Photoshop software is in a league of its own. Many software has come, but the cult following that Photoshop has cannot be compared to any other software in the market. But the monthly charges are not something everyone is happy to pay, which is a big drawback of Photoshop. Especially with so much software in the market which are as good as Photoshop, way cheap and some are even one-time purchases only. But are there any free online alternatives to Photoshop? For which we do not have to download or pay for? First, let’s see free online substitutes, then we will move on to free options which need to be downloaded.
1. Adobe online Photo Editor (Adobe spark)
Let us start with Adobe itself. It has a free online photo editor, which covers everything when it comes to basic editing. It is great for people who need simple and easy editing for their social media or website. People who are not too much into pro-level editing then give this a try. There are free images as well as paid. You can animate your photos, add texts, make collages, remove or change the background or add animated stickers. You get tons of options for design, layouts, alignment, colors. You can rotate, crop, flip, increase or decrease the brightness, warmth saturation, contrast.
2. Pixlr
Another free and really good online free editing website with similar features to Photoshop is Pixlr. It has more than just editing tools; it has everything, filters, color correction, distortion, adjustments, and layers. Pixlr has a learning curve like Photoshop. But you do not have to worry about that as there are many tutorials on YouTube. It is available on the Web; you can also download it for ease of use. If you have used Photoshop or Gimp before then, you won’t have to struggle a lot. It also means that it is not a beginner-level editor.
3. Canva
Another web-based software with amazing features is Canva. It is the favorite of every non-graphic field person. It has a paid version that provides more features, but a free version is enough for making brochures, social media posts, graphics, animated graphics, etc. It is best for people who don’t have the time to learn editing software like Pixlr. Everything is customizable. It is also fun and really easy to use.
4. Photopea
Photpea is another online photo editor which is free. It has some powerful features like advanced features, advanced layer. It can support PSD (Photoshop), XCF (Gimp) sketch, CDR for CorelDraw files. But you do need some knowledge to work on this software. It is not like Canva which, is extremely beginner-friendly and does not need any prior knowledge at all.
5. Sumopaint
It is another web-based photo editing software with a user-friendly interface. It is similar to Photopea. Its screen is similar to Photopea/Photoshop and has all the basic features like different shapes, text, crop, line, cool brushes, gradient layers, move tool, etc. You can move the layers, merge them, delete them and duplicate them too.
6. Fotor
You can do basic editing to create a design or a collage. It has tools like enhancement, clipper, crop, rotation, color saturation, and different filters like artistic, warm winter, festive, cinematic, classic, etc. You can also add or draw different effects like pixelate, color splash.
The software also provides different elements like text, fonts, colors, background remover, stickers, frames, templates for YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. it is similar to Canva.
Then there are other basic face enhancement tools like blemish fix, wrinkle remover, blush eye shadow, eyeliner.
7. Ipiccy
Ipiccy has three options similar to Fotor Photo Editor, collage, editor, and graphic design. They have different options for basic editing tools on top like the saturation, vibrance, crop, rotate, and flip, resize, auto fix, exposure. Then there are advanced tools like curves, clone tools, erase background, dodge, burn, levels, liquify. Adjustments have features like equalizing the image, local, contrast, etc.
The largest size of the canvas is 4000*4000. You can drag or upload your image. It has layer settings with options like duplicate, moving the layer back and forth, etc., vector mask, color tint with hue saturation, brightness, contest, and text settings- flip the image horizontally, vertically, bring the text back or to the front.
8. Polarr
It has a bunch of different filters, which makes your image look good without any effort. It has adjustments like color, light, details, distort, curves, vignette, effects, and advanced tools like HSL brushes.
9. GIMP
It is a special mention it is free software but, you will have to download it. It is not available on the web. It is great for people who want advanced editing features, so it’s basically for intermediate users. Although once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy to work through and does not have that steep of a learning curve. It is considered one of the best free raster graphics editors available for free. What’s even more, it’s even compared to Adobe Photoshop also. Check similarities between Gimp and Photoshop article if you want to know. It has features similar to Photoshop so, you can do stuff like digital painting, photo manipulation, and other than simple editing stuff.
There are some other good software also like Ribbet, Fotojet, Luna pic which, you can try and see if you like them.
Conclusion
These are some of the best editing software you can find online for free. There is a lot of free software available for free but what makes these worth mentioning is that they provide better features for their free versions too.