Privacy Bee is among the best data removal services on the market right now, helping you make sure that your data isn't falling into the wrong hands. 

In 2024, data brokers and other online actors accumulate data from all kinds of sources and then package and sell that data to other third parties. It's a completely legal practice, but one that some internet users might be wary of. 

On top of data removal services, we also recommend finding the best password managers, the best antivirus, and the best VPN, all of which will help sanitize your online life and keep you safe from bad actors. 

• Sign up to Privacy Bee

Today, we're looking at Privacy Bee, one of the well-established options on the market that offers a whole range of privacy-focused tools beyond just simple data removal, which we'll get into below in the review. 

As with all of our reviews, and especially software reviews, we recommend checking out competitors like DeleteMe, Mozilla Monitor Plus, and Kanary to make sure that whatever specific needs you have, they are being met. 

Let's jump into our review of the Privacy Bee data removal service. 

• How we test, review and rate on TechRadar

Privacy Bee: Pricing and plans

In terms of pricing, Privacy Bee makes things very simple: $197 per year gets you access to all of its services and features. It's that simple. The company advertises this as being for $0.54 per day, and that's a good way of thinking about it. 

Privacy Bee is on the high end of the spectrum in comparison to its rivals like DeleteMe, which costs $129 per year, and Kanary, which costs $180 per year. Many services also offer a monthly charge, as opposed to an annual one. 

As you'll see below, Privacy Bee does pack a lot of punch, and so don't discard the service just because it is pricier than some rivals – quality often comes at a cost. 

It's also worth noting that Privacy Bee offers a free scan of the internet when you put in an email via its website. 

• The best internet security suites for 2024

Privacy Bee: Basic features

Like other data removal services on the market, Privacy Bee starts off by letting users input their data and choose which companies can be trusted and, importantly, which companies can't. From here, the fun begins. 

It's worth thinking of Privacy Bee more as a suite of services than as just a data removal service, which is part of the reason the company charges a little more. 

The main features are focused around data removal, of course, and start with what Privacy Bee calls Proactive Data Privacy, a process by which users declare which companies can have their data before Privacy Bee works with over 117,000 other companies "to centralize your privacy preferences in one place". 

One thing to note at this point is that Privacy Bee is US-only, an annoying feature of a lot of different data removal services, although the company does say that it plans to eventually support European users.

Once you've set up Privacy Bee and input all of the relevant data, the service will begin with the task of removing your data from 440+ data brokers and people search websites listed on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and so on. 

Privacy Bee monitors 24/7 using its "state-of-the-art monitoring to instantly detect re-exposures", comprised of an expert team that uses AI tech to find and re-delete any data that comes up. The company offers a detailed blog post on each step of the process, to help alleviate any concerns. 

The company also offers a browser extension that works with Chrome and Firefox to help you choose which websites to trust or not, and there is a feature to remove your data from marketing lists to stop spam emails.  

Finally, Privacy Bee offers a limited free version and can start the process of scanning the web for your email via its website, both of which are neat features. 

• Best free antivirus in 2024

Privacy Bee: Advanced features

So far we've looked at features that most data removal services offer, but Privacy Bee has a couple of things up its sleeve that go above and beyond. 

The first is vulnerability monitoring,  which scans the web to detect known threats and then provides a privacy risk score, telling you about recent data breaches, and letting users configure how much protection they want from the service. 

Secondly, Privacy Bee offers a good set of tools to protect family members alongside your own account, offering a central dashboard to add or remove new members on the app, a useful way to keep tabs on kids, parents, and anyone else. 

Family members can also be granted permission to change these settings, and anyone added will be given a personalized email to help manage their privacy. 

On top of this, Privacy Bee also offers a number of Enterprise features to protect businesses. It's worth checking out the full list of features on the Privacy Bee website as it is extensive: spear phishing, employee poaching, doxxing, telemarketing and spam, social engineering, physical threats, and much more. 

• Best firewall software of 2024

Privacy Bee: Support

Like its peers, Privacy Bee offers a range of online support. 

First off, there's a lengthy FAQ on the website that deals with questions from Why do I need Privacy Bee? to What happens after you make a removal request on my behalf? to What security measures do you use to keep my data safe? and much more. We really appreciated how candidate the company is. 

Next up, the Privacy Bee Blog has a lot of material on privacy, how to stay safe online, password best practices, and so on. 

Finally, Privacy Bee also publishes a useful Privacy Manifesto that includes a lot of detail on what the company sees as the do's and don'ts. "Protecting your privacy is our commitment," the company says. "We will never sell your personal data. While we use certain tools to improve our services, such as analytics and digital marketing, we will never abuse your trust." 

You can also contact Privacy Bee via an online form, as you can with every company. 

• Best data recovery software of 2024

Privacy Bee: The competition

As mentioned above, when deciding what software to use it's always worth checking out every available option on the market, especially if you have specific needs. 

At TechRadar, we've tried a few different options so far and came away impressed with most of them. DeleteMe is one of the stand out data removal services, having launched in 2011, and offers a comprehensive set of tools. 

