Photoshop is the ultimate designer’s tool. When you master it you’ll be as confident as Mr. Miyagi waxing a sports car. The problem is you don’t need all that power for simple design jobs. Sometimes you just want a nice point and click solution. A simple alternative to Photoshop.
Luckily there are plenty of great online graphics editors. We’ve shortlisted the six best Photoshop alternatives for online designers. Most of these alternatives don’t have the functionality of Photoshop. For example, you can’t use a tool like Canva to create Gifs, rather you need a bespoke Gif creator. However, the tools on this list are all beginner-friendly and easy to use, which Photoshop definitely isn’t.
We’ll start with a short summary of just what’s available. Check out the table below for the key facts about the software.
| Software | Starting From | Best Thing About It | Biggest Problem |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canva | Free | Great all round design tool. | None. |
| Youzign | $87 lifetime | Part of a suite of design tools | None |
| DesignBold | Free | Decent freemium plan. Clients can preview and edit designs. | No transparent backgrounds. |
| Stencil | $9 a month | Create up to 10 images a month on the freemium plan. | No team feature. |
| PicMonkey | $6 a month | Nice all round design tool. | None. |
| Snappa | $10 a month | Good range of templates. | None. |
| Design Wizard | $9.99 a month | A nice platform for creating graphics and video in an easy way. | Watermark in the free version. |
Now you’vereviewed the summary, let’s get started with our review of the best Photoshop alternatives.
Canva
Canva was the first online graphic design software to hit the market. It has an easy to navigate interface with a learning curve your grandma could master. The software was created as a simple online alternative to Photoshop that allows anyone to create designs without having to turn to a designer. Access is free and probably always will be.
While you can use Canva without paying a penny, the best features, cropped images, and designs, behind a paywall (think a dollar an image or so). This is handy if you’re happy to pay the odd bit of money to spruce up your designs. There’s also a premium team feature for you guessed it, teams.
Youzign
Youzign is my favorite alternative to Canva (you can read Youzign user reviews here). It’s a graphics software with bells and whistles (or should I say coloring pencils and drawing paper). It comes with a library of inbuilt social media templates and hundreds of ready to edit designs, which is pretty standard for this type of software. Cool features include the image cropping and the integration with a number of photo sites that provide copyright-free photos.
One of the best things about Youzign is the graphics marketplace where you can order custom made designs or sell your own designs. At the moment you can get access to Youzign and a suite of graphics tools that include Gifzign, cinemagraph software, Logozign, and more, for a one-time price. Click the button below to find out more.
DesignBold
If you’re entering a crowded marketplace you need a unique selling point. For DesignBold it’s the ability to invite people to view and edit your designs. That’s a pretty useful feature for small teams or if you’re designing for a client. The other funky feature is the ability to upload your own custom fonts (it’s a pretty essential feature if you want your designs to stand out).
DesignBold has two-tier pricing. It starts with a free option which gives you access to the core features. Unfortunately, you can’t upload custom fonts on the free platform. The paid plan starts at $18 a month, which is more than the competitors. For this price, you get the ability to upload custom fonts, PDF and PNG download formats, and access to a color style guide.
Stencil
Stencil is a good alternative to Photoshop. You get a sense of how good when you talk numbers. Stencil includes 560 templates, 1,000,000+ copyright-free images, an equally large database of icons and graphics, 2,200 Google fonts, and 100,000+ quotes. The number of quotes is kind of special as it makes creating those ‘easy to share’ social media graphics a breeze.
You can use Stencil for free to create up to 10 designs a month. The paid service starts at $9 a month, for a single license, with the option of creating up to 50 images a month. It’s a very small number (you might find yourself needing to pay $12 a month for unlimited designs). In addition, there’s no team feature, which would have been a useful touch for the kind of small businesses they’re targeting.
PicMonkey
PicMonkey is a photo editor and graphics design tool. On the photo editing side the tool is like Pixlr, but with better filters and funky features like the ability to turn a photo into a sketch. You also get the option to export your finished photos as framed prints, fridge magnets, etc. It’s a nice way to keep your memories fresh and as a present for friends and family!
On the graphic design side, PicMonkey makes it easy for you to create social media graphics, posters, and other graphics. There are some nice custom fonts that run alongside the standard Google fonts. Everything is wrapped up in a nice user interface. A single license costs $9 a month.
Snappa
Snappa is a solid all-round design tool. It’s integrated with various social media platforms and social media management tools like Buffer, which is pretty handy given most people use these tools to create social media graphics (surprisingly none of the other Photoshop alternatives have done this).
Snappa has three pricing tiers. The first is the free ‘tester’ plan which allows you to create and export 5 graphics a month. Next up is the $10 a month plan with unlimited exports as well as the ability to import custom fonts. Then finally you have the team plan for up to 5 users that costs $20 a month. It’s all very logical and well thought through.
Design Wizard
You can create impressive videos and image designs in minutes with Design Wizard. The free features allow you to resize your designs, upload your fonts, photos, and logos, and create custom color palettes. The library holds over one million premium images, thousands of high-quality videos, illustrations, graphics, and more. Every video and image has also been licensed for commercial use!
The Pro plan, which starts at $9.99, gives you 60 image design downloads per month, image uploads, font uploads, free previews, and 1GB storage. And if you want to pay up the cash, the Business plan starts at $49.99. You get unlimited standard video downloads, 1 premium video per month, unlimited image design downloads, video uploads, add text and images to video and 10GB storage
A Few Thoughts
Everyone has a favorite design tool. Mine happens to be Youzign. While it’s not free, I feel it’s worth the money. You get a bunch of templates and some really useful integrations and features, like the eraser tool, which is about a million percent better than the magic wand. Of course, if you don’t want to pay for your software then Canva is the ‘no-brainer’ option.
For more useful tools for online business owners, check out our guide to the best presentation software, and Facebook Messenger chatbot software. You might also want to check out our roundup of the best online mockup generators.
Hope you like our content. If you feel you have a solution that should be on this list, shoot us an email. We want to make our articles as comprehensive as possible.
