Years ago, and this is showing my age, if you wanted to use an image editing program like Photoshop, you had to pay $400-$500 or more. Yes, even more. This was out of reach for a lot of people. And if you could afford it, there was still a learning curve you had to get through. 
Today, you can get on a monthly plan for less than $10/month and get Adobe Photoshop, along with a few other Adobe apps. Not too bad. But what if you didn’t want to pay anything? We all like FREE. Well, I’ve compiled a list of free Photoshop alternatives, many even resembling Photoshop (not sure how they can do that). I even added a few paid apps, just for comparison.
FREE
Pixler-X / Pixlr-E
https://pixlr.com/
This is my favorite, easy to use, and free online tool.
Two versions:
– Pixlr-X is a very simple to use Photo Image tool
– Pixlr-E has a few more enhancements, but it’s the one I prefer
GIMP
https://www.gimp.org/
Open Source Image Editor and Design tool
GIMP has been around for years and it is a great tool
Krita
https://krita.org/en/
Open source painting program
Not a photo editing tool, but it is great nonetheless as a paint program
Paint 3D
Comes with Windows and it’s FREE
Basic editing tools
Adobe Photoshop Editor
Check Microsoft store for this Windows app
Also available on mobile phones
Great tool for simple editing
PAID
Affinity Photo
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/
Mac and Windows $24.99; iPad $9.99
Professional Photo Editing – top notch
PicMonkey
https://www.picmonkey.com/
$7.99 – $12.99/month
Photo editing and design
Pixelmator Pro / Pixelmator Photo
Mac and iOS (iPad) $39.99
https://www.pixelmator.com/
A bit difficult to learn
THE PACKAGE
I wanted to mention one other program that is more than just photo editing. Besides photo editing, you can create music, draw images, edit videos, and build 3D models.
SumoPro $4.00/month (Also SumoPaint for free)
https://sumo.app/
SumoPaint for FREE
https://www.sumopaint.com/
The bottom line, for online internet marketers, is that you just want to do a few simple tasks like cropping a photo, removing the background, adding text. These are a few quick and easy software platforms that do just that.
QUICK AND EASY
Remove Background: remove.bg
Crop and Add Text: Paint 3D built-in Windows Adobe Photoshop Editor on Microsoft store for Windows
Well, that’s it for today. If you’re interested in learning more about photo manipulation and editing and image sources, or just want to find the software tools I use, check out my blog.
Rob Ingalls
P.S. While you are waiting for the next post, check out how I went from a frustrated online marketer to one with a clear plan, along with all the tools necessary, for a successful online career. An eye-opening experience, all because of this one thing.
This is a guest post from Rob Ingalls, if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.
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Thanks for sharing, Ron and John. I’m really graphically challenged and I find any editing program has a pretty decent learning curve. But I know many others, like my kids, seem to be able to pick up the software pretty quickly. This is a great list and I hadn’t heard of some of these before. I’m going to check them out.
This was a nice article from Ron, but it would have been even nicer if there had been a little more about each tool.
I used Photoshop in the past – and liked it, but I’ve been using Gimp on Linux for around 20 years (in parallel with Photoshop for the first few years).