Photo Editing Extensions for Photos for Mac

OS X El Capitan and the newer versions of MacOS X support third-party tools that are accessible right in the Photos app. If a photo editing application offers Photo Editing extensions, you can use editing tools provided by the application from the Edit panel in Photos. Don't expect the photo editing extensions to offer the full functionality of the hosting applications. The extensions provide only a subset of the tools of the stand-alone versions, but have a much more user friendly user interface, since the extensions have been designed to offer one tool.

Below is a list of the extensions I have tried so far. To search for more extensions see:

How to search for third party applications that offer extensions for Photos

• Affinity Photos: If you already own the Affinity Photos application, you have access to these six extensions:
  • Edit in Affinity Photos: This extension is giving you access to the full Affinity application
  • Affinity Develop: The basic photometric adjustments of a photo - noise reduction, exposure, shadows&highlights, white balance, contrast, ...
  • Affinity Haze Removal: A very easy to use haze removal filter
  • Affinity Miniature: A depth of field effect
  • Affinity Liquify: Change the shape of regions
  • Affinity Monochrome: Turn color photos into monochrome or black&white photos
  • Affinity Retouch: A versatile retouch tool, including in-painting.
• Aurora HDR 2018 and 2019: It provides a collection of powerful HDR presets, a great companion to Luminar 2018.
• BeFunky: A basic set of portrait adjustments: Skin smoothing and skin tone, teeth brighten, eye brighten, HDR. All is automatic, there is not much control over the adjustments.
• Color Filters for Photos: Color filters for a cinematic effects, and brushes to touch up selected areas with color splashes, dodge and burn, etc, very precisely.
• DxO Optics Pro for Photos: A versatile RAW processor for Photos, fixes lens distortion, chromatic aberration, noise reduction, sharpening, ... It does not yet support many RAW formats, but the list is getting longer daily.
• External Editors: This app extension will open any external image editor you have installed directly from Photos, and thus will give you access to the full functionality of your image editors, not just the tools provided as app extensions. It is the doorway to Photoshop, Pixelmator, Gimp, the NIK plug-ins, whatever you have installed.
• Focus CK: Beautiful Depth of field effects
• FX Photo Studio CK: Plenty of effects and frames
• Graphic Converter 10: Edit with Graphic Converter 10 - essentially open the photo on Graphic Converter 10 for editing
• Insta Beauty: Easy tools for retouching a face: Skin smoothing, Eye brightening, eye enlargement, pouch removal, teeth whitening.
• Intensify CK: Noise reduction, HDR, intensify effects for Black&White, landscape, architecture, ...
• Luminar: Edit in Luminar will open Luminar for editing the Photo.
• Noiseless CK: A great noise reduction tool
• Photolemur 3: A fully automatic image enhancer, uses artificial intelligence to recognize the important objects in the photo, like faces, the sky, vegetation, and improves them
• Picktorial: Open the Picktorial Image editor (Have not tested it yet)
• Pixelmator Distort: Distort the shape of regions.
• Pixelmator Retouch: Recently added. Versatile retouching brushes - cloning, repairing by in-painting, blurring, sharpening, dodging and burning.
• Snapheal CK: Retouching and image restauration tools
• Super Borders: Frame the photo with borders. Most borders require an in-app purchase.
• Tonality CK: Presets for turning color photos into monochrome photos
• Watermarker Tool: Define watermark defaults in the stand-alone version of the application, then add them to your photos using the photo editing extension. I found the workflow not very intuitive.

If you are interested in FX Photo Studio and Focus, buy the CK versions. The versions without CK in the name do not provide the Photo Editing extension. The CK versions are directly available from MacPhun's website.

To use the photo editing extension, install the apps, launch them once, then enable the extensions in the System Preferences > Extensions. Relaunch Photos, and you can now use the extensions from the Edit panel in Photos.

Recently added Photo editing extensions that I did not yet try. These are available from the AppStore:

• Stamp Photos Extension: it will add multiple texts or watermarks to a photo with different values of transparency or fonts.
• Perspective Photos Extension: Straighten or deskew photos and graphics - use affine transforms or perspective correction.
• Vintage Photos Extension: add grain or different types of paper or surface to your photos.
• HighDR Photos Extension: HDR effects for a single photo. You can apply the effect to selected spots or the full image.
• Edge Photos Extension: Add and design arbitrarily shaped borders, and make the borders transparent, so your photo has a custom shape.
• Hay Photo: Custom designed filters and adjustments, turn your photo into a pencil sketch

This page explains how to use the extensions: Edit your photos using third-party extensions in Photos for OS X - Apple Support

Some extensions cannot open original files in HEIC format, important for photos taken with an iPhone 7 or newer. In that case use the "External editors" extension to call the application and pass the images converted to TIFF or JPEG.