 100GB of storage, then you can sign up to Adobe Express Premium for $9.99/£9.98 p/m, with the option to cancel at any time. There’s also a free 30-day trial so you can see if Premium gives you all the Photoshop capabilities you need, without spending any money.

If you’re happy to work online rather than with a dedicated app, and you’re not after the high-end editing features, either Adobe Express or Adobe Express Premium are probably the ones to go for, plus you have those trials to ensure whether the tools you need for your particular workflows are included.

How to get full Photoshop for free

If you want to use the full version of Photoshop, then there is the aforementioned free trial, or you could sign up to a short-term subscription to at least keep the costs down.

Trial: The first option is a Photoshop trial. There is a 7-day free trial that gives you access to the full program, with no restrictions.

While Adobe advertises the free 7-day trial, you can actually get 14 days free, because you can cancel within 14 days of your initial order and get fully refunded. In fact, you could, theoretically, get 21 days free if you had the trial and then canceled your subscription after 13 days. Don’t forget though, as you’re then liable to pay 50% of the entire 1yr contract if you miss the deadline.

Monthly subscription: The second option is signing up for a subscription on a monthly rather than an annual basis. This won’t give you Photoshop for free, but the option will allow you to access all the features of the software on a shorter-term basis, then cancel when you no longer need it. We’ll run through the various subscription options in the sections below.

Adobe

To explain how it works we need to explain the difference between Adobe’s two monthly subscription packages: one is cheaper ($22.99/£21.98 a month) because it is part of an annual plan; the other is a more expensive option ($34.49/£32.98 a month), but you can cancel without having to pay Adobe anything.

Adobe doesn’t list these options on the site, instead you have to click the Buy Now button then you can select from the three options: Annual – Billed monthly, Monthly, and Annual – Billed upfront.

Adobe explains the legal terms of the various contracts here. Basically, if you sign up for the cheaper ‘annual contract, paid monthly’ and then choose to end your subscription you will be able to do so, but if you end the contract after the first 14 days “you’ll be charged a lump sum amount of 50% of your remaining contract obligation and your service will continue until the end of that month’s billing period.”

This is a slightly better scenario than if you were paying annually – in that case, your contract will continue to the end of the term. You wouldn’t get any money back.

This is why the best option, in this case, is to sign up for a month-to-month contract. In this case, the contract will automatically renew every month, but should you choose to cancel (we explain how to cancel below) you will be able to use Photoshop until the end of that month, at which point your contract will cease.

If you need Photoshop, but you don’t want to tie yourself into a contract with Adobe, this could be the best option for you. However, you should note that you will lose access to anything you have saved in Adobe’s cloud after 90 days.

If these options aren’t quite what you’re after, you can always look for alternatives to Photoshop, as there are some excellent apps currently available. We also have a round-up of the Best Mac free image and photo editors, which includes options such as Seashore and Gimp.

How to get Photoshop on a Mac without an annual subscription

If you were hoping to buy a copy of Photoshop to own, as in not paying on a subscription basis, we have some bad news for you: Adobe no longer sells what is known as a ‘perpetual license’ for Photoshop and its other apps.

There is one option though: you can buy Photoshop Elements. Photoshop Elements is designed for amateur rather than pro photographers, but it does offer a number of photo editing features that might be sufficient for your needs. One very important thing to note though is that Adobe has changed how Elements works, so that when you make your purchase you’re only getting a 3-year licence. That means, once the three years are up, the app will stop working, although you’ll still be able to access all of the work you created.

You can buy a copy of Photoshop Elements directly from Adobe’s website for $99.99/£86.99. (Buy Photoshop Elements from Adobe). See our review of Photoshop Elements for more information.

You can also buy Photoshop Elements on the Mac App Store for $99.99/£99.99.

The benefit of Photoshop Elements is that you can buy it outright and install it on your Mac. You will have access to features like masks, layers, colorisation, image manipulation and other useful, more consumer-level effects with Elements.

