Photo Editing Basics Tutorial: Free and Paid Picture Editors

Why Choose a Free Picture Editor?

The main and obvious choice to choose a free picture editor is because it is free. Some people in the world may not be able to pay the absorbent amounts of money for Adobe Photoshop or a similar picture editor.

Being free does not equal being efficient or mean the picture editor will be full of features. Free editors are not made the same. A free picture editor, such as Microsoft Paint, can be used but it doesn't have the features that we, as editors, may be looking for to make our lives easier. There are free picture editors that do come with an assortment of features. Some of the free picture editors are downloadable while some of them are online picture editors only.

While there are a lot of free picture editors out there from which to choose, how do we know where to start? The answer to that is by using them and seeing where our comfort zone is with a specific picture editor. It really is a close to impossible task to try and learn every free picture editor on the Internet and would be unreasonable of anyone to expect this from any one person so asking people what they think is the next best option. While our specific choice may not be all of the free picture editors we have listed below, at one point we have spoken with people that love and swear by these digital image editors so we have included them in the list we describe in this tutorial.

Why Choose a Paid Picture Editor?

Paid picture editors typically have a team of people behind them that are paid to do three things; create new features, fix bugs and constantly update the software. These types of picture editors will typically keep being updated because they have the money behind them to pay several people to plan, organize and keep up the updates on the software.

Our paid picture editor of choice is Adobe Photoshop. While there are free picture editors out there that rival Adobe Photoshop, the features inside the software tend to be released first inside this paid picture editor before the free picture editors.

Differences between a Paid and Free Picture Editor

There are several differences for which we have already spoken about in this tutorial on paid and free picture editors.

One of the biggest differences between a paid and free picture editor is when Microsoft or Apple changes their operating systems to the newer version, some of the free picture editors may not be updated whereas the paid picture editors come out on top and are prepared for these changes because these programmers get paid to do nothing else but work on that software, plan new features and keep their software updated and working with the latest operating system drivers, processor capabilities and graphics card capabilities.

Paid picture editors are typically backed by paid programmers of a corporation whereas free picture editors may not have as big of a budget to keep their software up to day. While it is valiant for someone to offer their time for free to create software, unfortunately that doesn't pay the bills, put food on the table or dress their children. If money isn't being made somehow then there isn't a lot of chance the free picture editor may stick around for a while unless the person or people behind it have money coming in from elsewhere to keep the software lucrative.

Free Picture Editors and Paid Picture Editors

There are a lot of picture editors and too many to list within this tutorial. We have taken the time and listed some of the picture editors out there. We have listed paid, free and online picture editors. Some of these need to be installed on the computer while others are an online picture editor only. Definitions for each have been provided.

GIMP [Free Downloadable Picture Editor] (Graphic Image Manipulation Program) The acronym stands for graphic image manipulation program. This is a full-featured and extremely technical downloadable picture editor. GIMP has a lot of extremely nice features. If you are a beginner, this may not be the program for which to start. There are a lot of technical terms such as resolution settings when choosing a new image, size, aspect, angle, spacing, hardness and force along with brushes. This is for the person that truly wants to dive right in and does not mind getting their hands dirty and wants to learn all the terminology. There is a heavy learning curve with GIMP but people that have taken the time to learn it have really grown to love it. Given the requirements to understand the technical terms to use GIMP and the fact we already have a very technical Image Manipulation Program for these tutorials we will not focus on using the GIMP.
Canva [Free Online Picture Editor] A quick program for creating templated banners, logo design, magazine covers and other professional type image creations. This is not a complete or full-featured online picture editor but it will help you easily and very quickly create quick designs for your business or other advertising venues.
Fotor [Free Online Picture Editor] - A free online picture editor that rivals Photoshop Express for premade effects. This free online picture editor puts a watermark on the picture until you start a free trial of the professional version. This is not a full-featured online picture editor. Fotor is an easy to use creative image effects online picture editor.
Photopea [Free Online Picture Editor] - https://www.photopea.com/ A free Photoshop combatant that works with videos and images. This is a full-featured online picture editor. There are two methods to use this software which include an online picture editor and a downloadable version for the computer. These tutorials will be created focusing on the downloadable version of this picture editor.
Photoshop Express [Free Online Picture Editor] - Great for putting together quick images and making quick animated GIFs but this is not a full-featured picture editor.https://express.adobe.com requires an account to be created. Block any notifications it requests to send you. This has draggable images and easy to use tools to quickly put together images for instagram or Facebook. Easily resize images and create advertisement images with their easy to use templates.
Photoshop [Paid Picture Editor] - An amazing full featured picture editor for which can be used to professionally edit and manipulate images. This is an expensive option. There is a heavy learning curve with this software. This picture editor is so well-known people use it in everyday language when referring to an edited image, they say it has been photoshopped in place of it has been edited. They say this even when Photoshop was never used to edit the image. The Solo Boss picture editing tutorials will focus on the installed version of this software.