On a slightly different wavelength, Mozilla Monitor Plus is part of the overall Mozilla suite that includes Firefox, a VPN, and many other software features, which is perhaps comparable to Privacy Bee. 

Both of these services come at a cheaper cost than Privacy Bee, and so it's worth checking the extensive feature lists of each service to make the right choice.

• Best web browser of 2024

Privacy Bee: Final verdict

Taken together, Privacy Bee offers a really comprehensive platform to help manage both your own data and the data of others – especially helpful if you have dependents – and, while expensive, we're impressed with how well-rounded the service is.

Privacy Bee comes recommended by a variety of reputable outlets and sources, and the extensive documentation on its privacy promises, how the service operates, and its multi-year history in the industry is comforting. 

It's perhaps a little on the pricey side, but $200 per year could be worth it for peace of mind that your data isn't in the wrong hands online. 

• Sign up for Privacy Bee

In this mobile-first world, businesses thrive on staying connected, with employees often relying on a fleet of mobile devices to get the job done. Keeping these devices in check while ensuring security and operational efficiency can be daunting. Enter AirDroid Business, an innovative solution providing an arsenal of tools designed to streamline mobile device management (MDM) for companies of all sizes. 

AirDroid Business stands out in MDM solutions by offering a comprehensive and scalable platform for managing, monitoring, and securing various Android devices. Whether managing a small team or overseeing an international operation, AirDroid Business provides the efficiency and flexibility necessary to keep your mobile network running smoothly.

Here’s more about AirDroid Business, its benefits, and costs to help you determine whether it’s the MDM solution for your business.

Interested in AirDroid Business? Learn out more at its website.

Features

AirDroid Business offers a centralized dashboard for administrators to manage all devices within the organization's network. This control center allows for remote app deployment, real-time device tracking, and enforcement of security protocols to protect sensitive corporate data. It also monitors device health, including battery life and storage usage, and the ability to lock or wipe lost or stolen devices to prevent data leaks.

The platform is known for its robust security features, including encrypted data transmission, role-based access control, and remote device lockdown in case of a security breach.

In addition to device management, AirDroid Business facilitates teamwork and collaboration with features such as screen sharing, file transfer, and two-way communication tools.

What makes AirDroid Business stand out is its scalability. It can adapt to the growth of your organization with customizable device groups, batch operation support, and comprehensive reporting tools.

By minimizing the time spent managing devices, AirDroid Business helps teams focus on core business activities and strategies, increasing productivity and profitability.

What about BYOD management?

As businesses embrace a more flexible work environment, the use of personal devices for professional tasks is rising. While this shift increases productivity and convenience, it also challenges managing a diverse and unpredictable device ecosystem. This is where AirDroid Business also stands out—it's not just another solution but a unique one that makes BYOD management feasible, secure, and efficient, setting it apart from many others.

A successful BYOD policy meets the needs of employees. AirDroid Business improves the BYOD experience by providing the following:

• Increased autonomy for employees to use their devices, promoting comfort and efficiency.
• Flexible collaboration tools, including file sharing and messaging, facilitating teamwork across different devices and platforms.
• Streamlined work processes, allowing employees to access company resources securely from their devices anytime and anywhere.

Implementing AirDroid Business within a BYOD framework offers a competitive advantage by addressing the complexities of device diversity while maintaining data integrity. Here are some key reasons why AirDroid Business is an essential asset for BYOD workplaces:

Customizable Control: Administrators can customize permissions and access levels based on an employee's role and specific needs. 

Cost-Effective: Improved device management can help companies reduce the overhead expenses of providing company-owned devices. 

Easy Integration: AirDroid Business is designed to be user-friendly, ensuring smooth integration into existing workflows for IT departments and employees. 

Real-Time Support: The platform's capability to offer instant support and communication enhances employee productivity and satisfaction.

Supported devices and installation

AirDroid Business is designed specifically for Android devices, but it allows you to control devices on Windows, macOS, and even iOS. You can also access clients through various web browsers, including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari.

Managing gadgets from afar can present a challenge for IT administrators and business owners. Nonetheless, AirDroid Business can streamline this process. 

To get started, you need to create an account on the AirDroid Business website. You’ll find the registration process relatively pain-free. Once you register, you’ll be asked to confirm your account via email. 

Next, assess your business needs. Identify the areas of your operations that could benefit from mobile device management and establish implementation guidelines.

AirDroid Business provides a wide array of services to cater to your needs. These include device tracking, remote control monitoring, application management, file distribution, document sharing, and geofencing. With such a comprehensive suite of features, you can effectively manage your mobile devices from a single platform.

To effectively oversee the devices, you need to install the AirDroid Business Daemon app on each device. The setup process is amazingly simple. 

Once you begin installing the client software, you can log in to your AirDroid Business Admin Console through a web browser to begin managing your devices.

From the console, you have the ability to remotely take over devices and quickly deploy, update, or uninstall applications across devices simultaneously using the Application Management feature. 

