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What Is The Best Free Online Photo Editor?

With how easy it is to take photos with our smartphones, it’s become increasingly necessary to have access to a high-quality photo editor to adjust, fix, or even remove certain content. But, most of the common photo editors, like Adobe Photoshop demand a monthly subscription in order to regularly use. 

Fortunately, a lot of alternative photo editors exist that you can use entirely for free. Free image editors will allow you to edit photos, digital images, and even screenshots from your computer. These photo editors are powerful, cheaper alternatives to photoshop that can even sometimes be accessed entirely online – no additional downloads required. 

This article will outline some free online image editors that you can use in your PDF documents. See our JPG to PDF converter tool.

Free Photo Editing Apps You Probably Already Have

Apple Photos

Apple users, look for the Photos app on your laptop, iPad or iPhone. Not only is this app where you go to find your stored photos and videos, but it’s also a built-in editor. You can apply built-in filters, crop the image, adjust the color and brightness, plus apply a variety of Photoshop-like features to sharpen your photos. 

Apple Photos app edits images on your iPhone or tablet.

Microsoft Photos

Photos by Microsoft may come installed on your Windows computer, and it’s compatible with Windows 8, 10 and 11. It will let you crop, adjust, filter, markup retouch and alter the background of photos. And, because it is installed on your device, it syncs with your cloud storage (OneDrive). 

Free Online Programs Like Photoshop

If you’re looking for free online image editor solutions that don’t require you to download and install a program, software, or app, here are 5 sites that have free options for online photo editing. 

Canva

Canva's web-based photo editor offers limited free options for photo editing.

Canva allows you to upload images and immediately start editing your images for free. The Canva editor has a free plan that offers limited, but free, photo editing options. 

Pros:

  • Image templates
  • Drag-and-drop customizability tools
  • Powerful AI-powered design tools
  • Collaborative editing with other users 

Cons:

  • Advanced features locked behind pay wall — Canva Pro is $14.99/mo or $120/yr
  • Customer support only available to pro users

Canva Pro has millions of photos, templates, and graphics to use when producing images. It also has cheaper business subscriptions that will give you multiple licenses to be used by several users. You will also have access to 1TB of cloud storage. 

Adobe Express

Adobe Express offers a free online photo editor with simple features.

Adobe, who makes Photoshop, also has a free online photo editor that’s accessible entirely through your web browser. This editor has many simple features, such as removing backgrounds, adding filters, and cropping photos. 

Pros: 

  • Familiar for users familiar with Adobe products
  • Some AI tools
  • Can also edit graphics, videos, animations, and documents

Cons: 

  • Limited access to most tools
  • Adobe pushes you toward paying for one of their programs

Adobe Express is a great, simple option, with the clear upgrade being the monthly subscription for Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop will grant you far more features, such as layers, drawing tools, and more. 

PhotoEditor.com

Photo Editor dot com is one of the simplest photo editors with a lot of tools for free.

Likely the most straightforward photo editor that we’ll suggest, Photo Editor is a no-nonsense online photo editor that provides you access to a lot of tools entirely in your web browser. With this photo editor, you simply upload or search for your photo and get started editing. 

Pros:

  • Immediate access to a lot of tools
  • Free, no pushes toward a paid premium version
  • Can search for an image to edit by URL — don’t have to upload the photo

Cons:

  • Simplistic UI
  • Functionality comparable to Microsoft Paint

Fotor

Fotor is also a free online photo editor and offers AI tools as well.

Fotor is a free online image editor that has free effects, editing tools, and even AI tools. Fotor’s free editor is fairly simple to use by dragging and dropping your image into the tool. Note that while an account is not needed to use the editor, it is required if you want to store edited images online. 

Pros:

  • Intuitive, easy to use
  • Lots of AI tools
  • Free premium trial to try out

Cons:

  • Free version has ads
  • Mostly meant for editing images of people
  • Watermarked images on download

Fotor Pro comes with more templates, editing tools, AI tools, and removes watermarks on downloads. 

Sumopaint

Sumopaint's free online photo editor that allows you to draw and make shapes on images.

Sumopaint can be thought of as an online, free photoshop alternative. It has many features beyond editing photos, such as drawing and making shapes in an image. Sumopaint doesn’t require an account to use and does have a premium version, but the free version is still very powerful. 

Pros: 

  • Painting, drawing, and shape creation features
  • AI tools for generating images
  • Layers and other capabilities familiar to photoshop users
  • Premium version is only $4/mo

Cons: 

  • Limited options for masking 
  • Other features may be locked behind pro paywall
  • Limited free AI options — just a text-to-image generator

Sumo Pro will grant users all Pro editing features and 30 daily AI credits. You can try out Sumo Pro with a 7-day free trial, which can be canceled at any time.