18 Best Online Photo Editors You Can Use for Free

Looking to improve your photographs but unsure which online photo editor to use? We’ve created this handy guide to help you decide.

Regardless of your photography skills, a good photo can always be improved or retouched to make it great. That’s why photo editing apps exist—they allow you to get quality results without breaking the bank.

Your success as a photographer hinges on great quality photographs, an eye-catching portfolio to showcase your work, and the right equipment to shoot with—and this can add up. When all is said and done, a tight budget might make it tough to spend more on paid photo editors.

Rather than focus on well-known, higher-priced editors, we’re going to point you toward the best Photoshop alternatives for online photo editors–but with a twist. Each editor we’ll be exploring today are free, or come with free tiers! 

Multi-Platform Photo Editors

GIMP

When it comes to free photo editors, GIMP is king. Short for GNU Image Manipulation Program, GIMP is the closest you can get to Photoshop without paying a dime. It comes equipped with an impressive number of professional-quality functions, a completely configurable interface, allows fine-tuning of images, and contains a fully-integrated toolset that allows the creation of professional-quality original artwork.

If you can do it in Photoshop, you can almost certainly do it in GIMP. If you want even more options, you can also use Photoshop plugins, which provide you with unmatched flexibility compared to any other free photo editor. GIMP is also open-source, which means that if you have the coding know-how, you’ll be able to add desired filters and features.

If you are experienced in image editing software you should get the hang of GIMP relatively quickly, but those not well-versed in image editing software may find the interface cluttered or non-intuitive. A fair compromise for the sheer editing power you get at no cost!

• Notes: GIMP is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems, making it accessible for pretty much anyone. 
• Best for: Professionals on a tight budget
• Cost: Free forever

Photoscape X

For a free program, Photoscape is actually quite impressive—it’s fantastic for editing and managing your personal photo archive. It contains an image viewer, batch processing, a screen-capture tool, and a great selection of filters and effects to take your photographs to the next level.

Even new users will be able to produce exceptional, professional-looking shots in moments. Thanks to handy little functions to make your photographs look like analog shots, a decent cut-out feature, and image transformation capability; it also gives access to over 240 figures, frames, borders, and more than 1000 patterns to use in your creations. 

The robust toolkit PhotoScape offers includes features such as cutting, color adjustment, resizing, GIF animation, and printing.The batch editor feature allows users to convert, rename, or resize multiple photos with a single mouse click; the software can also convert RAW images to JPEG images with ease.

• Notes: PhotoScape X is only available for Windows and Mac systems, and is not compatible with Linux.
• Best for: Batch processing and experimentation projects.
• Cost: Free

Canva

Canva is one of the most popular graphic design tools on the market. The tool is very easy to use, convenient, and intuitive. This photo editing software acts as an all-in-one platform for everything graphic design. 

As a graphic design software, it lets you create brochures, posters, social media graphics, calendars, videos, presentations, logos, watermarks, labels, menus, resumes, letterheads, wallpaper, t-shirt designs, and more. This free online image editor can be used by anyone, with or without any experience in graphic design, which makes it an absolute no-experience photo editor. The vast amount of templates means you can create something in a matter of seconds. 

While the free subscription already contains a lot of great features, you will need to get the Premium subscription to unlock specific features, templates, and tools. With the paid subscription, you will also be able to access millions of stock photos, videos, and design elements in their library.

Another great thing about Canva is being able to use its design tool on the go, as long as you’re connected to the internet. You can download their app on your Apple, Mac, Android, iOS, or desktop. 

• Notes: Canva offers a range of free resources, including tutorials, design tips, and inspiration, to help you improve your design skills.
• Best for: Anyone with or without graphic design experience.
• Cost: Canva offers a free plan, as well as several paid plans that are more affordable than traditional graphic design software.

darktable

An open-source photography application, darktable brands itself as a virtual light table and darkroom for photographers. As a post-processing program, it’s a free alternative to popular tools like Lightroom. The interface is quite similar to Lightroom, and it allows you to manage RAW files and conduct general post-processing.

darktable allows you to export your images, which covers formats like JPG, PNG, PDF, and more. It also offers over 61 image operation modules that support powerful blending operators. If you don’t want to deal with paid subscriptions, then darktable is a great alternative.

