No matter what kind of blogger you are, you need to add images to your blog posts. Adding images aren’t only for making your blog post look better but they are also good for SEO.
Now the question arises – How do images help in better SEO? It’s pretty simple when you add images with alt tags relating to the topic it boosts your image results. Image SEO is one of the On-Page SEO techniques.
“An image is worth a thousand words”, the saying has been going on since ages. If there are no images in your blog posts then they will look boring for sure. People are attracted more towards visual content.
After all, visual content is shared 40x more than other kinds of content. It isn’t a surprise, have a look at your FB newsfeed all are sharing images nowadays. (My newsfeed is always full of memes.)
But… Not all images are equally good, some are way too bad and your readers won’t like them. Creating images that look childish (or bad) will leave a bad impression on your readers and they won’t even come to read your blog post.
You must make sure that each image you create is visually attracting. It’s not possible to make images like a pro, not all are graphic designers. However, it’s totally possible for everyone to make some decent looking images.
This is where the online image editing tools come in, with these tools it is totally possible to make great looking images. Here are some reasons why you need to use image editing tools –
- Images are good for SEO.
- Images improve the quality of your blog posts.
- You can create stunning images with image editing tools.
- It’ll save you a lot of money. Hiring graphic designers ain’t cheap.
- You will learn to do things by yourself.
There are both free and paid image editing tools available. (And here, you will learn about both of them.) So, let’s start…
6 Great Image Editing Tools That Every Blogger Must Use
#1 Canva
Canva is without a doubt the best image editing tools for anyone. Even most of the images on this blog are made in Canva. It’s a freemium image editing tool i.e, you can use basic tools for free but for more options, you will need to pay.
Started in 2012, in just a small time it has become the best and most popular image editing tool. It is used by more than 10 million users, that tells its popularity. Not only bloggers but photographers, designers, and all use Canva.
You can also use Canva on your mobile phone and edit images on the go. It’s a pretty handy image editing tools, the features are all awesome. I’m personally a fan of theirs and have never felt the need of using another tool.
No matter what you want to design – you can do it all with Canva. Be it infographics, ads designs, banners or social media posts, you can design all with Canva. They also give you ready-made designs which you can edit and use for your own.
However, it’s not like photoshop where you can add a lot of filters and do much-advanced stuff. The thing which Canva allows you to do the best – is to create stunning images for digital formats. It’s great for designing blog posts images.
#2 Stencil
With Stencil creating great images for your blog is very easy. It’s an easy to use online image editing tool that’s gives competition to the likes of Canva. Stencil is super fun and easy to use, creating an image take only minutes.
It’s a freemium tool i.e, anyone can use the free plan, and for getting more features you will have to pay. The unlimited plan costs only 12$/month (about the same as canva) and is good. You can use it without much experience.
You get a lot of features with Stencil – almost 1 million free images to use, thousands of icons, etc. Stencil is good for both beginners and pro, if you want something different than canva then it’s a good option. Although, I think Canva is the best.
You get to create images as you like with Stencil i.e, you can set its size according to your requirements. It’s also possible to preview and schedule images to social media sites. (When integrated with Buffer.)
But you should remember like Canva, Stencil is also not an advanced image editor tool. It is meant to be a simple tool for designing blog images, social media images, etc. However, it’s still worth a shot.
#3 Fotor
Fotor is an easy to use image editing tool which requires no experience i.e, anyone can use it. It is great for those who want to add good-looking images to their blog posts. Thousands of people use Fotor on a daily basis.
While it’s an online image editing tool, you can also download it to your smartphones. It’s available for both Android and Ios. Fotor has a clean user interface and as I already said – is easy to use.
Fotor is a suite for online photo editing, it does have a lot of features. Some of the features are – batch processing, 20+ layout designs, effects, etc. It also supports a lot of file formats like PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and more.
It is good for people who only want to create simple looking images. I feel like it’s just like Canva but with some changes. If you want something minimal and less expensive then it might be a good choice.
