Not everyone needs an expensive, every-possible-feature photo editor. Acorn has just enough pro-level features to get the job done without being overwhelming—all in an easy-to-use package.

This affordable app is one of the fastest ways to crop, resize, and add text to an image. And it offers more than 100 photo effects, like vignette and drop shadow, plus nondestructive filters that you can adjust even after you save a file.

The app is also powerful enough to grow with you as your skills evolve, thanks to support for layers and masking; nondestructive curves and level adjustments; and RAW and PSD formats. It even offers vector tools and lets you wrap text along a shape or path.

Acorn also includes accessible tools for complex edits. For example, machine-learning-powered features instantly select or mask an image’s subject or remove a photo’s background. Perspective Fix & Crop makes it simple to fix distorted images. Lookup Table (LUT) support lets you quickly change the overall colour and tone of an image to get a desired look. And the new Data Merge feature (“mail merge but for images”) can take a template and create multiple unique images using text from a CSV file—perfect for badges, IDs, or personalized invitations.

If you frequently take Mac screenshots for documentation or presentations, Acorn can capture layered screenshots—every window, dialogue box, menu, and other item on your screen is saved as a separate layer that can be repositioned, reordered, edited, and deleted.

And don’t miss the Command Bar, which is like an Acorn-specific version of Spotlight. Press Shift-Command-O, then type a few letters of what you want to do—for example, B-L-U for blur. Acorn will present matching menu commands as well as links to related Help topics and tutorials. The Command Bar even reveals some niche and power-user features (such as Feather and Use Pixels For Measurement) that aren’t listed in the app’s menus.