Patience is key with darktable because it’s not a simple filter editing tool. You’ll need to be familiar with raw development in a non-destructive manner. However, it does include a tethering module, allowing you to connect your camera directly to the program and push your productivity up a notch. 

• Notes: Darktable has a complex user interface and a large number of modules, making it difficult for beginners to learn.
• Best for: Photographers working with RAW files.
• Cost: Free and open-source

Polarr

Polarr is a multi-platform photo editing software available for iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. Whether you’re looking to access it on the web via your Chromebook or your Apple device, Polarr is an advanced photo editor at the tip of your fingers. 

The tool offers more than just filters and effects: it allows you to create professional retouches and edits. Polarr is great for both novices and professionals to make minor retouches, as well as fine adjustments and lens distortion on your images. One of the best things about Polarr is the ability to customize your interface with all the tools you need. You can also customize your own style with colors and overlays! 

The best part? With their mobile apps, you can even generate QR and shortcodes to share your images and styles with others, making it a more collaborative platform.

• Notes: May not be suitable for those who need advanced photo editing capabilities, due to limited customization options for filters and overlays.
• Best for: Making quick, easy customized edits.
• Cost: Free

Online Photo Editors

Pixlr

Pixlr is available via your browser and both the iPhone and Android platforms. This photo editor provides a number of simple one-click functions and a relatively robust toolset. 

Perhaps the best feature of this app is just how easy it is to use: it contains tutorials to guide you through the more complicated features and can be mastered very quickly once you get the hang of things. If you are familiar with photo editing apps, then this is a fantastic choice for you.

In addition to this great little program, the company also provides Vectr (a free vector graphics editor), some free graphics that you can use in your creatives, and a nice selection of free stock images should the need arise.

A tiny little caveat: While this app is free to use, the best features are locked behind a paywall. You’ll need to go Pro if you intend to take advantage of the more advanced functionality. Even so, it remains one of the most popular iPhone photo editors in the world.

• Notes: Pixlr doesn’t offer cloud storage for edited photos, which can be inconvenient for users who need to access their files from multiple devices. Also, Pixlr has advertisements in its interface, which can be distracting for some users.
• Best for: Beginners working on quick and simple image-processing projects
• Cost: Free

Instasize Photo Editor + Video

Available on both iOS and Android, Instasize is built for mobile editing. Its sleek design is user-friendly and doesn’t cut corners on features and tools. Cropping and resizing is the app’s bread and butter, but when it comes to image editing, the app lets you get into the nitty-gritty: manipulating exposure and brightness, tint and warmth, shadows and highlights, contrast, sharpness, and saturation. Not everyone has the time for that, so Instasize also has over 130 professional-grade, photographer-inspired filters for you to choose from. You’re bound to find a filter that fits the aesthetic you’re looking for.

Other useful features include robust beauty tools, unique borders, a collage creator, and a text editor. You can make simple edits, create collages, or go wild with your imagination. With Instasize, anyone at any skill level can add a personal and professional touch to the photos they post online. The only limit is your creativity!

• Best for: Mobile editing and influencers.
• Cost: Free editing tools. InstaSize offers competitive pricing, starting at $4.99 per month, for access to the entire platform.

Design Wizard

Design just got easy! You can create impressive videos and image designs in minutes with Design Wizard’s straightforward software.

The free features allow you to magically resize your designs. You can also upload your fonts, photos, and logos and create custom color palettes within Design Wizard. The library holds over 1 million premium images, thousands of high-quality videos, illustrations and graphics, and more. Every video and image has also been licensed for commercial use.

While there is plenty of value in the Free plan, you can also go Pro or Business. The Pro plan gives you 60 image design downloads per month, image uploads, font uploads, free previews, and 1GB of storage. On the Business plan, you get unlimited standard video downloads, 1 premium video per month, and unlimited image design downloads. video uploads, add text and images to videos, and 10GB storage.

• Notes: Design Wizard offers a perpetual license, allowing users to use their designs without ongoing subscription fees.
• Best for: Social media marketers and business owners.
• Cost: Comes with a free plan, with paid options.

Fotor

Try the free photo editor Fotor–an excellent tool with an extremely easy-to-understand UI that makes it simple to use. Considering how choppy some browser-based programs can be, Fotor’s performance is fantastic and won’t hog system resources—which may waste precious time.

