Revised April 5, 2023
Revised August 17, 2022
Revised September 24, 2021
Revised November 12, 2020
Revised February 22, 2019
Images add color, visual appeal, and life to online content. Blog posts and articles with images get 94% more views than those without, according to Jeff Bullas. Pictures make your news release more likely to be read and your business more likely to be contacted.
Photos grab our attention. Photos of faces even more so, generating 38% more likes and comments. And pictures really draw us in when they are optimized, modified, and combined with other content.
Your photos don’t have to stand on their own. Use the tools here to retouch images, add layers, apply effects, overlay text, create collages, replace colors, optimize file sizes, crop images, add transparency, rotate, resize, blur, distort, add icons and stickers, cartoonize photos, drop backgrounds, and more.
1) FotoFlexer
Google Review Count: 423
Once the most popular advanced online image editor, FotoFlexer was abruptly shut down in December, 2018.
2) PicMonkey
Google Review Count: 419
A standard photo editor with effects like ombre and mirroring, touch-up tools, and fonts, plus filters, overlays, design and collage tools.
Sample review: “PicMonkey (is an) online photo editing tool that makes it easy for you to create cool images for your blog posts.” — BuzzBlogger
Pricing: $4 or $8 per month
Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, Kathryn Aragon Media, RazorSocial, Siasat, SmallBusinessNewz, TNW News
3) Pixlr
Google Review Count: 371
Work in layers, replace color, transform objects, and more from this browser-based editor. Create new images, draw with SketchBook, or open images from your files, a URL, or an online image library.
Sample review: “Pixlr…is a more advanced tool which is like a lightweight version of Photoshop.” — RazorSocial
Pricing: free or $2 per month/$14 per year
Showcase reviews: Likeable Media, RazorSocial, StoreYa Blog, TNW News
4) TinyPNG
Google Review Count: 330
TinyPNG uses lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of PNG files. By selectively decreasing the number of colors in the image, fewer bytes are required to store the data. The effect is nearly invisible but the resulting files are much smaller, use less bandwidth and load faster.
Sample review: “Need to shrink your images without losing their high-quality? Feel free to use (TinyPNG)…Your SEO will thank you for shrinking your images with these tools.” — StoreYa Blog
Pricing: free or $25 per year
Showcase reviews: StoreYa Blog
5) LunaPic
Google Review Count: 325
An image editor with a variety of editing tools (cropping, transparency, text and drawing tools) plus more than 200 effects and filters.
Sample review: “(LunaPic offers) a huge amount of interesting material, including entire menus of drawing tools, effects, adjustments and animations. Old Movie Effect animation, for example, makes a color photo black and white and adds scratchy moving vertical age lines throughout. Groovy Color gives you looping animations…It’s worth having a look at what LunaPic has to offer.” — StoreYa Blog
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: TNW News
6) GIMP
Google Review Count: 318
GIMP is a cross-platform image editor that provides sophisticated tools for graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, scientists and others. Manipulate photos, create original artwork, or produce icons, graphical design elements, and art for user interface components and mockups.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Likeable Media
7) Compressor.io
Google Review Count: 246
A powerful online tool for reducing the file size of your images and photos by up to 90% while maintaining high image quality.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: StoreYa Blog
8) Sumo Paint
Google Review Count: 191
A simple yet powerful image editing tool that lets you rotate, resize, perform a variety of adjustments (brightness, color, hue), apply filters (3D, blur, distort), and work in image layers.
Sample review: “Sumo Paint opens up to a Photoshop fascimile that provides a clean, non-distracting gray background complete with the most important palettes photo editors need to process their images…Sumo Paint has vast potential to be your image editor of choice in the cloud.” — TNW News
Pricing: free or $4 per month
Showcase reviews: Siasat, TNW News
9) PhotoShop Express
Google Review Count: 189
Perform a variety of image edits and adjustments including crop & rotate, auto-correct, white balance, and color effects.
Sample review: “It should come as no surprise that an iPhone app from Adobe…is jam-packed with excellent photo-editing tools that are (mostly) free to use. But don’t be misled by the name into thinking of Photoshop Express as a mobile version of the main Photoshop …program. It’s not the killer, do-it-all app that Photoshop is on the desktop. It’s more of a selection of very useful photo correction tools. ” — PCMag
Pricing: free or $10 per month
Showcase reviews: PCMag, TNW News
10) Ribbet
Google Review Count: 187
Create original artwork, photo collages, apply shapes and effects (such as vintage photo aging), and design holiday cards from a collection of templates and stickers.
