If you are a digital marketing professional generally you are required to know how to handle software like Adobe Photoshop/ Illustrator, CorelDraw, or GIMP to an immediate level. But to be effective in using these tools need lots of investment in term of money (for the courses) and time (practice). Photos are important essentials of digital marketing content. Thus if you are not efficient in using these popular tools, you would end up being dependent on some freelancer or an agency. And so henceforth; we see the importance of online photo editors, by using these websites you can create photos just like a pro. It’s no secret that people prefer visual content. Articles and social media posts with images get over 200% more shares than content without visuals.
Creating images for social media is not as difficult as it may sound. And there are plenty of tools to help you along the way. These sites can be helpful in redesigning and enhancing your photo with the better appearance, the conventional artistic touch on the photo print itself or desktop version is not enough, it is possible for you to upload your photo or enter the URL of an image on the internet. Once you upload your photo or a picture you can resize, rotate, or sharpen it. You can add sharpness and color to it. Do whatever you like to enhance its quality to your liking and download it and keep it online for all your future requirements. After all, photo editing is not merely for special occasions, but it is an everyday online requirement. Some of the websites which can help you with the same are listed below:
- Canva– Having said that, Canva is a great tool to start with. Whether it is about creating a design from scratch or editing an existing photo, Canva offers a wide range of features.
- GetStencil– GetStencil/ Stencil is different from Canva with its installation speed, direct sharing on social media platforms, all-inclusive-pricing plans, and integration with Buffer.
- PicMonkey– It is a popular photo editor and design maker, making image creation easier. You can make your photos look good with the available filters and fonts. The extra beautifying touchup tools, exclusive overlays, and frames are a boon. PicMonkey allows you to ‘undo’ and ‘redo,’ allowing you to make a lot of experiments on the way.
- Pablo, by Buffer– Are you looking to create beautiful images easily to make your posts pop up? Pablo by Buffer helps you in making your images beautiful, especially in your social network. Buffer is a web service for the pages and profiles of Facebook updates, Linkedin, Twitter, and social networks. You can update multiple profiles simultaneously. You can even plan ahead and update directly from any other page you like instantly. Pablo has all the features that you might be looking for in an online photo editor.
- Snappa– It is a faster way for marketers and entrepreneurs to create graphics. Without using graphic designers or photoshop, useful for ads, social media, display ads, landing pages.
- BeFunky– You might be familiar with the mobile version of beFunky, as there’s an app for both iOS and Android. However, you can use BeFunky on the computer, too– in any web browser that supports Flash. BeFunky has three modes: Photo Editor, Collage Maker, and Designer. You can play with the first two, but for social media images, you will need the third one.
- Desygner– Desygner is one of those apps with a lot of smart details that help it rise above the competition. Another area where Desygner stands out is file format support. It can work with PSD, PDF, and PPT files, and import images directly from Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Dropbox, and Google Drive. Once you are ready with the image, you can download it as a JPG, PNG, or PDF file. Then share it on social media or via email and even get an embed code for your website. Apart from templates for social media headers and posts, Desygner also offers templates for Facebook, Instagram, and Google ads. You can use it in the browser, or download the mobile apps (for iOS and Android).
- Fotojet– Fotojet looks and feels like a mix of Canva and BeFunky. But it seems to work much more smoothly than both. Design elements are neatly organized into categories. If the ones provided by Fotojet are not good enough for you, the search option is right there to help you find more. The options for editing clip art are reasonably detailed, and you can change the color and transparency of the design elements in your image. You can use Fotojet to create collages and edit photos. It’s really practical in that it lets you use fonts from your computer (alongside the default ones). Fotojet integrates well with Facebook, so you can log in with your existing account and import photos from it.
- Relay– While Pablo is for users who prefer simplicity, Relay is a full-fledged solution for branded content marketing. As such, it’s more focused on managing your visual materials than on editing them. With Relay, you collect and divide images into projects. Every project can contain multiple photos, fonts, colors, text snippets, and even SEO keywords. Those are your branding assets. This is somewhat similar to the “Your brand” option in Canva. If you modify one of the shared assets, Relay will update them automatically in all images and projects. For example, if you decide to change your brand color, you don’t have to do it manually everywhere. On the other hand, if you’re not particularly good at color matching, you can use Relay Themes. They are preset or “bundles” of design elements that you can rely on instead of tweaking every detail.
- Polarr- Polarr is an online photo editor so powerful that you could consider it a Photoshop alternative. Although its interface is unconventional, the features are standard for photo editing software. If you end up feeling confused, Polarr has fantastic tutorials that take you through the app, and there’s a guide that explains various photography-related terms in plain English. Polarr also has iOS and Android apps, as well as desktop apps and a Chrome extension.
- Fotor– Fotor is another simple alternative that comes with 5 major and powerful features named, photo editing, photo collage, graphic design, HDR, and beauty retouching. The photo editor comes with tons of tools like crop/resize, rotate/straighten, 1-tap enhance (HDR), etc. You can also apply various filters and effects such as funky, webcam, cool, lomo, etc. to make beautiful designs.
- Gravit– Gravit is another powerful online designing tool to create social media images, greeting cards, business cards, illustration, logo design, infographics, and more. It also lets you make website designs, smartphone screens, Kindle covers, etc. All you have to do is create a project and choose any template to proceed with your design. Change background, add images, shapes, 100+ unique icons, custom text with more than 700+ fonts to give your design a stunning look.
- Social Media Image Maker- It is another simple application that lets you make ideal images for social media. It doesn’t exhibit all the features of Canva, but in terms of making social media images, it is definitely an alternative. Create astonishing covers and profile pictures for Vimeo, Skype, Google+, YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Gravatar, Facebook, Xing, and more. Select a template and upload an image from your PC to start editing. After that, you can crop the image perfectly for the social media template you’ve selected.
- Social Image Resizer Tool– Actually, it is a simple online tool to resize social media image and not a perfect alternative but still, if you want to create custom images for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, and youTube, then you can use this tool. In addition to that, it also allows you to create favicon and custom size images. The best part of this tool is that along with covers and profile images, it also lets you create images for social media tabs, links, posts, highlight, board thumbnail, channel art, image feed, and much more. Now all you have to do is upload an image from your PC and choose a size from different social media templates. When you’re done with resizing, you can save your designs as a JPG, PNG, GIF, and ICO. Ultimately, it is a tool to create optimized images for social networks by resizing them with respective templates.
If you have tried any other online photo editing tool apart from these, let me know how and why that can be a great alternative to these listed above.