However, one thing that I don’t like about Fotor is that – to remove the watermark you will need to upgrade. Apart from this flaw, everything is good about this tool. If you have no issue to pay almost 4$/month then you can use Fotor.
#4 Pablo (From Buffer)
Pablo (from Buffer) is a tool which lets you create stunning images for free. It’s helpful for all kinds of designers, whether you’re a pro or beginner you can easily grasp to use it. The Buffer team is behind the creation of this tool.
The best thing about this tool is that it’s completely free, you don’t have to pay anything (as it promotes the Buffer app). It is one of the best free image editing tools for bloggers, it also has a ton of features.
Some of the features are – more than 600k readymade designs which you can edit, it’s easy to share images on social media (buffer), etc. It’s one of the few truly awesome image editing tools, I’ve used it and I was impressed!
One other thing that I like about Pablo is the Pablo extension. With the Pablo extension, you can select any image on the web and it’ll upload to Pablo automatically. You don’t need to do the upload images one by one.
There are a lot of image editing tools which promotes themselves as free but aren’t. So, if you are looking for a totally free tool then Pablo is a great option. And, without a doubt, it’s seriously good. You should use it.
#5 Pablo
Who doesn’t love infographics? We all love them. Don’t we? So what’s the best tool to create stunning infographics? It’s an easy answer – Pictochart helps you to create amazing infographics for your readers.
You already know the power of infographics, they bring tons of backlinks and traffic. There are lots of tools to create infographics but Pictochart outshines them all. It has a lot of features which will help you create an infographic.
Some of its features are – 600 readymade designs, 400+ icons, and images, etc. You can also convert your infographic to the format of your choice like JPEG, PNG, and even PDF. There are the important features, there are many more.
If you want to outsource the design of a single infographic it will cost around 100$ to 150$ minimum. It’s better to use Pictochart and make infographics on your own, it’ll be cheap and you will learn how to create them.
While it doesn’t have many options for creating other kinds of images but when we talk about infographics, it’s the best. If you are still waiting for a tool to create infographics your search ends here. It’s a great tool.
#6 Pixlr
Pixlr is one such image editing tool which boasts of having many advanced features. It’s a bit different than most of the tools in this list. How? Because it’s more like Photoshop, an advanced image editing software.
Other tools in this list are just for creating simple images for blogs, ads or social media. Whereas Pixlr is used to edit and create images in a more advanced way. It has a lot of features even in the free version.
If you’ve ever used Photoshop then using Pixlr will be a piece of cake for you. Both Pixlr and Photoshop have a similar user interface. Other features include are – pixlr express tool, basic photo editing, effects and more.
Pixlr is a freemium tool i.e, you need to pay for advanced features, or you can use the basic tools for free. To run this app, you will need to have flash installed in your web browser. Pixlr can be used as a web app.
However, to get the most out of this tool, you need to get the pro membership. With pro membership, you will get access to many advanced features like – blending, HD effects, masking tools, etc. It’s great if you want something like Photoshop.
Final Thoughts…
You would know (by now) that images are the things that make a blog post more lively. Without images, your blog post is just a chunk of text that nobody likes. So, use these online tools to edit your images.
The tools which I think the best ones among these are – Canva, Stencil, Pablo, and Pictochart. These are the tool I use from time to time and have been impressed with them.
And also remember that you should only use those images that are free of copyright restrictions. Using copyrighted images can land you in big trouble, avoiding them is the best. You can use these sites to get stock images for your blog (or site).
Some of the best sites to get free stock images are – Pixabay, Visual Hunt, Unsplash, etc. But after you upload an image you need to optimize it for SEO, to do this all you need to do is to read our guide on Image SEO.
This is not a complete list as I’ve only mentioned the tools which I’ve used. With time I’ll add more images editing tools to this list (after using them). Till then I’d be great if this list will be helpful to you.
Wrapping it up, what are your thought on these tools? Which tool do you think is the best one? Or, if I’ve missed any tool feel free to tell in the comments box below…