Photo or image editing is the process of altering, manipulating, enhancing or transforming a photo, image or illustration using various digital techniques. Before the advent of computers and digital cameras, photo editing was only possible manually by using ink and paint or techniques such as double-exposure and airbrushing.

With the advent of computers, digital cameras and mobile phones, several digital retouching and image editing software are available now. Even the old photographs, printed photos, negatives, transparencies and all other analog formats can be transformed into a digital form using a scanner, to be edited later.

Resizing: or image scaling i.e. making them larger or smaller
Cropping: creating a new image by cropping the unwanted parts and improving the image composition
Removing objects: removing distracting elements form an image to make the subject more focused
Color Swapping: changing the color of specific items in an image
Enhancing: improving the quality of image by making it lighter or darker, increasing or decreasing the contrast, or balancing the colors
Sharpening and Softening: sharpening or blurring the image to make the object stand out
Merging: merging one or more images to form a single image

Balancing brightness, contrast and colors
Removing scratches, blemishes, creases, dust, spots and unwanted objects
Restoring very old/damaged or faded photos and colorizing black & white photos
Vector conversion, i.e. converting logos, artwork, maps, signs, painting and cartoons etc to hand drawn vector photo
Image masking, i.e. removing the background from an image to make the object more prominent
Clipping path, i.e. clipping the path in intricate images like jewelry and hairstyle to make the object stand out from background