Are you the kind of creative social media genius who always like to post those unique and out-of-this-world images? Or, are you among the few who always click pictures and tweak them before showing them off on your social media pages?
Well, you definitely need to a genius photo editor that will allow you to unleash your creativity, and that is what we are here to give you.
The invention of Adobe Photoshop in 1990 revolutionised the photo editing arena. This is due to the introduction of numerous useful tools such as the magic wand tool. It is still the best photo editing software available in the market right now; however, the problem is it’s very expensive.
But:
Most of the time, you do not need all the bells and whistles in Adobe Photoshop. You just need a tool to quickly spin up a graphic for your blog.
Thanks to some creative developers who came up with snappy tools to cut the graphic design chaos. There are now tens of cheap graphics editing software available online. Canva is one among the popular ones and if you are looking for Canva alternative, the list below should help.
Here is a list of the best affordable and easy to use image-editing tools you can use to unleash your photo editing creativity.
1. Stencil – Our Pick
Stencil is a cloud-based photo editing tool that allows creators to tweak and share their content faster and more professionally. However, unlike the other platforms mentioned in this article, stencil is more inclined towards digital marketing than normal graphic design creation.
Consequently, you are unlikely to experience the templates and photos selection flexibility that is in other platforms of its class, but you will get a chance to enjoy hyper-focused tools for creating social media ads and posts.
Stencil is an extremely easy-to-use and fun graphics editing tool that is designed for both beginners who have never had a photo-editing class before, and the tech-savvy who are looking to experience a professional editing environment.
Some of its premium features include; ability to create unlimited images per month, access to over 1.3 million high quality photos, access to 2200+ Google fonts and over 1 million graphics and icons, ability to upload fonts and add logos and watermarks, premium support, 650+incredible templates, and 100 Instagram SMS per month among others.
This tool offers 3 plans; a Free plan for hobbyists which allows you to create 10 images per month; a Pro plan which costs $9 a month, and the Unlimited plan which costs $12 per month.
Visit Stencil
Update: Stencil recently announced their WordPress plugin. Adding beautiful images to your blogs is now easier than ever. You can download the plugin from your WordPress dashboard, just search for stencil or visit here.
2. Canva
This platform comes with a ton of features among the most important ones being simple drag-and-drop editing tool, access to a collection of 1 million+ high definition photographs, and fonts.
With Canva, you are guaranteed to get the rare chance of turning ideas into stunning graphic designs with minimal effort and maximum precision. Whether its graphics for a presentation, a social media post, a digital marketing campaign, or graphics for your blog content, Canva is the tool to make it happen.
Some of its features include; image cropper, design grids, free icons, photo frames, Web wireframe, photo Blur, photo vignette, 8,000 templates, image Transparency tool, Speech bubble maker and photo straightener among others.
Canva offers a free option which allows you to access over 8,000 templates, 1GB storage for photos, ability to upload your own images and millions of photos. However, if you want to enjoy the full experience of Canva, you may want to purchase some of their paid plans which start at $12.95 per month.
3. Crello – Our Pick
Crello is an easy to use graphic design tool made by Depositphotos. It allows you to select templates from its vast array of templates that you can consequently customize into your liking through changing the backgrounds, text styles, lines, stickers, icons, borders and many more.
The templates are categorized explicitly into different sizes to allow you to choose the best template depending on whether you are creating for Facebook, other social media accounts or other uses.
Amazingly, it also allows you to design animations through the Crello animator which offers easy to customize animated templates, animated emojis, icons, illustrations, and ability to combine photos with video backgrounds.
However, unlike Canva, this graphic design tool is better suited for social media posts and marketing campaigns depending on the templates it provides. Be sure you will be able to make your professional design within just minutes of tweaking.
Crello is a free tool which means you get the chance to access all features without paying a dime. You only pay if you want to use a paid template or image which costs $0.99.
4. Snappa
Snappa is another cloud-based graphics editor for numerous purposes such as digital marketing, personal graphics, social media, and blogs. It is an editor designed with all users in mind hence includes very easy to use editing tools.
Additionally, it gives the user an option to share designs directly to their social media accounts and even schedule posts for a later time.
Some of its benefits include speedy design creation for all users, easy to use hence requires no training, premium assistance in the form of team helper since it supports work collaboration which is also a cheaper option.
Just like the above tools, it is packed with an array of templates, fonts, visual assets, and other incredible features.
It offers 3 types of plans which include; a free starter package that gives access to 600,000+ HD photos and graphics, 5,000+ templates, 5 downloads per month and link to 2 social accounts. The paid options are Pro option which costs $10 per month but billed annually, and the Team option which costs $20 per month but billed annually.
5. RelayThat – Our Pick
As the name suggests, RelayThat is a graphics editing tool that allows you to pass on your ideas and creatives talent to your audience in a quick and user-friendly fashion. It is an ideal tool for making social media posts, digital marketing ads, banners and all other designs that require to be made in the shortest time possible.
This tool gives you access to 350,000+ photos, backgrounds, and icons that are copyright free; ability to easily tweak your graphics through editing colors, adding logos, and images; and ability to resize your creatives for different social media networks such as Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, and others. The interface is also drag-and-drop enabled to allow easy editing and aligning.
Visit RelayThat
6. DesignBold
DesignBold is a freemium online design tool that is designed to allow everyone to create an eye-catching and professional graphics content for both print and digital within minutes.
It is a very user-friendly, intuitive, and robust platform requiring no complicated training for starters who don’t have any prior graphic design experience. It comes loaded with tens of thousands of editable templates that fit any design work; whether social media posts, party invitations, charts of infographics.
Its drag and drop features make customizing of the templates super easy and fast. Additionally, it allows the creation of templates from scratch.
You also get access to more than 300,000 free stock photos and other premium photos that cost only $0.80 compared to other platforms that mostly charge $1.00. About storage, no worries as it is all unlimited! You can save as many photos as you wish.
It offers a free option that gives you access to 2GB storage, 10,000+ free layouts, 40+ million photos at less than $1 each and a team functionality among others. Its paid option costs $9.99 a month.
7. Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark is a new web app from the Adobe team whose intention is to serve the adobe nonprofessional customers in creating gorgeous single-page website graphics easily.
It is best suited for making single page content and comes packed with a tool for creating animated videos and a social media graphics creator.
It is best suited for making landing pages, photo galleries, business newsletters, creative portfolios, travel stories, and product pages and catalogues among many others.
Its design is crafted from Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator hence includes tools and features from both. However, don’t let this scare you; it is very easy to use, and you do not need to be a professional to get things done in Spark.
Thanks to Spark, you will get access to a collection of amazing fonts and font pairings, thousands of professional photos, and a wide variety of themes. Best of all, it is free to use.
Final Words
All of these tools have unique features that set them apart from the others. Therefore, recommending one and claiming it to be the best would be misguiding since selecting the best graphic design tool is an individual choice that depends on many factors such as your level of Graphic designing skills and experience.
Here are our top picks:
I would recommend you to try each of them since they all have a free option and settle for the one you will feel most comfortable using.