You can also swiftly transfer files to and from your managed devices through the File Transfer functionality for file exchanges.

Two other features include: 

Setting Boundaries: Use the “Geofencing” capability to establish perimeters for your devices and receive alerts when a device enters or exits a zone.

Device Monitoring: Stay informed about your device status in time, including battery levels, system versions, and usage details.

Plans and pricing

AirDroid Business offers transparent and flexible pricing plans to meet the needs of small businesses and larger enterprises. The basic plan starts at $12.00 per year for managing up to 10 devices, making it an affordable option for small-scale deployments.

Discounts are available to manage more devices and features, catering to the scalability needs of growing companies. For a full range of services and specific pricing tailored to the size of the device fleet and unique business requirements, engaging in direct negotiations with the AirDroid Business sales team is recommended. 

In addition to remote device management, AirDroid Business provides add-on products such as Policy & Kiosk Mode, offering a more comprehensive array of security and management options essential for businesses needing to lock down devices for specific uses or enforce company policies remotely.

For organizations looking to integrate AirDroid Business into their IT infrastructure, detailed pricing or a tailored quote can be provided upon request to ensure that the solution fits the business's exact needs regarding device management, security policies, and operational efficiency.

Final Verdict

The features offered by AirDroid Business include remote control, file transfer, device health monitoring, and kiosk mode, making it a comprehensive solution for businesses looking to manage and secure their mobile devices. However, the learning curve associated with implementing these features and the potential need for training employees should be considered.

Moreover, businesses should assess their reliance on internet connectivity to use AirDroid Business effectively. While the solution offers excellent flexibility and accessibility, it's essential to consider the impact of internet outages on day-to-day operations.

Privacy implications are also a significant consideration. With access to sensitive company data and the ability to remotely control devices, businesses must ensure the highest data security and user privacy standards.

Cost is another factor to evaluate. While AirDroid Business offers valuable features, the pricing structure should align with the company's budget and provide a clear return on investment.

Lastly, potential compatibility issues with different devices and operating systems should be thoroughly examined to ensure seamless integration with existing infrastructure. In other words, if you aren't planning on using this on Android-based devices, you need to look elsewhere. 

In summary, while AirDroid Business is a powerful tool for mobile device management, businesses should carefully weigh the advantages and disadvantages to determine its suitability for their specific needs.

More from TechRadar Pro

• We've also featured the best MDM solutions
• For an alternative, check out our Hexnode MDM review

Safeguarding company resources is crucial in today’s changing business environment, where mobile gadgets and remote work are prevalent. Meet Scalefusion, an encompassing Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution created to streamline the supervision and protection of devices within the corporate setting. This article explores what Scalefusion entails, its standout features and advantages, and how it distinguishes itself in the MDM market.

Scalefusion is a user-friendly MDM solution that empowers businesses to securely oversee and govern company-owned and personal devices across platforms like iOS, Android, Windows 10, and macOS gadgets. Crafted by ProMobi Technologies, Scalefusion simplifies device management through a platform that eases device deployment, control, and security while fostering communication and collaboration among team members.

Interested in Scalefusion? Learn out more at its website.

Features

Scalefusion's comprehensive device management capabilities extend across various operating systems, including iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS, making it a versatile solution for businesses with diverse device preferences. Its flexibility ensures that regardless of the type of device or OS used within the organization, Scalefusion can effectively manage and secure them.

At the core of Scalefusion's offerings are robust security protocols beyond standard device management. In addition to password enforcement, device encryption, and remote data wiping, the platform offers advanced threat detection and response capabilities, ensuring comprehensive protection against evolving security threats.

Scalefusion simplifies the deployment, updating, and management of applications on enrolled devices, allowing IT administrators to streamline this process easily. Furthermore, the platform's application management features include blocking unwanted apps and pushing necessary apps to devices, providing granular control over the software environment on corporate devices.

One of Scalefusion's standout features is its ability to facilitate the seamless distribution of documents and multimedia content to team devices. This functionality ensures that the latest information, such as critical documents, training materials, or company announcements, is always accessible to employees across different geographical locations, fostering better collaboration and communication within the organization. 

In addition to its robust security and application management capabilities, Scalefusion enhances device security through advanced features such as geofencing and real-time location tracking. Geofencing triggers alerts when devices enter or leave predefined geographical boundaries, providing proactive monitoring and security enforcement. Real-time location tracking enables organizations to keep tabs on the physical whereabouts of their devices, adding an extra layer of security and asset management.

Furthermore, Scalefusion's remote troubleshooting feature empowers IT support teams to efficiently resolve device issues by allowing them to view and control devices remotely. This capability reduces downtimes and improves productivity by enabling swift troubleshooting and issue resolution without physical access to the devices, ultimately contributing to a more efficient and responsive IT support infrastructure.

What about BYOD management?

Scalefusion provides a comprehensive BYOD management solution that enables employees to securely access company data on their personal devices without compromising data privacy or security. Scalefusion ensures a clear separation between individual and corporate data on an employee's device, allowing businesses to control and protect their data while keeping their personal data private.