Fotor provides a wonderful set of Smart Filters and effects, as well as an engaging photo collage tool, and can handle RAW files without much issue. Fotor also allows some limited design functionality in the form of business cards, social media images, posters, banners, documents, collages, and invitations, which should be useful to bloggers and digital marketers.

While Fotor lacks any actual art features such as a paintbrush, and is not suitable for high-end effects like some other apps in this list, it does what it does very well and is good for general photo editing for those who don’t need advanced functions.

• Notes: Fotor allows users to bulk-import photos and edit them collectively, making it a great option for those who need to edit multiple photos at once.
• Best for: Hobbyists and beginners, social media influencers, and digital marketers.
• Cost: Fotor offers a free version with limited features and pop-up ads.

Befunky

Befunky is simple, intuitive, and one of the best options for performance on this list. It features awesome elements to boost your image quality, as well as a nice and simple collage feature. Like Fotor above, Befunky also contains many design elements that allow you to create lovely postcards, brochures, posters, slides for Powerpoint presentations, and invitations with only a few simple steps.

If your goal is social networking posts, printable assets, or a presentation for a client, then Befunky is a good option for you. While not as wide-ranging as other options on this list, you’d be hard-pressed to find a faster and more efficient option for cranking out simple creatives in a reasonable time frame.

• Notes: BeFunky is cloud-based, which allows users to access their files from anywhere, making it a great option for those who work on multiple devices.
• Best for: Bloggers and people looking to create social media assets.
• Cost: BeFunky offers a free version with limited features, allowing users to try out the software before committing to a paid plan.

Google Photos

Google Photos is extremely simple and intuitive and allows you to edit your photographs with very little fuss. You can easily browse your photo library and organize your work right within Google Suite. Features are limited for actual photo editing, but the program does provide the key functions you would expect (crop, redeye, auto contrast, color correction, etc.).

With Google Photos you’d be able to make animations, photo booth-style photo arrangements, holiday-themed effects, interactive stories, and apply frames and filters to your photos. Google Photos offers unlimited cloud storage for photos up to 16 megapixels and videos up to 1080p resolution–which may come in handy for those big projects! 

Access Google Photos via your Google account literally anywhere on the internet. With one-click sharing options for Google+, Blogger, and YouTube, and integrated sharing with Facebook, Flickr, and other social networks, you’ve got a lot of flexibility at your fingertips.

• Notes: Concerns over data privacy: Some users may be concerned about Google’s data collection and use of their photos, as well as the potential for government access to their photo libraries.
• Best for: Hobbyists.
• Cost: Free with a Google account

Photoshop Express

An excellent browser-based online photo editor, Photoshop Express is well-designed, and comes with all the accessible features you would expect from image editing software, including powerful masking and healing tools. 

The biggest bonus? It’s built especially for mobile use and quick sharing, making it easy to create masterpieces on the fly and post them onto your favorite social media sites or messaging apps. 

Another bonus: it supports multiple file types, including RAW, and you can also add images from Google Photos directly into the Photoshop Express to start editing.

• Notes: Due to the trade-off for mobile use, Photoshop Express is not as powerful as the full version of Photoshop.
• Best for: On-the-fly editing via your mobile device (including Chromebooks.)
• Cost: Free, with in-app purchases or subscription options which make it an attractive choice for those who don’t need the advanced features behind the paywall.

iPiccy

Boasting one of the easiest-to-use interfaces of any editor on this list, iPiccy is a great choice for anyone looking for a free photo editor without learning a complicated interface. 

With many one-click tools and a fantastic zoom feature, you’ll be able to create compelling photographs with a minimal time investment. You’ll also have access to advanced features such as with curve adjustments, clone tools, background erasers, and other options. 

While iPiccy doesn’t work equally well across all browsers (according to its FAQs page, the photo editor prefers the latest version of Google Chrome), the ability to upload multiple files simultaneously and the WYSIWYG interface will keep your productivity high.

• Notes: You will require Flash to use iPiccy in-browser.
• Best for: Novices and intermediates looking for robust features.
• Cost: Free, with ads at the bottom of the in-browser photo editor

Ribbet

Even the most unskilled novice can master Ribbet quickly, thanks to the fantastic user interface. Like other options on this list, it contains a collage feature as well as a variety of different tools allowing you to add over 70 different fonts, create stickers, and so much more.

Featuring handy online sharing options as well as free cloud storage to help save and sort your photographs for easy use, you really can’t go wrong with Ribbet. It’s a solid package that is pleasant to use and will likely only get better as time passes.

