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Tuesday 19th January 2021 at 09:53 By Olivia |
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One of the most common questions I get asked is about how to edit images, for example creating graphics, overlaying text and removing backgrounds from images. So I put this article together to gather the four most affordable or free image editing softwares that we recommend
Price: Free for a standard account
Ease of use: Easy (suitable for beginners)
You may not have heard of Canva because it's a relatively new contender in the game, but it's a fab little web based tool. You can use Canva's drag and drop feature to create what would seem a professionally designed graphic. You can also design your own from scratch or you can choose from hundreds of templates. They range from Instagram posts and YouTube channel headers to ebooks and presentations, so you'll find templates for everything you'd need on there. Canva is free to use but does offer a subscription service for their premium features starting from £10.99 per month.
There is basic photo editing tools on there too using filters, tint, brightness, and more so it's a great all rounder.
Canva is super easy to use and it's intuitive too, so creating beautiful and professional looking graphics with matching branding to post on your social channels, has never been easier!
YouTube instructional videos on how to use Canva
Please note these videos aren't produced by us; but we have handpicked them for you!
Price: Free
Ease of use: Medium (fairly easy to use, but may frighten some beginners)
GIMP is a free photo editing software used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialised tasks. Thus making it a little more tricky to navigate than some of the others mentioned in this article.
It's very similar to photoshop but one of the downsides to it in comparison to Photoshop, is that it isn't as powerful. You can find plenty of comparisons between the two online but the biggest advantage of using GIMP over photoshop is the fact that it is completely free. It's still a very powerful image editor/manipulator and we recommend giving it a try if you're feeling tech savvy!
YouTube instructional videos on how to use Gimp
Please note these videos aren't produced by us; but we have handpicked them for you!
Price: From £9.98 / $9.99 per month
Ease of use: Medium (easier than Adobe Photoshop for most people)
Find out how to use Lightroom here
A lot of people get confused between Photoshop and Lightroom, as they are both photo editing applications made by Adobe, so which would you start with? It is recomended that if you're a complete beginner to photo editing softwares then Lightroom is the one to go for, as it is easier to learn how to use it than Photoshop. Lightroom will also help you in establishing a solid photography workflow process.
You also have the advantage of working through a bulk of photos at the same time without having to open and search for files. As a file management tool, Lightroom allows the ability to create folders and sub-folders in your hard drive and can mass-rename files using templates, which is a super handy tool to have. You can also get LightRoom on your mobile and edit photos straight from your phone, if you take your website photography on your smart phone. Lightroom starts from £9.98 per month so again it is a steal.
YouTube instructional videos on how to use Adobe Lightroom
Please note these videos aren't produced by us; but we have handpicked them for you!
Price: From £19.97 / $29.99 per month
Ease of use: Tricky if you're not fairly computer literate; but it is the most comprehensive out of all the ones reviewed
I'm sure you've heard of photoshop before, it's a classic and it's a great tool to use! You can sharpen images, remove the backgrounds, create graphics and change the colour presets on them too. Photoshop has a massive amount of functions and capabilities. It can be a little tricky to learn as it is a monster software, but you can find the basics on YouTube and become a photoshop pro before you know it.
Photoshop is like an amalgamation of Canva and Lightroom. It has the photo editing capabilities of Lightroom and more, with the graphic creating abilities of Canva.
At only (approx) £19.97 per month (correct at the time of writing- Dec 2020) it's a worthwhile investment!
YouTube instructional videos on how to use Adobe Photoshop
Please note these videos aren't produced by us; but we have handpicked them for you!
We can all use a bit of help with making things easier and one of the most commonly asked questions I get is how to create graphics and edit images, including removing the backgrounds of them, so I hope you found this article of use.
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