As a blogger, having high quality, eye-catching images is essential for driving traffic, building your brand, and engaging readers. But not all of us have advanced design skills or budgets for hiring graphics professionals.
Fortunately, there are many user-friendly and affordable image editing tools out there perfectly suited for bloggers. In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll be comparing the top 9 options available in 2024/2024 based on features, capabilities, and value.
Whether you‘re a beginner or experienced designer, you‘ll discover the best editor to create stunning images that make your blog posts pop!
Key Features To Compare
When evaluating image editors, here are some of the most important features for bloggers to consider:
- User-Friendliness – Is the interface intuitive and easy to navigate?
- Templates – Does it offer pre-made design templates and layouts?
- Graphics/Icons – Is there a library of images, graphics, illustrations, and icons to use?
- Text Tools – Can you easily add/format/style text and titles?
- File Formats – Does it support JPG, PNG, GIF, and other needed formats?
- Mobile Apps – Can you edit on smartphone/tablets via mobile apps?
- Integrations – Does it have plugins or apps that integrate with WordPress?
- Stock Images – Does it offer access to royalty-free stock image libraries?
- Collaboration – Can you give other team members access to edit?
- Price – What is the pricing or subscription model?
I compared all the top contenders across these features to help you decide which solution fits your specific blogging needs and budget.
Reviews of the Top 9 Image Editors for Bloggers
1. Canva
Canva has quickly become the favorite graphic design platform for bloggers and non-designers. It‘s extremely user-friendly while still offering tons of powerful features.
With Canva you can easily create social media posts, blog header images, posters, YouTube thumbnails, infographics, and more using pre-built templates or custom dimensions. It has a huge library of design elements like icons, shapes, illustrations, and stock images available.
While the basic editor is free, Canva Pro starting at $12.99 per month provides additional features like visual assets, brand kits for white labeling templates, and image resizing/optimization tools.
Canva is a top choice for beginner to intermediate bloggers who want professional looking graphics without needing to be designers.
2. Easil
Easil is a newer online graphic design platform built specifically for bloggers and small business owners. It focuses heavily on simplifying graphic creation and empowering non-designers.
The drag-and-drop editor makes putting together stunning social media posts, blog headers, lead magnet covers, and other graphics intuitive and fast. Tons of professionally designed templates help spark ideas or accelerate the design process.
While in beta, Easil is currently free without any limits. It even provides free access to premium image, icon, and illustration libraries normally reserved for paid Canva users!
For beginner bloggers who want a simpler yet still powerful graphic design solution, Easil is a great option worth checking out.
3. PicMonkey
PicMonkey focuses primarily on photo editing with some graphic design capabilities layered in. It’s beginner-friendly like Canva, with the added benefit of more advanced image editing tools.
You can quickly fix blemishes, whiten teeth, edit exposure/color, crop, add text effects, create collages, apply filters, and more. While PicMonkey lacks robust graphic design features, its photo optimization features are extremely polished.
They offer a basic free plan with paid pro plans starting at $7.99 per month. One limitation is needing to download images rather than native cloud storage support. But overall PicMonkey is a great choice for bloggers focused specifically on photo editing.
4. Visme
Trusted by over 10 million professionals, Visme is particularly well-suited for creating informative, data-rich graphics like infographics, charts, and presentations.
They make it simple to turn statistics and information into sleek, professional visuals that capture attention and drive engagement. Visme is also great for maps, flowcharts, timelines, and other data-heavy designs.
While it takes more upfront effort to create complex graphics in Visme, their advanced templates and tools empower you to produce visual content that stands out from competitors. Pricing starts at $25 per month for the Pro plan.
For bloggers who regularly need to translate data or research into compelling visuals, Visme is an excellent go-to solution.
5. Adobe Creative Cloud
The Adobe Creative Cloud is the leading premium suite of design apps used by professionals globally. While priced higher, it unlocks the full capabilities of industry-standard tools like Photoshop and Illustrator.
The expansive feature set enables creating complex, multilayered designs with advanced image editing, drawing, typography, and layout tools. However, the learning curve for Adobe apps is quite steep.
An individual plan starts at $23.99 per month. Adobe CC is best suited for experienced bloggers who need maximum design flexibility or already know how to use Photoshop. Casual users may be overwhelmed.
