Free Photo Editing Tools for the Less Photoshop Savvy
If you’re anywhere to be found online these days, whether through a Wix site, a blog or just about any social network, you’re going to need some visuals. Appealing photos draw attention and help you better demonstrate any story or statement, no matter where you choose to tell it.
If you’re anywhere to be found online these days, whether through a Wix site, a blog or just about any social network, you’re going to need some visuals. Appealing photos draw attention and help you better demonstrate any story or statement, no matter where you choose to tell it.
You don’t need to be Photoshop savvy in order to edit and fully enhance your photos. There are great online photo editing tools that can be used for free by those of us who haven’t quite mastered professional editing tools.
To make things easier for you, we gathered a list of 5 awesome and free(!) photo editing tools. All the services we’ve listed are web based which means you can also access them from anywhere, anytime.
iPiccy
Simplicity is the name of the game. iPiccy is the perfect tool for the less experienced user and has many fun features to offer. With Picnik recently integrating into Google+, many users are now packing their photo stacks and moving to iPiccy as the next editing tool.
iPiccy allows you to get pictures from a variety of places. You can upload photos from your computer, from a URL, from your camera, from Facebook or create a drawing from scratch. Few words of guidance are needed, the interface is inviting and simple to operate.
Once you’ve chosen your image, you’ll find a nice selection of editing features including cropping, resizing, sharpening and rotating. The best part of iPiccy is that you need no background in photo editing to start working – it’s that easy!
Aviary Phoenix
Phoenix application by Aviary delivers the key features of a desktop image editor with the simplicity and accessibility of a web-based application. This of course means you can easily import all your recent photos from sharing sites like Facebook and Flickr and give them an extra touch. Phoenix gives you tons of features such as: layers, different brushes, masks, editing and effects tools. It’s most recommended for the intermediate to experienced user. However, if you’re just starting out, there is a pretty big community behind Phoenix that provides very good guidance, and support – try them!
Pixlr
Pixlr offers online, mobile and desktop image editing services. They have a suite of applications that are very intuitive and can serve both experienced and inexperienced users.
Some of the featured offered: – A fully customizable user interface with movable and scalable windows
– Intuitive design and paint features with a dedicated history window for reference and quick undo/redo
– A “Photo Express” platform for quick, simple changes to images and photographs. Photo Express is better if you consider yourself a beginner.
Pixlr also provides Pixlr-o-matic, an awesome tool that lets you play with cool effects, overlays and borders on any photo from you webcam, Facebook, or computer.
There’s no registration required so you can jump right in and party.
PicMonkey
PicMonkey is another easy and intuitive tool to use, similar to iPiccy in terms of style and simplicity. Once you’ve uploaded a photo you can start using features such as basic adjustments, cropping, rotating and sharpening. It offers a huge selection of frames and textures as well, and of course vintage filters, a feature we cannot go without in this day and age.
PicMonkey offers cool touch-up effects which makes it excellent to use with portrait photos. From wrinkle remover, to blush boost to spray tan, all your basic styling troubles are left behind.
Know a good photo editing tool that’s not covered here? Let us know in the comment and we’ll be happy to include it on our next review of great photo editing tools.
