The Easiest and Most Free Tools for Basic Photo Editing (Except Photoshop)

Opening Photoshop or GIMP just to crop the image is silly. These powerful tools are great, but sometimes you just need a simple program. Here’s how to make frequent edits with simple free online tools.

When we asked our readers about their favorite Photoshop alternative , GIMP was the clear winner. However, it is also a large and cumbersome application if all you need is a quick crop or light color adjustment. Rather than picking the best photo editing app in general, we’ll go over some of the most common photo editing tasks and pick the best free tool for each one, so if there is a simple task that you have to complete every day, you don’t have to wait. while GIMP is loading to do this. All editors presented here work in a web browser, so you can use them on any platform.

Trim: Fotor

Cropping a photo can be as simple as removing something around the edge of the frame, or as specific as adjusting the image to its exact resolution. Fotor offers some of the most reliable cropping tools you will find in the free app. You can crop any shape, reduce the original dimensions, or set your own resolution. It even comes with some built-in size presets like Facebook covers. To crop photos, follow these steps:

1. Open Fotor .
2. Click “Edit Photo”.
3. Select the photo you want to crop. (If you block plugins, you may need to enable Fotor or it will freeze on load.)
4. From the left menu select “Trim”.
5. Select a constraint from the drop-down menu. You can also set specific dimensions in the fields below. Select Maintain Aspect Ratio to keep the rectangle the same shape as you adjust the crop box.
6. In the main window, adjust the handles on the cropping frame until it only contains the portion of the image you want to keep.
7. Click Apply.
8. Click the floppy disk icon to save the image to disk.

Cropping isn’t hard, but if you need precise tools, a regular image editor might not impress you. In my testing, Fotor had the best tools for any situation with the least friction. It also has a basic swivel and flip function, which is great if you need it. At the bottom, you can use the resize options to adjust the size of the image without cropping it.

Color Correction: Pixlr Editor

Sometimes light doesn’t hit your photo as it should, in which case a small tweak can improve it. Pixlr Editor has some of the most powerful near-Photoshop-level tools for image adjustments. While most editors have basic brightness, contrast, or tint meters, Pixlr can go much deeper than most apps for no fee.

To edit a photo using Pixlr, open the app here . You will be prompted to open the file you want to edit from your computer or a URL. Once you open it, you can find several options in the settings menu. Here are some of them and how they work:

• Levels. Chances are you are familiar with brightness and contrast. Levels can really help you accomplish both tasks in one filter. When you select Levels, you will see a histogram of the colors in your image. The three markers at the bottom represent the black, white and gray levels. By dragging these sliders, you can adjust the black depth and white brightness. Typically, if you drag the black and white sliders to the edge of the histogram curve (as opposed to empty flat space), you fix a lot of color balance issues. Check out this album to see how this adjustment works.
• Curves: Curves are one of the best color grading tools at your disposal. It’s a complex tool and we can’t walk through it in one step, but the World Digital Camera has a great guide here . Unfortunately, it cannot be used as an adjustment layer like in Photoshop, but it is still effective on its own.
• Hue and Saturation: Of all the filters on this list, these are the ones you’re most likely to find in other apps, but they’re nice to have here too. This setting can make your colors more vivid, adjust them to different hues, or increase or decrease the brightness.

There are about a dozen other settings you can play around with. Many of them can be used in different ways to solve the same problem, but it’s worth trying them all. The interface may seem intimidating, but if you start playing with them, they become pretty simple.

Layering: Pixlr Editor

Another useful Photoshop feature is layers. Photoshop layers work the same way as Cel animation . You can work by changing one layer without affecting the others, and move them independently. Luckily, Photoshop isn’t the only app that has this feature: the previously mentioned Pixlr Editor has excellent layer support. To use this:

1. Open the image in Pixlr.
2. At the bottom of the Layers window on the right, click the New button. This will create a new transparent layer.
3. Draw a new area. Alternatively, you can copy selections from other images and paste them into your document. New layers for inserted selections will be created automatically.
4. Click the slider icon in the lower-left corner of the Layers menu to enable opacity and transfer mode options. You can adjust opacity to make layers partially transparent and transfer modes to get unique effects.

Of course, just having layers doesn’t necessarily mean you can do as much with them. Pixlr’s selection tools leave a lot to be desired, so taking photos of birds with hands can be a little more difficult than using Photoshop. On the other hand, it is much cheaper.

Text and titles: Fotor

The Internet has turned words in text into something of an art form . In fact, getting the text in the image is a little trickier. Fotor is one of the best apps in this case as it allows you to preview the fonts you choose as you scroll through them. To add text to images, follow these instructions:

1. Open the image in Fotor .
2. Click the Text icon in the left sidebar.
3. Select a font from the dropdown list. You can see the name of the font by previewing it in the font style itself.
4. Click the Add Text button to create a resizable text box.
5. Enter your text in the field.
6. In the box that appears on the right side of the image, you can change settings such as alignment, bold and italic, transparency, and spacing.

Fotor can extract fonts installed on your computer or a set of installed Fotor fonts. You can save certain fonts as favorites, but you will need to register an account to do this. The only downside is that Fotor doesn’t seem to be able to add layer styles, so you’re limited on how to select text. However, by playing around with a few text layers, you can get some nifty effects.

More…