5 free tools for editing photos

Most people that publish content on the web aren’t professional photographers or designers. But we still want our photos to look amazing. This is why we turn to photo editing software that is both free and easy to use.

While professional grade tools like Adobe's Photoshop and Lightroom are great, these are too expensive and complicated for most of us. For the team at Shorthand, the five best free photo editing software tools are PicMonkey, Photoscape, Paint.Net, GIMP, and Canva.

These free online photo editor tools will allow beginners and the self-taught to brighten eyes, crop, lighten, add filters, layer, collage and blur — and much more.

Whether you’re creating a photo essay, blog, feature story — or anything else on the web — these tools will help you make your high quality photos look great. And with the rise of enormous free stock photo libraries, you can create something amazing without leaving your computer.

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Photo tools have lots of editing features. The most expensive and advanced editing tool can look like as complex as the dashboard of a Millennium Falcon, and have a significant learning curve. The cheapest, though, might not have what you need — and may leave your images with a nasty watermark.

Here are some common workflows that most folks working with photography will want to do. It’s important to think about exactly what you want to do — and how ambitious you want to be — as this will determine what photo editing app you end up choosing.

• Crop the photo to remove any unnecessary elements. This is a basic feature that just about any image program — including those that exist natively on IOS, MacOS, Windows, and Android devices — can do. But the best image editors will have crop presets to allow you to create images for standard social media formats. Remember to understand what file formats allow lossless resizing, and which really do not.
• Apply a filter to give the photo a unique look, or remove blemishes and red eye!
• Add text to the photo using a range of built-in fonts.
• Apply stickers (why not) and other photo effects, graphic design elements, and overlays.
• Retouch the image and provide a range of other automatic image enhancements, including remove any blemishes or unwanted objects from the photo.
• Make minor adjustments to the brightness, contrast, and saturation of the photo.
• Save the edited photo in a different format or resolution. This one is key. You’re going to want to export your image in a range of image file formats — and perhaps not just PNG, JPEG, or (help us) GIF.
• Background removal. This feature is becoming much more popular, especially in more advanced machine learning tools.
• Use design templates. Many photo editors these days come with templates, so you can apply stunning filters without needing to push any pixels.

Ok, without any more delay — let’s check out the best free photo editors!

According to internet folklore, the unfortunately named GIMP is one of the best free photo editing tools on the market. Some say rivalling Photoshop or at least the top freemium rival.

What makes it great? It's a photo retoucher, photo editor, photo batcher or it's a simple paint tool. Its open source coding means that it is extendable with plugins. It's highly versatile and pleasurable in that you can craft it to suit your own needs. Compatible with Windows, Linux and MacOS. Expect industry-standard photo editing and re-touching with layers, lines, curves, gradients, blur, blemish touch up and at lightning speeds. Special effects galore will enable you to take you photography from zero to hero.

GIMP has a handy modular interface, which you can move around as three floating windows which saves precious screen real estate.

When to use it: You're part creative, part developer, part tinkerer and you want flexibility, and the ability to customise your editing suite.

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PicMonkey has four main features, which are edit, touch-up, design and collage. Each of these tools has a free version, but as with all our freemium SaaS pals, there are locked add ons and the real sweet stuff is locked behind the paywall. However, there is still a huge amount you can achieve with the free tool.

Staff at Shorthand have uses the collage feature weekly for social media posts and we find it to have a great user interface and fast.

Things we like about PicMonkey are the ability to edit on the run — you can use the app editor to edit images on the fly. Super smart for those community managers who are on the road meeting with clients and juggling multiple tasks.

We liked the edge sketch feature, this works well in our transitional section types such as two-column scrollmation and background scrollmation. As well as filters, you can use PicMonkey for layering, and creating effects which will work well in our reveal section, we created a tutorial with a step by step guide.

When to use it: You like your image editing and graphics creation to be in one place. PicMonkey is a small business power house, great for entrepreneurs editing their own images.

Pixlr is an intuitive online photo editor that offers a wide range of features, including the ability to add text and stickers to photos, crop and resize images, and adjust photo color and lighting. It's a great tool for adding a bit of extra polish to your photos before sharing them online.

One of the things that makes Pixlr so popular is the fact that it’s easy to use. The interface is clear and straightforward, and there’s a wealth of tutorials available online if you need help getting started. Another big plus is the wide range of functions on offer.

Whether you want to crop, resize or edit photos, or create logos or banners, Pixlr has the tools you need — many of them work with just one click. And if you’re not happy with the results, you can always undo your changes or start again from scratch. With its ease of use and wealth of features, it’s no wonder Pixlr is so popular.

When to use it: You want to get started with photo editing tools right in your web browser, and have the option to upgrade to advanced features within the same platform.

PhotoScape, an easily downloaded desktop app is giving Photoshop a run for its money. The dashboard of this app may feel different at first, but after a 15 minute investigation, you can see why this is gaining eyeballs from the staunchest of Adobe fans.

Features include, RAW to JPG converter, viewer, editor, merge, page, combine, print editor, face search and a favourite of mine, a GIF maker.

There are a lot of features kept under lock and key which requires you to upgrade to Pro. Tools like gradient fill, which many users will miss, curves, levels and mixers, as well as more filters and effects than you'll know what to do with.

When to use it: You've tried the Lightroom demo and it was more confusing than the world's current political landscape, so you gave up. PhotoScape allows you access to similar tools, and is more novice friendly.

Canva know a thing or two about giving creative power to the people. Canva's free tools have been a game changer for all types of businesses. Their full online tool features basic editing options for images, and they also have a free standalone photo editor.

This simplistic editor is the answer for anyone looking to make a quick change to a stock picture. This is not going to come close to editing RAW images or changing file types or size, but it is worth an honourable mention.

We have written an in-depth article on using Canva to create transition effects. Such as using our reveal section, two-column scrollmation and background scrollmation. Canva makes creating transition effects really easy - and they are a great way to kick off a story or new chapter in a lengthy article. The effect gives your readers a cue that this is more than just an illustration. It's a point in the narrative to draw breath and get ready for a little context shift.

When to use it: When your photography is edited and you're ready to create some creative images with minor filters, size adjustments and layers.

Because this list is only 5, we’ve missed a few classics — including Fotor, Photoshop Express, BeFunky, and Paint.net (which isn’t a thing anymore, alas). These are all great tools, too, with their own pros and cons.

Have we missed your favourite free editing tool? Let us know! If you're seeking more tips and guidance on how to get the most out of your Shorthand subscription, you can visit our article detailing all our favourite tools for multimedia storytellers.