6. Fotor
Fotor provides a nice balance of photo editing, graphic design, and collage making tools for bloggers. It‘s free to use with available paid upgrades.
Offering capabilities between Canva and PicMonkey, Fotor enables common blogger tasks like creating social media posts, blog headers, and enhanced photos. You can easily layer graphic elements, add text, apply filters, touch up images, and more.
The handy scene creator even automatically adjusts your image perspectives and layouts to create collages fitting various dimensions. This simplifies repurposing images across platforms.
For bloggers wanting more flexibility than Canva but with fewer advanced options than Adobe CC or Visme, Fotor hits a nice sweet spot in the middle.
7. BeFunky
BeFunky focuses primarily on quick, easy-to-apply photo effects and editing tools for bloggers. It enables anyone to create eye-catching, polished images.
With just a few clicks you can apply photo filters, textures and lighting effects, graphics overlays, customizable frames, and text. It also supports common editing fixes like cropping, resizing, red eye removal and teeth whitening.
The free plan provides ample capabilities for most bloggers. Paid plans unlock additional editing features, graphics, and storage starting at $7.99 per month.
For bloggers who need to spice up dull images with graphic elements and stylish filters, BeFunky is a great option not requiring design expertise.
8. Kapwing
Kapwings stands out by providing easy GIF creation and video editing tools alongside more traditional graphic design capabilities.
It enables mashing up video clips, images, text, and audio into short social videos, cinemagraphs, and attention-grabbing animated GIFs perfect for social media. Kapwing also supports designing static images like thumbnails, banners, flyers, and presentations.
The free plan allows up to 15 exports. Paid plans start at $20 per month enabling unlimited exports and lengthier videos.
For bloggers focused on upping their video and GIF content, Kapwing provides a full suite of multimedia creation tools not found in other graphic apps.
9. Snappa
Snappa positions itself as an easy yet still robust Canva alternative suited for bloggers and marketers. It strikes a nice balance between simplicity and customization options.
Offering hundreds of templates, over a million curated stock images, and plenty of quick customization tools, Snappa empowers fast graphic creation optimized for social media.
It also integrates directly with WordPress enabling seamlessly adding visual flair to your blog posts. Paid plans start at $11 per month for the Pro account providing additional assets, storage, and branding options.
Snappa hits the sweet spot for bloggers prioritizing social content and wanting deep platform integrations with WordPress baked in.
Optimizing Images for Web
No matter which graphic editor you use, properly preparing your images for web use is critical for site performance. Follow these 5 key optimization tips:
- Compress images to reduce file size without sacrificing visual quality
- Resize to appropriate dimensions for placement, avoiding overly huge images
- Set appropriate DPI for screen rather than print output
- Double check file formats like JPG and PNG are set properly
- Add descriptive ALT text for accessibility and SEO benefits
Properly optimizing your images will make your blog load faster, look better on all devices, drive more traffic from image search results, and improve accessibility.
Many graphic editors like Canva or Snappa offer built-in image optimization tools taking the guesswork out of resizing, compression, and conversion. Leverage these to prepare great looking images that also perform well online.
Top Sources for Free Blog Images
Access to royalty-free stock images is extremely valuable for bloggers. When choosing graphic tools, having libraries of free background images, graphics, and illustrations built-in can save tons of money.
Here are some of my favorite sources to find free stock images safe to use on blogs:
- Unsplash – Massive library of beautiful free stock images and photos
- Pexels – Another great source of free stock images you can download
- Pixabay – Huge selection of photos, vectors, illustrations, and more
- Canva Elements – Canva‘s library of images, graphics, and templates
- Adobe Stock – Get limited free assets each month with CC subscription
Just remember to double check licensing terms as some images may have usage restrictions or attribution requirements. But overall, these platforms make finding amazing free visual content simple!
Choose the Best Image Editor For Your Blogging Needs
As you can see, today‘s bloggers are spoiled for choice when it comes to easy-to-use yet powerful graphic design tools. Whether you need to create stunning social posts, eye catching blog headers, polished headshots, or informative visuals – there‘s an editor up for the job.
I encourage you to try out multiple options covered here to discover which platform feels best suited to your skill level and content needs. The beauty of software as a service (SaaS) is that you can easily jump between tools finding the right visual voice for your brand!
Let me know which solutions you end up loving (or hating) in the comments below. Happy image editing!