Scalefusion's BYOD solutions are compatible with multiple operating systems, catering to a diverse range of employee-owned devices. Creating work containers on Android devices, for example, prevents mixing work and personal apps, thereby safeguarding data integrity.

The BYOD solution from Scalefusion includes safety checks such as device integrity, security, and compatibility assessments using features like SafetyNet, ensuring that devices adhere to the company's security standards.

In the event of a lost or stolen device, Scalefusion provides features such as remote wipe and locks to protect sensitive information from unauthorized access.

Benefits

There are several benefits to using Scalefusion, including the following:

Enhanced Productivity: By effectively managing and securing devices, companies can ensure that their employees have the necessary tools to work efficiently at any time and from any location, leading to increased productivity. 

Improved Security: Scalefusion provides comprehensive security features to protect against data breaches and unauthorized access, essential in today’s complex cybersecurity landscape. These features include encryption, access controls, and remote data wiping.

Simplified Device Management: Scalefusion’s intuitive dashboard and user-friendly interface empower IT administrators to quickly deploy, manage, and secure devices without requiring extensive technical expertise. This simplification streamlines the management process and enhances overall efficiency.

Cost Savings: Businesses can save significantly by streamlining device management and reducing IT overhead. This includes minimizing the time and resources required for device maintenance and support, ultimately improving cost-effectiveness.

Installation and setup

To incorporate Scalefusion into your company’s operations, you need to go through a setup process that varies depending on the device you’re using. Before deployment, it’s essential to create an account on the Scalefusion website and grant access to the devices you intend to manage. Next, refer to the Scalefusion documentation for details on OS versions and hardware prerequisites. Also, ensure that each device is connected to the Internet.

Scalefusion offers apps for Android and iOS devices, as well as Windows and macOS systems. It also supports Linux. To enroll your device successfully, follow the prompts on your screen. This may involve allowing permissions and activating device administrator privileges.

Once Scalefusion is installed on all devices, administrators should verify its installation status on the Scalefusion dashboard. Use this dashboard to enforce device policies and restrictions based on your organization’s needs. From there, you can use Scalefusion to distribute across managed devices and monitor device compliance and usage.

Plans and pricing

Scalefusion offers flexible pricing designed to accommodate businesses of all sizes. The subscription-based pricing model has different plans, each tailored to various business needs. The plans range from basic device management to advanced features like remote troubleshooting, data security, and extensive device and app management.

The Essentials and Growth plans are for small businesses or those just starting with device management. These plans cover fundamental MDM features such as device enrollment, basic security settings, and application management capabilities. The Growth plan offers extra features like advanced restrictions, content management, and more.

The Scalefusion Business plan targets medium-sized businesses or those needing more advanced features. This plan often includes enhanced security protocols, app management, content distribution, and remote support, among other extras.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise Plan is suited for large organizations requiring a comprehensive suite of MDM solutions. Features could include advanced security management, high-end remote support, detailed analytics and reporting, and personalized customer service options. For organizations with particular needs, Scalefusion also offers the option to create a custom package, allowing businesses to tailor the required features to their specifications.

The cost of each plan generally depends on several factors, including the number of devices, contract length, and feature set. To help businesses get a feel for their platform, Scalefusion typically offers a free trial period during which you can test out their features and interface with a limited number of devices. This is a great way to see if Scalefusion aligns with your needs before committing to a subscription.

Final Verdict

Scalefusion provides a powerful, versatile, and user-friendly solution for managing and securing mobile devices in the corporate environment. With its comprehensive features, businesses can enhance their security posture and improve operational efficiency and productivity. Scalefusion offers tools for businesses of all sizes to maintain control over their mobile devices, ensuring data security and workforce productivity, regardless of location.

By embracing solutions like Scalefusion, businesses can confidently move into the future of work, where flexibility, security, and efficiency converge to create a resilient, connected, and dynamic work environment.

Scalefusion is an appealing option for businesses seeking to manage a diverse and distributed device environment securely and efficiently. Its simplicity, security, and support advantages make it a strong contender in the MDM space. However, potential users should consider cost, learning curve, customization, and connectivity dependency.

Every organization's needs are unique, and what makes Scalefusion perfect for one might be a limitation for another. It's crucial to align specific business requirements and technical capabilities with what Scalefusion can offer. Given the rapid evolution of digital workplaces, choosing an MDM solution like Scalefusion could be a step toward future-proofing your business's device management strategy.

More from TechRadar Pro

• We've also featured the best MDM solutions
• For an alternative, check out our Hexnode MDM review

Adobe Lightroom is a very good tool to organize and edit your photos and videos. We’re big fans of Adobe’s professional photography software - you can see what we thought in our Adobe Lightroom review - but can you really slim down that feature-rich experience for mobile devices? 

We put Lightroom for iOS and Android to the test to see if it’s the best photo editor for photographers using phones and tablets.  