Sample review: “Sophisticated choices are available from cropping to specific photo sizes or services like a Flickr buddy icon, Twitter picture, or desktop or mobile sized versions. That attention to detail spans the app’s special effects, stickers, text, frames, touchup, pro features, and seasonal filters, most of which you can adjust to your liking.” — TNW News
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: TNW News
11) Fotor
Google Review Count: 186
Sample review: “Fotor.com is (a) great option to create one awesome visual using a few images. They let you do shape collages, photo stitching, photo montages, etc..” — Kathryn Aragon Media
Pricing: free, $9 per month or $40 per year
Showcase reviews: Kathryn Aragon Media, TNW News
12) Paint.net
Google Review Count: 180
Originally developed as a free replacement for Microsoft Paint, Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for PCs that run Windows. It features an intuitive user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a variety of useful tools.
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Likeable Media
13) BeFunky
Google Review Count: 179
A photo editor/collage maker/design tool that lets you touch up high-res photos, design from templates, embellish photos, and apply effects like cartoonizer and oil painting.
Sample review: “You don’t need to learn any software. Spend an hour playing with (BeFunky) and you’ll find that it takes just 15 minutes to create a custom image that will pull social media interest to your website.” — SmallBusinessNewz
Pricing: free, $5 per month or $35 per year
Showcase reviews: SmallBusinessNewz, StoreYa Blog, TNW News
14) Pixelz
Google Review Count: 172
Sample review: “(With) Pixelz, instead of taking the time to optimize the images yourself, this platform just wants you to upload the images. The rest is history, as they optimize your product images for e-commerce.” — Kathryn Aragon Media
Pricing: free, $49/$559 per month, enterprise pricing by quote
Showcase reviews: StoreYa Blog
15) PicResize
Google Review Count: 162
Easily crop, resize, and edit your images online for free.
Sample review: “From someone that has had to crop, resize and adjust many images over the years, I’m glad that Picresize has been there to help me every step of the way. With the ability to resize images to all of my marketing modules while keeping the best aspect ratios, crop out any unwanted space and reduce the file size for better image uploading, it’s a go-to for inbound marketers.” — SmartBufg Media
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: SmartBug Media
16) Photo Raster
Google Review Count: 151
An online photo editor including paint tools (like photo retouching), layers, adjustment (color, saturation), filters and masks.
Sample review: “From someone that has had to crop, resize and adjust many images over the years, I’m glad that Picresize has been there to help me every step of the way. With the ability to resize images to all of my marketing modules while keeping the best aspect ratios, crop out any unwanted space and reduce the file size for better image uploading, it’s a go-to for inbound marketers.” — SmartBufg Media
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Likeable Media
17) Social Image Resizer
Google Review Count: 121
A simple image editor to properly resize images for social networks. Just upload an image then choose from a list to automatically resize it for any popular social media use (e.g., Facebook cover photo, Twitter header, Twitter image display, LinkedIn profile photo, etc.).
Sample review: “Unfortunately, designing and resizing images so that they render correctly across different sites can take up a lot of time, and can be pretty costly if you’re relying on a tool like Photoshop. Enter Internet Marketing Ninja’s Image Resizer Tool. It’s a super-simple-to-use tool that allows marketers to quickly crop and resize images to fit most common social media formats. ” — Marketing Insider Group
Pricing: free
Showcase reviews: Marketing Insider Group
More Tools
PicBackMan
Google Review Count: 153
Do you store photos on multiple online sites? If so, this is the utility for you. PicBackMan enables you to automatically upload your photos and videos to multiple online sites and locations including Flickr, Picasa, Smugmug, OneDrive (formerly Skydrive), Dropbox, Box, Photobucket, Facebook, Google Drive, and Amazon. Migrate collections of photos and videos from one account to another, and automatically dedupe files.
Pricing: free; $4/$6 per month; $35/$49 one-time
Instasize
Google Review Count: 136
An iOS-based (iPhone or iPad) photo and video editing app that lets you get creative with premium photo filters, picture borders, collage maker, retouch tools, format photo resizer, and other tools. Features include the ability to create tappable stories, add links and post anywhere; apply vintage overlays to photos and videos; use videos for backgrounds; and add frames to photos.
Pricing: free or $5 per month
Colorcinch (formerly Cartoonize)
Google Review Count: 117
Pricing: free; $4/$6 per month
Compress PNG/JPG from WebsitePlanet
Google Review Count: 111
Compress PNG/JPG is a free online free tool which helps you compress JPG or PNG images. Some tools reduce the size of an image but decrease the quality as well. WebsitePlanet claims their free tool will allow you to maintain visual image quality as is while decreasing the file size.