One thing that is important to note: using Ribbet’s more advanced features is going to require an upgrade to the Premium version (at an affordable $3.33/month, as of Fall 2024). Despite this, you still have access to most program features with the free option. Available for both Windows and Mac users, as well as a Ribbet Fly that operates right in your browser, you can take it anywhere you go.

• Best for: Casual and professional users.
• Cost: Free, with option for premium upgrade

Photopea

Photopea is a free online photo editor that runs without any plugins. Whether you’re looking to make simple illustrations, create a sketch, or resize images, this online photo editing tool allows you to edit images, add filters, apply different effects, crop, and process photographs easily. Photopea also works well with editing PSD, AI, and other Adobe Creative Cloud files, making it easy for Adobe Creative Cloud users to integrate this app into their editing toolkit. 

If you’re looking for a tool to do basic graphics and images for vector and raster graphics or to design social media banners, Photopea would be a great choice. It’s comparable to Adobe Photoshop Express; however, for enthusiasts that are seeking something more advanced for complex projects, you may need more professional image software.

• Notes: Photopea can be accessed offline through an app install, allowing users to work on their projects even without an internet connection.
• Best for: Casual users for small editing and design projects.
• Cost: Free

FotoFlexer

Part of Inspire Media, FotoFlexer is a web-based picture editor featuring lots of visual photo effects that can be layered, which makes it easy for you to edit images. Registration isn’t needed and you won’t need to sign up for an account. There is no installation or download required to get this photo tool working–just click “Photo Editor” in the top right corner, drag-and-drop the image from your computer into the workspace, and you’re good to go!

While the editor is simple and does the job, the application might be a bit hard for beginners without any experience working with an image editor. The editing tools are not as powerful as some of the other options, but they are reportedly hard at work expanding the tool set. Unlike other photo editing tools, FotoFlexer doesn’t have a lot of guidance and hand-holding tutorials for assistance.

• Notes: While the interface is beginner-friendly, the browser-based program may freeze or lag when you’re applying filters or effects if you don’t have a great internet connection.
• Best for: Quick image edits using visual effects and overlays.
• Cost: Free, with no subscription fees

LunaPic

LunaPic is a free, secure open-source program that allows users to upload, edit, and share their images. The photo editor lets you edit, crop, apply effects and filters, and other artistic effects to edit your images, create slideshows and collages, convert videos to GIFs, and make simple animations.

As a free photo editing tool, LunaPic doesn’t require any sign-ups or installation. The website also provides an extensive help section to help solve any technical issues or design problems you might encounter with their tool. And with the newer “Smart AI Tools”, editing photos with this program becomes a breeze. 

While LunaPic is packed with animations and effects, the app is limited in terms of canvas size. The image size can only be a maximum of 3,000 x 3,000 pixels, which may be limiting for those working with larger images.

• Notes: LunaPic is a browser-based program, which can be inconvenient because a secure internet connection is needed during the entire process.
• Best for: Creating animation and adding effects.
• Cost: Free forever

iPhone Photo Editor

Photo Editor by Aviary

This free iPhone photo editor is widely lauded for its variety of photo editing tools and effects, clean interface, and wealth of sharing options that make posting your shots online a breeze. Photo Editor by Aviary contains more correction and enhancement tools than nearly any other mobile/desktop-based competitor on the market.

 Similar to Instagram, creative filters, cute stickers, and catchy fonts are available to add a touch of sparkle to lackluster photos.

• Notes: Photo Editor is only available on iOS, so you’ll have to look elsewhere if you want something on your Microsoft/Linux desktop, or Android phone.
• Best for: Mobile photographers using iPhones.
• Cost: Free with in-app purchases.

Which Photo Editor is Right For You?

There is a multitude of options available to anyone with a camera, and you’re going to want to play with a few of them before you settle on the best photo editing app for your purposes. Remember to look at a tool that can easily import pictures from your camera of choice, whether you have high-end gear or utilize your mobile phone’s built-in camera. From photographer power users aiming to batch-process a thousand photos you’ve had on the backlog for a year, or a fine art photographer trying to make the most of every detail in your work, there’s a tool on this list that will do exactly what you need.

More resources for photographers:
How to Make and Sell Your Own Lightroom Presets
How To Make More Money With Your Editorial Photography
How to Price Stock Photography