You no longer need software to turn your photos into masterpieces. Jane Hoskyn reveals the free web tools that outclass expensive Desktop programs
Photo-editing programs are digital dinosaurs. They' clog up your hard drive, take ages to open and, if you want advanced tools that aren’t incredibly difficult to master, they cost a pretty penny.
Online photo editors have advantages far beyond saving money and space. When you edit online, you’re working on a virtual version of your photo. Ihis means you can make fine-timed edits and add dramatic effects without degrading the original file. You can do whatever you want to your photo without destroying it, and export as many versions as you like.
Web tools also bridge the gap between storing, editing and sharing photos. If all your pictures are stored in Google Drive and shared in Facebook albums, it makes far more sense to edit them online, too. Many of the tools we mention here let you import photos directly (and securely) from your online accounts.
Get Photoshop-style tools for free
If you want professional results wit hout shelling out nearly a tenner a month for Photoshop (PSE, www.snipca.com/14505) or a one-off £66.43 for Photoshop Elements (www.snipca.com/14506), you have a couple of options. You could switch to Gimp (www.gimp.org), which is free but huge and hard to master, or use the brilliant web tool Pixlr Editor (www.snipca.com/14445).
Pixlr is the one online photo editor that can seriously claim to rival PSE or even the full version of Photoshop for sophistication and ease of use. Its main window looks similar to PSE, with familiar menus File, Edit, Image, Layer, Filter and View containing all the expected options such as Undo and Redo, ‘Free transform’, ‘Gaussian blur’, ‘Flatten image’ and so on. The menus aren’t quite identical - there’s no Select menu (those options are under Edit), and Pixlr’s equivalent to PSE’s Enhance menu is called Adjustment. This is where you’ll find the key editing options such as Levels, Curves and ‘Brightness & Contrast’, along with ‘Auto levels’ if you’re in a hurry.
The editing window also contains a Photoshop-style Tools sidebar with Lasso, ‘Spot heal’ and so on, and boxes on the right for working with layers and managing your edit history. You can also add text, resize photos, retouch, cut out selections, warp and draw - all like PSE. To find out more about these tools, click Help to open a detailed help site and FAQ in a new tab.
If Pixlr were just a free copy of Adobe’s program, that’d be enough for us to recommend it. But we actually prefer it to PSE. It’s much faster, it’s easier to learn and customise, and it doesn’t litter your PC with program folders and files like Adobe does.
It also gives you loads of photo-import options. You can upload a file from your PC, paste it from your Clipboard, type an image URL (ending with a photo file extension such as ‘.jpg’ or ‘.png’ instead of the usual ‘.html’) or import it securely from your Facebook, Flickr or Picasa account. This is a huge advantage and saves you having to download photos from your online albums before editing them.
Pixlr has just launched a free downloadable Windows version (www.snipca.com/14539), which may suit you better if your broadband connection isn’t fast or stable enough for online editing.
Edit photos you've stored online
Free new online tool Polarr (www.polarr.co/editor; note that it’s ‘.со’, not ‘.com’) maintains a dishonourable tradition of photo websites with silly names ending in ‘r’ (see also: Pixlr, Flickr, Tumblr). Indeed, it has its own Tumblr blog (http://polarrist.tumblr.com) and it’s getting a lot of attention as the new tool on the block.
Like the popular app Instagram (Android www.snipca.com/14509; iOS www.snipca.com/14510), Polarr’s focus is on fast filters and even faster sharing. It makes it particularly easy to edit photos you’ve stored online, then share the results. You can import photos from several services that Pixlr doesn’t support, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, OneDrive and Evemote as well as Flickr, Picasa and Facebook. The import process requires a few clicks (see screenshot above), but it’s much quicker than downloading a photo from the web to edit in a Desktop program.
Polarr is no Pixlr in terms of Photoshop-level tweaking, but there are sliders to adjust colour and exposure, and tools for cropping and rotating. This is all easy to do and Polarr’s filters look fantastic, but we found the site to be quite unstable. Most online photo editors are based on Flash, but Polarr uses the newer WebGL (Web Graphics Library), which your PC or browser may not support.
Transform your photos with fun effects
Polarr looks fabulous but is limited by its reliance on WebGL. If this frustrates you try using free Flash-based tool BeFunky (www.befunky.com/create) instead. This brilliant all-rounder also lets you import photos from Facebook and Flickr and has good editing tools, but its greatest strength is its range of filters, textures and special effects.
To get started, upload or import your photo and click the icons in the grey sidebar on the left. (Incidentally, BeFunky is one of very few modern photo editors that doesn’t have a dark grey editing background. We like that touch of independence.) The wand icon opens scores of categories of filters that are at least as good as those in Polarr or Instagram (we particularly like the flattering colour boost of OrtonStyle), and you can adjust each filter to suit the photo. There are so many filters that we recommend saving your favourites for quicker editing later (right-click a filter thumbnail and click ‘Add to Favorites’).
Click the brush icon to explore inventive effects such as Cartoonizer, Oilpainting and Inkify, and click the hashes icon at the bottom to try some textures and fantastic light effects. If you click the box icon, you’ll open up a world of stickers and emoticons that you may love or hate. You have been warned.
You can save your work as you go along (you’ll need to create a free account for this, or sign in via Facebook), download the finished product to your PC or share it via many online services, including Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr or Pinterest. Alternatively, create your own BeFunky Gallery (www.befunky.com/explore).
The one downside to BeFunky is that some of its effects can take several seconds to load. For instant gratification, use Pixlr-o-matic (www.snipca.com/14457). This sister tool to Pixlr Editor lets you overlay your photo with filters, frames and special effects (some beautiful, some bizarre) for dramatic results with one click.
Pixlr-o-matic has just two import options: click ‘webcam’ to take a picture with your PC’s camera (if it has one), or ‘computer’ to upload. Click the thumbnails to try out Alters, or click the dial to experiment with effects and frames. When you’re happy, click ‘save’ to export the results, then carry on adding more filters if you want.
Create photo collages and slideshows
BeFunky recently added a Collage Maker tool for turning a batch of photos into a mosaic. Select photos from your computer or Facebook, drag them onto and around the collage window, then click Edit to play around with effects and layout. You can download your creation as a JPEG (small, better for emailing) or PNG (large, better for printing).
One tool BeFunky doesn’t have yet is a slideshow maker, which is a shame because most slideshow tools start asking for money as soon as you want to create slideshows more than a few seconds long. The best exception is Slidely (https://slide.ly), a slick new online tool that lets you create collages and galleries as well as slideshows, using photos stored in your online accounts as well as from your PC. You can add your own music, share your slideshows online and even turn your videos into photos and collages - and it’s all free.