PhotoWorks
Google Review Count: 92
Not quite happy with your photos? PhotoWorks is a photo editor powered by content-aware AI that helps you to retouch photos with an array of one-click effects and intuitive sliders. It provides non-destructive workflow, a wide variety of filters and 3D LUT profiles, RAW formats support, and background swapping, as well as basic photo editing tools like color enhancement and cropping.
Pricing: $19/$39/$80 per year
Pixelcut
Google Review Count: 62
Pixelcut is a lightweight photo editing app that makes removing backgrounds and unwanted objects from photos as easy as one swipe. Edit lighting, add new backgrounds, insert props, and more to create stunning profile pictures and product shots.
Pricing: $10 per month
FixThePhoto
Google Review Count: 58
A professional photo retouching, editing, and restoration service. FixThePhoto offers expert one-off or photo collection editing for professional photographers, beginners, marketers, and others in portrait, wedding, newborn, landscape, real estate, or ecommerce photography.
Pricing: $2 to $25 per photo
Clickmajic
Google Review Count: 32
Clickmajic uses AI technology to automatically strip out the background in photos of people, cars, products, buildings, and other foreground objects. Eliminates the need to take green-screen photos or manually edit photos. Choose from a white, transparent, color, or your own custom background.
Pricing: monthly subscription starting at $6 or pay per image
zerolens
Google Review Count: 23
zerolens is a virtual photo studio as a web app. The software enables creative professionals, agencies, and brand marketers to easily do photo shoots for their marketing, without the need for a professional photographer. Sign-up is open for early access.
Pricing: N/A
Stockphotos.com Image Upscaler
Google Review Count: N/A
A free tool to upsize and enhance photos using AI. Upload any image, and in seconds get an image with higher resolution and sharper details, that you can download in a range of sizes optimized for the most popular social networks.
Pricing: free
Stockphotos.com BG Remover
Google Review Count: N/A
This free background removal tool uses AI technology to remove the background of any image within seconds. It’s easy to use and produces high-quality results that suitable for graphic design and other creative projects.
Pricing: free
PhotoSize
Google Review Count: N/A
Reduce the size of photos from your desktop or mobile device for free and without the need to install an app. You can also crop, rotate, and convert the image file type. Works with most popular image formats.
Pricing: free
MockupPhotos
Google Review Count: N/A
MockupPhotos.com is a online mockup platform for high quality mockup photos, made by independent creatives from all around the world. Get unlimited downloads of more than 500 unique mockups; no need to use PhotoShop or other pricey apps. You have to see this.
Pricing: free; $19 per month
Showcase Reviews
BuzzBlogger
Kathryn Aragon Media
Likeable Media
Marketing Insider Group
PCMag
RazorSocial
Siasat
SmallBusinessNewz
SmartBug Media
StoreYa Blog
TNW News
This was the 33rd post in the Best Online Business Tools series.
#1: Best Online Business Tools Series Kicks Off Today
#2: The 12 Best Competitive Intelligence and Benchmarking Tools
#3: The Nine Best Facebook Marketing Tools
#4: The 14 Best Content Planning and Research Tools
#5: The 23 Best Content Ideation Tools
#6: The 24 Best Online Writing Tools and Apps
#7: The Six Best Google+ Marketing Tools
#8: The Four Best Online Education Tools For Business Pros
#9: The 14 Best Marketing Automation Tools
#10: The 17 Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO and SEM
#11: The Seven Best File Sharing Tools
#12: The Five Best Infographic Creation Tools and Services
#13: The 28 Best Influencer Marketing Tools
#14: The Five Best Pinterest and Instagram Marketing Tools
#15: The 24 Best Visual Content Creation Tools
#16: The Six Best Online HR, Payroll, and Employee Scheduling Tools
#17: The 20 Best SEO Rank Tracker Tools
#18: The Six Best Screen Capture Tools
#19: The 15 Best Special-Purpose SEO Tools
#20: The Four Best Online Survey Tools
#21: The 26 Best All-in-One SEO Tool Suites
#22: The 32 Best Twitter Marketing Tools
#23: The 29 Best Web Analytics Tools
#24: The 24 Best Email Marketing Tools
#25: The 28 Best Web Design Tools
#26: The 29 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools
#27: The 17 Best Project Management Tools
#28: The 21 Best Content Curation Tools
#29: The 26 Best WordPress Plugins
#30: The 14 Best Personal Productivity Tools
#31: The 11 Best Social Media Campaign Builders and Ad Monitoring Tools
#32: The 12 Best Landing Page and Form Builders for Conversion Rate Optimization
#33: The 17 Best Photo Editing Tools