Having great, high-quality pictures is an essential step if you want to stand out online. However, some people might not have the budget to purchase professional photo editing software. Luckily there are free services to help you out! In this article, you will learn which is the best free photo editor.

So get comfortable and let’s go through the six best free photo editors of 2019.

Best photo editing services

Using photo editors will help you turn your pictures from dull, simple images, to eye-catching visuals your users will love. Online photo editors are a great alternative to expensive tools like Adobe Photoshop. So let’s go through our list of the best picks and see which is the best free photo editor out there.

GIMP

Screenshot of Gimp free photo editor 2019

Pros:
Many advanced features
Loads of plugins
No ads

Cons:
Steep learning curve
Cluttered interface
Not cloud-based

GIMP is the champion of free image editors. It is an open source service, packed with loads of powerful features. No wonder that GIMP is the most popular and best free photo editor.

If you are familiar with Photoshop, you will immediately feel at home when using GIMP because their interfaces are very similar. It includes functions such as layers, filters, a wide selection of customizable brushes and other Photoshop-like tools.

Since it is open source, a broad community of users developed a collection of great plugins. You can utilize them to extend photo editing possibilities even further. Any bugs that might appear are always quickly fixed too.

Overall, GIMP is a fantastic editing tool. The lack of a price tag doesn’t reflect on the product’s quality.

Unfortunately, GIMP is not a cloud-based editor, which means you will have to download and install it on your computer. This isn’t a big drawback unless you’re out of computer disk space.

Best features:
Layer Styles
Content-aware rescaling
Color manipulation
GIF creation

Fotor

Screenshot of the Fotor photo editor

Pros:
Convenient one-tap options
Simple photo collage tool
Easy to use

Cons:
Annoying ads

Fotor is an amazing browser-based photo editing tool. It’s simple to use, fast and has plenty of great features to help you make stunning edits.

Besides editing pictures, you can easily make collages and unique designs for different content purposes.

The interface is straightforward and easy to navigate. If you want to make some small changes to your photos, you can play around with basic photo settings like exposure, temperature, tint, and curves.

Fotor also has a great selection of filters, stickers, borders, and various special effects if you want to jazz up your pictures even more. The special effects are grouped in categories, so you will find the one you want in no time.

Fotor is a great solution when you don’t have a lot of technical experience and want a quick fix.

One great feature that Fotor has is combining differently exposed images into one, to create a picture that has the best light and tone coming from separate photos.

Best Features:
Advanced beauty features
Loads of custom designed stickers
Massive selection of backgrounds and textures
Advanced HDR

Pixlr

Pixlr free online photo editor

Pros:
Supports layers
Customizable interface
Powerful functions

Cons:
Steep learning curve
Requires flash
Ads

Pixlr is another powerful, Photoshop-like online image editor. You’ll be surprised to see all the available features it offers. Pixlr is a cloud-based, yet surprisingly fast photo editing service.

The interface is similar to the one Photoshop uses. On your left, you have the navigation bar with functions like crop, lasso tool, paint bucket tool, dodge tool and other tools you’d find in Photoshop.

On the top, you can select functions like layers and filters. These come in very handy when you want to edit colors, add overlays and so on.

The right side of your dashboard is dedicated to the navigator, layer list and edit history. These tables let you see what changes you have made, which layers are visible, and enables you to edit your pictures quickly, with no stress.

Just like GIMP, Pixlr is a very powerful tool. However, it also has a steeper learning curve. It can take a little time to master this program. But if you’re looking for a lot of functionality, Pixlr is the best free photo editor for you.

Best Features:
Layers
Magic Wand
Lasso
Digital Inking
Object transform

Befunky

BeFunky free photo editor

Pros:
Drag-and-drop
No registration needed
You can upload multiple pictures at once
You can edit photos in fullscreen

Cons:
Not completely free to use
The number of features can be confusing

BeFunky prides itself with being a photo editor, that focuses on useful yet fun features. It is widely considered one of the best free photo editors out there.

This photo editor has a slightly steeper learning curve. The sheer amount of functionality can be a little confusing. This can be a downside if you’re looking for an easy to use and fast photo editor.

However, BeFunky is super powerful, which can be rare when it comes to cloud-based services.

The interface is intuitive and comfortable to use. Located on your left, it contains all the features you could ever need. You can crop and resize images, take care of exposure, manipulate the colors.

If you’re retouching a selfie or a portrait, you can utilize many features dedicated to this purpose. Skin editing, artificial makeup, and other functions are available for use.

BeFunky has loads of effects you can use on your pictures. In addition to that, you can add frames, graphics, text, overlays, and textures to your photos.

One big downside to BeFunky is the price tag. Even though the core of BeFunky is free, most of the more advanced features require purchasing a license. So if you are on a budget, this won’t be the best free photo editor for you.

Best Features:
Cartoonizer
Skin editing
Exposure
Frames
Graphics
Textures

Best Photo Editing Apps

Editing pictures on your phone has never been easier. There are plenty of top-notch photo editing apps to help you alter your images.

Best thing is, photo editing apps are easy to use, free and offer loads of great functionality.

Now that we helped you pick out the best free photo editor service, let’s quickly review the best photo editing Apps.

VSCO

Pros:
Loads of free presets
Professional tools
Customizable interface

Cons:
The crop function messes up photo quality
A lot of features are paid

VSCO is the leader among smartphone photo editing apps. It’s easy to use and offers a lot of functionality.

First of all, you can add professional filters to your pictures. While some of the pre-made filters can look a bit messy and amateur, VSCO offers a great variety of amazing presets.

If you want to keep it simple, you can only edit the brightness, contrast, clarity, white balance and other aspects of your image.

You can play around with the settings and create your own “recipes” for photo editing as well. So if you tend to take pictures in very similar lighting, and want to keep a specific flow of your feed – this is a fantastic option.

While the core of VSCO is free, you can also upgrade to VSCO Premium. It costs less than $2/mo and offers a great deal of additional functionality. But if you are on a budget, the free functions offered by VSCO truly makes it the best free photo editor app!

Best features:
Professional Presets
White balance tool
Fade
Grain
Tone
Sharpen

PS Express

Pros:
Easy to use
Powerful
Loads of tools

Cons:
Professional features are paid

The super popular smartphone app version of Adobe Photoshop.

PS Express offers its users a bunch of quality presets and photo editing tools. You can edit exposure, contrast, highlights and shadows, white and black color balance, tint, vibrancy and so on.

Basically, this is a simplified version of something in between Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom.

However, if you want to use the more advanced options, you’ll have to connect to Adobe Cloud. If you don’t have it and don’t want to pay for it, you can use the basic functions offered by the free plan.

Best features:
Loads of presets
White and Black color balance
Tint
Vibrance
Saturation
Exposure
Great selection of fonts

Conclusions

Whether you want to have great pictures for your personal Instagram account or your business website, there are many solid free photo editors to choose from.

If you want to keep it simple and easy – explore some of the cloud-based editing services. This will let you work on your pictures online and won’t require a lot of skills or additional software.

Even if you’re on the go and need to do some quick retouches on your pictures, you can use many mobile apps to do so. All in all, photo editing has never been easier than it is today.

Now when it comes to choosing which is the best free photo editor for you – only you yourself can make the decision. So we suggest you try out the editors mentioned and see which fits your needs the best!

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