Adobe Lightroom Mobile: Pricing & plans

• A free sample is good, but the best tools are always hidden behind a paywall. Still, the full features come bundled with a subscription to the desktop version of Lightroom, so that’s got to be a plus.

The good news is Lightroom Mobile can be downloaded for free, but its feature-set is limited. You have the ability to organize and share your photos, as well as use most editing tools, but the juiciest ones are restricted behind a paywall.

Any Adobe subscription that includes the main Lightroom application includes the mobile version too, and unlocks all of its features. $10 a month on a yearly contract gets you either Lightroom with 1TB of online storage, or 20GB bundled with Photoshop, while $20 a month includes everything: Lightroom, Photoshop and 1TB cloud storage. 

Alternatively, you can subscribe to the Creative Cloud All Apps plan, which bundles Lightroom for mobile and desktop alongside Photoshop, premiere Pro, InDesign, and more. For an individual, this costs $60 a month on a one-year contract. However, prices vary if you're an individual, student, business, or university, and whether you pay monthly or annually. 

• Pricing & plans: 4/5

Adobe Lightroom Mobile: Accessing media

• It’s easy to choose how much of your device’s media to share with Lightroom, all your shots saved on Adobe’s servers are but a tap away, and you can get inspiration via the community tab.

As with all mobile apps, Lightroom needs to ask you for permission to access the images stored on your device. You’re free to deny this, grant it full access or limit it to just a select few, safe in the knowledge you’re able to grow or shrink that list in the future.

In addition to that, any media you have saved on Adobe's servers can be accessed via the ‘Lightroom' tab at the bottom of the interface when browsing through your collection. This integrates perfectly with all versions of Lightroom, meaning you can effortlessly bring in media from any device, knowing you'll be able to work on it on any machine logged in to the same Adobe ID. This is a huge plus, and can be a wonderful time saver, giving you great flexibility with your workflow.

Finally, there's the Community tab, which not only lets you explore other people’s work, follow specific artists, and grab inspiration from them, but you can also save their color correction parameters as presets, which you can use for your own images, and customize them to suit your needs.

• Score: 4/5

Adobe Lightroom Mobile: Interface & experience

• A great interface, well designed, simple to use, with a wealth of powerful tools at your fingertips. What’s not to love?

Lightroom Mobile's interface is incredibly polished and easy to understand. Once you've selected an image to work on, the majority of the screen will be taken up by it, with a sidebar on the right offering you a list of tools broken down by category: edit, presets, crop & rotate, remove, masking, lens blur, and version history.

Essentially, anything you can do on the desktop version of Lightroom, you can do on a phone or tablet, offering you immense versatility. Let's just take a look at a handful of features that really impressed us.

Let’s start with some well thought out interface touches: when you’re in the process of changing a parameter, the whole editing sidebar disappears, allowing you to focus on the image while dragging that slider left or right. Release the slider and all the tools reappear instantly. It’s subtle, well implemented, and a great way to remove any distraction from precision work.

The Presets are a nice inclusion, although there are so many to choose from. What we liked was that the software analyzes your photo and offers you a choice it thinks would suit your composition well. You don’t need to go with that selection of course, but considering the sheer volume of available presets, it’s nice there’s a feature that can help you narrow down your search, should you want it. It’s also possible for you to create your own presets, defining a unique look which you can use again and again.

The mask tools are, for us, probably the most impressive in the range. Making particular changes to a specific part of an image was something you most likely would’ve gone to Photoshop to perform, but no longer. With these masks, you can perform such alterations without needing to leave Lightroom. Yes, Photoshop is included with certain subscription packages, including Photoshop for iPad, but isn’t it better if you can just remain in a single app and keep on working uninterrupted? We think so, and clearly, so does Adobe.

You get to add as many masks as you need to an image, and make use of special algorithms to automatically select the sky, a person, a specific color range, or the shot’s luminance. Then, any changes you make will only affect the area selected by the mask. Adding or removing sections is as easy as tapping on the relevant menu. You can create incredibly unique looks that way, and it’s so easy to use, it’s almost effortless.

And finally a quick word on the Lens Blur: it uses AI algorithms to create an artificial depth of field to your image, blurring our sections while keeping others in sharp focus. Again, the interface is very easy to master, with a graphic slider to help you select how much of the foreground or the background to keep in focus, a crosshair to be more specific about your selection, a slider to select the amount of blur, and a choice of five lenses. It’s as easy as pointing and clicking.

• Score: 5/5

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You like to edit your images on the go, enjoy a clean, easy to use interface that’s quick to master, love being able to work on the same image both on your mobile device, and your computer.

Don't buy it if...

The power Lightroom Mobile offers is too much for your needs, you don't want to subscribe, or you just want the best Adobe Lightroom alternatives. 

We tested the best photo editing PCs and the best laptops for photo editing and these are our top picks for photographers. 

Adobe Lightroom is a tool designed to organize and edit your photos. This might make it sound like it’s nothing more than a souped up organizational app that comes bundled with your computer, but as you’d expect from Adobe, it’s much more powerful than that. We wanted to see what one of the best photo editors offers professional photographers today - so, we put it to the test.  

