Your site is loading slowly, and the culprit is large image files. You’re here because you’re searching for free photo editing tools and apps for bloggers that can easily help you solve this problem.
Visuals are extremely important to creating a dynamic-looking, professional blog.
They can elevate your site by working with your branding and illustrating your points. After all, an image is worth a thousand words.
Finding the right online photo editing tool will help you upgrade your blog visuals and make your site stand out.
Nobody wants to visit a site with images that look amateurish. You know, the ones – with poor lighting, blurriness or no cropping.
You want your blog to look professional, even from the start!
While professional stock photos are the easiest to use, if you’re using your own photos, they need to look amazing.
As I’ll show you in a moment, there are many free online editing platforms available to bloggers and social media influencers.
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Top Free Photo Editing Tools And Apps For Bloggers
All the free photo editing tools and apps I’ve listed offer entry features.
They are an introduction to what each of the photo editing platforms and tools offers. You get a taste of how they work, and you can create so much with them as is.
For many bloggers, the free versions are excellent and will meet your needs.
I’d use these with my photos as well as those that are stock photos. Sometimes tweaks are needed, such as crops. Of course, you have to also pay attention to optimizing images for SEO purposes.
But back to the free tools. Here are the best of the best!
1. BeFunky
From desktop to app, BeFunky is a fantastic photo editor with a whole slew of features that you’re going to love.
For bloggers like myself, it has a super easy save feature that gives you the power to save a file in a lower quality – EASILY and quickly. You also see what size it is.
It has all the key editing features you need to update and modify your photos to work with your needs.
BeFunky also has a Collage maker, as well as a graphic designer feature, which gives you a growing number of options for designs. Not as robust as Canva, but good enough for anybody on a budget.
The premium upgrade for BeFunky, which unleashes a whole slew of additional features, is an affordable monthly rate.
2. Pixlr E
Pixlr is a freemium photo editing tool that has many features for editing your images. It also includes many of the favourite features found in Adobe Photoshop. It feels a bit like Photoshop too, with how its left-hand toolbar.
It has some unique features that make it a go-to for many including dodge and burn the colour, heal, cropping, etc. The standard adjustments to brightness, contrast, and colour are all there too.
What I LOVE about Pixlr is the super-easy way you can optimize your images so that they are saved as small files.
When you’re saving an image, choose JPG, re-size it to your theme’s minimum image size, and move the quality slide to 70%.
You won’t lose too much quality but you’ll save on the size of your image file. This loads your posts MUCH faster than when you use large image files.
NOTE: In 2024 – you have a limit as to how many images you can save (bummer!). You’ll need to upgrade for more. But it’s affordable and does so much more, making it a worthwhile investment if you’re on a budget.
It’s a useful free tool with many cool features that make it so much easier to do more editing.
Try PIXLR-E for free. Premium option with extra features available.
3. PiZap
Another free photo editing tool for images and creating designs is PiZap. The photo editing tool is quite comprehensive. Sliders make it easy to fine-tune what you want to do with the images.
It has some handy features like Meme editing, so you can take a photo and create that meme look with block lettering.
You can also add graphic overlays (e.g. social media icons, items, etc), filters, text and more. It’s a fantastic free tool and it blends much of what Pixlr E has with its separate Pixlr X (graphic design platform).
With PiZap you can also create many more images – from social media to phone wallpaper, and memes using their pre-existing templates.
Try PiZap for free! An upgraded version with more options is available.
4. Fotor
Another one of the best free image editing tools is Fotor.
Like the other tools mentioned above, it does great photo editing. It also allows you to design social media images.
However, the big thing about Fotor is some of the great tools it has for portraits.
If you’ve got a selfie or photo of somebody that needs to be tweaked and edited, this is a great desktop photo editing tool for it.
The free version offers you tools like removing wrinkles, blemish fixes, and teeth whitener. Other features are available with the pro version.
Fotor is a bit of a Canva wannabe. It even has many of the same familiar options on the left-hand side.
Doesn’t it look familiar, Canva users?
Saving images in a resized format isn’t as easy as with Pixlr, which is unfortunate. It’s a feature that bloggers short on time love as it makes them more productive.
Try Fotor for free. A paid version with access to other cool features like removing backgrounds, templates and more is available.
5. Adobe Lightroom (App)
By far the easiest-to-use professional-grade photo editing app for bloggers that they can use on their phones.
This is what makes your Instagram images go from hum-drum to WOW. Especially if you’re using presets that you’ve added to your Lightroom app.
This is a free app.
The upgraded Lightroom version has a few extras that you may want to explore, but the free version may be all you need.
When you add presets (you can purchase them and there are easy-to-follow instructions from sellers on how to add them) you can take an average photo and very QUICKLY upgrade it to a WOW photo.
Grab your phone and download Lightroom today for free.
Other Apps That Work Well
I’ll be adding new sites and apps as I find them here. So bookmark this post!
Colorcinch
One of the new photo editing and cartoonizing apps is Colorcinch.
I had the opportunity to test out the free and upgraded versions and there’s much to like!
Like Pixlr-E, it does a great job of saving files without losing quality. However, you do have to resize separately and then save. I hope they make this a smoother process because it does save time!
What’s cool about Colorcinch (upgrade) is that with the standard photo editor, you can do many cool additional things: add frames, text, overlays, effects and masks.
It also has a fantastic cartoonizer that takes photos and makes them artistic.
The price is extremely affordable for bloggers seeking a platform that offers them quite a bit. But doesn’t break the bank like Adobe. Check it out for free: Colorcinch.
Also, check out the free avatar maker the site offers which helped me create my own:
Creating Beautiful Blog & Social Media Visuals Easily
There you go, five great free photo editing tools for bloggers!
These photo editing platforms are all free to use, and they can quickly upgrade your average phone images from mediocre to beautiful in a matter of minutes.
Taking the time to make tweaks, crop and improve the quality of an image can take your blog from amateur to professional.
Check them out, and tell me which ones YOU love to use!
Make sure you are using photos properly if they aren’t your own. Read up on how to blog legally including tips on crediting photos.
| RELATED: 15 Free Blog Tools For Beginner Bloggers
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Originally published October 19, 2022.
Yes, you are totally correct. Bloggers frequently need to alter their photos before publishing the perfect image on their site. But I prefer Adobe Lightroom, which is quite useful to me.
It’s a good one too!
this article was very informative, i never thought of using canva to do photo editing
It’s not the best solution, but it’s getting better.
I think Pixlr is the best free online photo editor.
For the most part – things are changing with some of the free features. They’re limiting how many you can save in a day. Time to search for a new free one!
Hey MARGARET! Thanks for the nice article I got this post very engaging and got information about the top photo editing tools, great keep it up.
This article was very informative.
I use the Gimp. But for less complex editor I usually use PaintNET.
And I have a XPPen Deco Fun drawing tablet, Using a pen so much more intuitive than using a mouse. I feel like using a mouse to edit is like trying to use a brick to draw instead of a pencil.
I’m already using Canva Pro, but I’m going to look into Pixlr E. Sounds like it might be a good photo one to try.
It’s one of my all-time favourite tools for images that I add to my site. I always optimize them with it.
I love Canva! I create all my visuals from my computer. I have still yet to try an app.