If you’re a creative professional though, or are used to the full-blown version of Photoshop, then you may find too many tools missing from the box. If you want to take a look there’s also a 7-day free trial of Photoshop Elements so you can take the software for a test run.

If you don’t care about how up-to-date your software is you might be interested in buying a secondhand copy of Photoshop, or an old Mac with Photoshop installed. Just be aware that Adobe doesn’t support all older versions in terms of updates, so the ones you find might not be compatible with later iterations of macOS, plus newer Macs won’t run old versions of Photoshop.

You’ll also need to confirm that the software license hasn’t already been used, as usually these are non-transferable. And generally, we would advise against buying a used Mac (unless it’s certified refurbished).

For more information read: What version of macOS can my Mac run?

If a subscription to Photoshop isn’t for you, and Photoshop Elements isn’t enough, we recommend you look at alternatives to Photoshop, many of which have comparable features with the benefit of being available to buy outright. The best options include PixelMator Pro, Affinity Photo and others. See: Best Photoshop alternatives for Mac.

Is there an education discount for Photoshop?

There is one other way you can save money while getting a copy of Photoshop for your Mac.

If you are in education then you may qualify for a discount. However, you can’t sign up for a reduced price on the Photoshop-only tier, you have to get the entire Creative Cloud collection, which includes Photoshop and a large collection of other Adobe apps. The student and teacher deal for Creative Cloud does represent quite a hefty reduction.

At the time of writing, Students and Teachers pay $19.99/£16.24 a month, which is around 70% less than the normal subscription rate.

Photoshop for Mac price

If you have accepted that you need to pay for a subscription to Photoshop you will want to know how much it costs. There’s not actually a straightforward answer: it depends on how you want to buy it.

Whether you love or hate the subscription model, there are a few options to choose from if you want to get a copy of Photoshop:

Photoshop: If you just want the single Photoshop app you can have that for $20.99/£19.97 a month if you sign up for a year, or $31.49/£30.34 a month if you just pay on a monthly basis. Sign up on Adobe’s website.

Photography Plan: However, the Photography Plan is actually the best deal. It includes Photoshop, Lightroom (for web and mobile), and Lightroom Classic (for desktop), plus 1TB of storage. The bundle costs $19.99/£19.98 a month, but you will be on a contract for a year as there’s no monthly option. Sign up on Adobe’s website.

Business: If you are a business user you ought to sign up for the Business option where you can get a single Photoshop license for $37.99/£27.99 ex VAT a month per license. It’s worth noting that all the Adobe CC apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and Acrobat, cost $89.99/£65.49 (ex VAT) per license a month. Sign up on Adobe’s website. 

How to cancel a Photoshop subscription

The ease with which you can end your Photoshop contract is one of the benefits of Adobe’s decision to switch from selling copies of Photoshop outright to a subscription model.

It also means that you only need to pay for Photoshop for as long as you need it. So if it’s just for a short-term project you can unsubscribe as soon as the work is done.

Here’s how to cancel your subscription:

1. Sign in to the Adobe web page where plans are managed.
2. Sign in to your Adobe account.
3. Under the My Plans tab find Manage Plan (or View plan) and click on that.
4. Now click on Cancel plan.
5. Give your reason for cancellation.
6. Click on Continue.

Best alternatives to Photoshop on Mac?

There is plenty of great photo and image editing software available on macOS, many of which come with lower price tags than Adobe products. One of our favorites is Affinity Photo 2 from Serif, which boasts a wide range of powerful tools, a friendly interface and costs $69.99/£67.99 as a one-off payment, and also offers a 30-day free trial.

Seriff

Another popular choice is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), which is completely free and comes with an incredible range of tools and features. The interface can take a little getting used to, which is not uncommon with open-source software, but once you get to know your way around, you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve. There’s also a large collection of tutorials for the software on YouTube, so if you’re willing to put in the time then it’s a powerful suite that will cost you nothing at all.

We also recommend you read Best Mac for photo editing.

You may also be interested in: How to get Adobe Illustrator on a Mac and How to get InDesign on a Mac.