Adobe Lightroom: Pricing & plans

• Adobe offers a good number of Lightroom subscriptions - but no local storage on the standalone 1TB plan

Lightroom used to be an app you paid for, before adding a complementary subscription plan. Now, as with most of Adobe’s professional offerings, you only have the option of subscribing - either as a standalone plan or as part of the Creative Cloud All Apps package, which bundled in Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, and more. 

The CC All Apps prices vary depending on whether you opt for a yearly contract, choose to go on a month by month basis, and if you’re an individual, student, teacher, or business. Taking the individual as an example, this will cost you $60 a month on a one-year contract.

A single subscription to Lightroom is $10 a month, which includes 1TB of online storage. And you’ll also find a Lightroom and Photoshop combo for the same price, although your online storage would drop to 20GB unless you opt for the terabyte subscription. 

There’s one thing you need to be aware of though: the 1TB Lightroom-only subscription option doesn’t allow you to work with photos stored locally. It’s cloud-based all the way. The other options include an offline facility.

• Pricing & plans: 3.5/5

Adobe Lightroom: What is It?

• An excellent and versatile application designed to help you organize, catalog, edit and share your work.

The reason why Adobe includes so much bundled storage with a Lightroom subscription is because it’s primarily designed to work online: you upload your media and work from there. This has the advantage of granting you access to your library wherever you might be, and on whichever machine you happen to be logged into. This is undeniably an advantage, but you can also opt to keep your data safely on your own machine should you prefer, by switching from ‘Cloud’ to ‘Local’ on the left sidebar (and you’ve chosen the proper subscription of course). Even better, you can choose which photos or videos to keep locally, and which to send to the cloud, giving you the most control over your work, and offering you the best of both worlds.

The Local side of things grants you access to your entire hard drive, so if you’ve organized anything into specific folders there, you’ll find it all replicated within Lightroom. Click on a folder from the sidebar and if it contains any images, they’ll show up at the bottom of the interface.

To the right are all the tools available to you to make alterations to your photos. Everything is neatly divided by category, including a large selection of presets, the usual colour adjustment curves and parameters, cropping, healing brushes, masking, and a very handy version history of all the changes you made to an image, enabling you to roll back the clock if needed.

All of this is fantastic, and makes for an extremely powerful cataloging and editing application. It’s safe to say that most of the tweaks you need to make can be done without ever having to leave Lightroom, although Photoshop is but a click away (as long as you subscribe to it as well).

The left sidebar also gives you access to the ‘Community’, where you can see other people’s works, follow your favorite photographers, and even contribute yourself. It’s a great way to draw inspiration from others, or just ignore it completely if that’s not your kind of thing. Above it, is ‘Learn’, a place filled with tutorials to help you make the most of Lightroom.

In addition to that, there’s an app for mobile use (for both Android and iOS), as well as a web version, so wherever you are, as long as your photos are stored online, you can view, edit and share your work with ease. You can see what we thought of the app in our Adobe Lightroom Mobile review.

• Score: 4.5/5

Adobe Lightroom: What’s new?

• Lightroom is constantly being updated, offering ever more useful and advanced tools to your arsenal.

As it’s been a while since we last looked at Lightroom, a lot has changed, and the pricing structure mentioned above is just the tip of the iceberg. We thought we’d highlight a handful we found interesting and useful.

We discussed the Masking tool’s location in the interface earlier, but being able to make changes to specific areas while leaving the rest untouched is one more reason not to have to pay a visit to Photoshop!

You’ll find a series of different ‘adaptive’ presets available. These use AI to analyze and modify a specific portion of your photo, such as the sky, someone’s clothes, their teeth, etc. and make pre-defined alterations to them. The seven blur presets are designed to help you subtly blur your image’s background, for instance. You also have control over your presets as they now have sliders to allow you to tweak the intensity of the effect you’re adding.

Cameras can do more than taking photos: they can also record videos, and Lightroom’s been able to edit those since 2022, from the basics, such as trimming, flipping and rotating, to color correction. As of May 2024, you can also make use of curves when altering your clips. You also have the ability to extract and export still frames.

Would it surprise you to know that AI is creeping more and more into the tools you use everyday? The Denoise feature is AI-driven for instance (only available if you’re working with Bayer and X-Trans mosaic RAW files), and the content-aware heal tool can do some moderately interesting work, but it’s nothing next to the new Generative Remove (currently in Early Access). It does an incredible job not only at removing an unwanted part of an image (the standard heal tool could do that already), but the generated background fill is truly incredible. We tried it on a person in front of the sea, or flecks of bamboo off of fur, and the results were astounding. We also went a little too far by trying to remove the entire foreground and those results were more comical than anything else, so use it in moderation. For an early access feature, and for detailed work, we were most impressed.

• Score: 4.5/5

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You’re a photographer, you need advanced tools to alter your images and videos, you need to be able to access a community, and work on your computer, tablet and the web.

Don't buy it if...

You're not interested in a subscription or you're ideally looking for the best Adobe Lightroom alternatives. 

We tested out the best photo editing PCs and the best laptops for photo editing and these are our top picks. 

Adobe Fresco is a fun app for iPad and Microsoft Surface tablets. It’s all about simulating the real-world painting process - so expect to go to town on your digital canvas with the stylus as paintbrush. 

We’ve tried out a number of the best digital art and drawing software, and Adobe’s graphic design set has always impressed us. We liked Fresco last time we reviewed the painting app. But how does Adobe Fresco hold up in 2024? We wanted to find out.  

Adobe Fresco: Pricing & plans

• Free for a few brushes and some online storage, but it’s more than enough to get started. Subscriptions are available and Fresco is also bundled in with other Adobe  plans. 

You can download and install Adobe Fresco for free, which will allow you to work with about a hundred brushes, and be offered 2GB of online storage. You’ll need an Adobe account to take advantage of this - which is also free (save for a few minutes of your time).

This is the basic Fresco app, but you can choose to subscribe to it for around $10 a month to gain access to over 1,000 additional brushes, more online storage, additional shapes, and access to Adobe’s premium fonts. However, if you already subscribe to the Adobe Design Mobile Bundle, the Adobe Photoshop Single Plan, or the Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps plan, then you already have access to the full version of Fresco. Subscription prices vary depending on whether you’re an individual, in education, or a business, and whether you choose to pay on a month by month basis or opt for a yearly plan, but as a guide, an individual person can expect to pay between around $23 and $60 a month for the Photoshop Single Plan and the Creative Cloud All App respectively.

Whichever option you decide to go with, Fresco will broadly look the same, so let’s install it and take it for a spin.

• Pricing & plans: 4/5

Adobe Fresco: How it works

• A compact interface has tools that appear as you need them, with an interesting rotating feature.

If you’re familiar with other Adobe software, you’ll feel right at home in Fresco. From the home page’s style, to the layout of the various sidebars, you’re in no doubt you’re working with an Adobe product.

To the left are the various brushes available to you. Tap on one of them for that menu to expand, offering you further options. On the right is a series of parameters affecting your entire document. This is where you can access your layers (on by default), see various layer properties, enable options such as snapping, add comments, and even expose more layer-related tools. Top right of the interface are sharing options, and undo and redo buttons among others. It’s a very compact yet very full featured interface.  

Obviously, the bulk of the screen is devoted to your artwork. As it’s an app designed for a tablet, you can turn your device in any orientation and the toolbars will rotate in kind - but your artwork won’t. This might feel a little disconcerting at first, but it does allow you to work on your project from any angle. Plus, if that doesn’t suit you, all it takes is a simple two finger rotate gesture to bring your canvas into the ‘right’ orientation.

• Score: 4/5

Adobe Fresco: What it does

• Painting and drawing on a portable digital device is smooth and easy, coupled the advantage of digital convenience and capabilities.

From the sound of it, Fresco feels like a portable version of Adobe Photoshop, but the fact there is a version of Photoshop for mobile devices shows that it’s more than that. Its focus is on trying to replicate the real world experience of drawing and painting.  For that to work, Fresco offers a wealth of different brushes whose strokes can interact with others.

Take the watercolours for instance. They come with a ‘watercolour flow’ parameter, which is there to determine just how much bleed you’ll get when using them, ie, just how wet is the brush and how much will the new colour you’re using interact and mix with surrounding colours already on your canvas. This makes for a fun, versatile and highly interactive simulation, which is far removed from how too many digital image compositors work (not all, mind - Corel Painter is a notable example of software trying to replicate how paint behaves in the real world, only this time on a computer)

Combine this with layer work, the ability to use and customise so many different brushes, and compatibility with a stylus, allows you to get pretty close to real world painting - without the mess, or running out of paint. It’s an attempt to blend the physical with the virtual in what we felt to be a very enjoyable experience.

Add to that your ability to export your work as a PSD file, so you can work on it further in Photoshop on your computer, increasing your workflow possibilities immensely.

• Score: 4/5

Adobe Fresco: What’s new?

• Motion paths and rotation. It may not sound like much, but it’s well implemented and easy to use.

 On top of all this great art creation tool, Fresco also lets you animate portions of your artwork, and these capabilities have been improved in the latest version. You can now create motion paths. 

This in part due to an easy to control floating toolbar at the bottom of the screen, with various additional parameters available on the sidebar to the right, once that option is triggered. From there, you’ll also find a new feature to either rotate or sway your chosen layer. It’s all incredibly easy to use, adding additional dynamism to your project. 

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You enjoy creating digital artwork but would like to replicate the feel of the real painting experience. Fresco is a great app for working on the go, and linking to other Adobe apps across your devices.

Don't buy it if...

You're not an artist or painter, and you especially don't like free painting apps. 

• For more Adobe-style options, we've reviewed the best Adobe Lightroom alternatives and the best alternatives to Adobe Photoshop

When you think of Adobe, you’re likely imagining high end professional creative apps, be they image compositing, video editing, desktop publishing, and more besides, but would ‘word processing’ spring to mind? And yet, there is one available, which integrates perfectly with what we consider the best desktop publishing software going: Adobe InCopy. 

With it, writers and editors are able to style text, track changes and make simple layout alterations, while at the same time, designers seamlessly work on the same document in InDesign. Sounds cool, right? We tried it out to see how it helps the design workflow. 

And you can see what we thought of the latest improvements to the main app in our Adobe InDesign review.  

Adobe InCopy: Pricing & plans

• The cheapest individual subscription in Adobe’s portfolio, and also comes free when you grab the full All Apps package.

As with any professional Adobe product, you only gain access to InCopy through a subscription. Your cheapest option is to get it on its own for almost $5 per month (that’s with an annual plan). It’s actually the cheapest subscription you can get with Adobe. You can choose to pay for the year upfront, but this is a rare occasion where you don’t get any discount for doing so, not even a cent. Alternatively, it’s $7.50 per month on no contract.

Access to Adobe Fonts, Portfolio, Creative Cloud Libraries, 100GB of online storage and 25 monthly generative credits (for AI creations) are included in the price.

Alternatively, you can opt for the Creative Cloud All Apps package which comes with the whole enchilada, including Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, for $60 per month on an annual plan. As with the single app above, prices fluctuate depending if you pay on a month by month basis, or for a yearly plan. In addition to that, students and teachers get a hefty discount for the full package ($20 a month), and there are specific deals for businesses and academic institutes.

• Pricing & plans: 4/5

Adobe InCopy: How it works

• The concept of being able to work on a document and have it updated in the InDesign project is a very attractive one. But it’s not instantaneous, and was sadly prone to crashing when we tested it.

InCopy was created to speed up the process of getting a design project done and dusted. Usually a writer would submit their copy to the designer who then turns it into an article/poster/book etc, which then gets sent back to the writer, the editor, both, or more, for review and changes, which the designer then has to integrate back into their version in InDesign. And this cycle repeats until everyone involved is happy with the results.

There’s a lot of redundant work involved, with the potential of one revision being lost or mislaid along the flow of information. InCopy’s aim is to streamline all of this, making the whole concept much more of a collaboration tool, which allows writers and designers to work on the same document - although not at the same time: only one user can alter the text at any one time.

A designer can submit a text box to an InCopy file, for its content to be reviewed or altered, or a writer can produce an InCopy document which will then be incorporated into a designer’s InDesign file. However you prefer to work, the link between the two documents will be made, enabling anyone who has access to either of them, to make changes.

The process isn’t automatic: making some changes in InCopy will not make them appear in InDesign, for instance. Instead you need to click on ‘update content’ from the contextual menu. Also, while someone’s altering the content, everyone else is locked out of it. The person making the changes has to manually ‘check in’ in order to release the document, allowing others to make their own modifications.

It’s not as seamless as it could be, but it works well… until it doesn’t. Although we could easily make changes in InCopy, and update our version in InDesign as advertised, our version of InCopy (19.3), crashed every time we tried to update the content after someone had made changes in InDesign, which forced us to either use it as a one-way system, or check the changes once we relaunched the app, which was far from ideal.

• Score: 3/5

Adobe InCopy: Interface

• An easy interface to get to grips with, offering you just the tools you need to limit distractions.

As you’d suspect, the InCopy interface looks like a vastly simplified version of InDesign, paring down the tools to solely what you need for writing. The toolbar at the top contains all the basic word processing options, such as alignment, font, size, style, etc.

The sidebar to the left is where you’ll find some search and navigation tools, as well as a comments option, so you can easily communicate with others working on the same document. Those notes can be seen on the page itself, or in a floating window which can be accessed in InDesign. The same applies for being able to track changes, although this isn’t switched on by default.

The document’s content can be viewed in three different ways: ‘Galley’ strips the text of its style, which is displayed in a sidebar to the left for each line. The ‘design’ visual left in the body of the text are the page breaks. ‘Story’ is virtually identical to ‘Galley’, except even the page breaks are removed, letting you focus on what needs to be written or altered. 

Finally, there’s ‘Layout’ which shows you your document’s style as it would appear in InDesign, although again, only the text is shown. If the designer has laced the page with images in InDesign or instance, those will not be seen in InCopy. In addition, this assumes the writer has the same fonts installed on their machine as the designer has on theirs, which is why it’s important to make sure all those potential hiccups are sorted out ahead of time. It’s also possible to import styles, thereby limiting any additional work between computers.

Overall, when it works, InCopy does what it sets out to do: streamline the document creation process between the writer, editor and designer. Such a shame our copy kept crashing when trying to update the document’s content.

• Interface: 4/5

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

You or your designer use InDesign to create projects, and need a way to communicate more seamlessly when making changes.

Don't buy it if...

You don’t need to work with a designer as you do it all yourself, or you don’t create your projects in InDesign.

Branching out in page design? We checked out the best Adobe InDesign alternatives

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