Photography is a huge part of the travel experience, though it’s rare to come home with shots which don’t require any editing. Whether it needs cropping, or adjusting brightness to finding the perfect contrast and saturation, sometimes that precious moment was captured in the wrong way.
Even for those who take amazing photos, a lot of the time it’s the editing stage that separates the pros from the amateurs. Professional editing can really go a long way. Sad thing being, I’ve never been very savvy with Lightroom or Photoshop (I swear you need an advanced degree!)
But what if there was a tool that could help you make your photos look just as good as the professionals? An editor that anyone can use to make their photos look great, and do some serious photo editing with virtually no learning curve?
Sometimes you just want a quick, fun way to enhance your photos, add some neat effects, and maybe create a collage or two. Fotor is the answer – a free online photo editor which proves that not everyone has to be skilled at Photoshop to compete.
Editing Your Travel Photos: Use a Free Online Editor Like Fotor
What is Fotor?
Despite being free (you don’t even have to register), Fotor is a powerful tool which is loaded with professional editing features and templates for amazing graphic design.
It’s a one stop shop for quick and easy photo editing, and with its help you can do it all – edit your photos, apply filters and effects, crop, add a vignette, blur, sharpen, rotate, add text, remove red eyes, and so much more. And the best part is, it’s super straightforward.
When you head to Fotor.com you have three options. You can start to edit, collage, or design. Depending on what you want to do, we’ve talked you through these three options as follows.
Photo Editing
Getting Started
Once you get started, you’ll find editing images is quite easy as the image dominates the majority of the screen with the editing tools conveniently located on the left toolbar for you to access.
For those who aren’t very savvy, there’s a 1-Tap Enhance button to quickly make your photos look great (without you manually have to adjust brightness etc.) But if you’re ready to experiment with different effects, there’s a huge range of options for you to play with.
The first thing you’ll do is upload your photo/s, and you can do this from your computer, Facebook, Flickr or anywhere on the web. There are then dozens of filters and effects to choose from and all the basic tools a photo editor needs; you can crop, blur, rotate, flip, use brushes, optimize lighting, color, and partial effects.
Dozens of Filters and Effects
With every effect you have complete control to change the level of intensity to your liking. If you hate what you’ve done to the image, it’s easy to go back one step at a time with the undo button at the top of the page, or you can choose to revert to the original image and start again.
Under the tab for “beauty” there are powerful portrait retouching tools and makeup options, including blemish fix, lip tints, wrinkle remover, red eye, and a weight loss tool. You can add eye shadow, mascara, or use a teeth whitening effect – it’s quite amazing the range of options you have!
Working your way down the left hand sidebar, there are then options for adding frames, stickers and text. And once again you’re spoiled for choice with borders, fonts, color, and a drag and drop functionality which means you can design exactly as you wish.
When you’re done with editing, you can save the image on your computer and share it on Facebook, Flikr and Twitter. You can save the photo in .JPG or .PNG format.
More Screenshots
Collage
Photo editing is not the only thing you can do with Fotor. You can also create amazing photo collages of all shapes and sizes.
To create a collage, you choose a template, upload your photos, and drag and drop into the empty spaces. There are also tools that allow you to stitch photos together, do shape collages and do photo montage.
My Screenshots
Design & Social Media
After you’ve edited your photos, perhaps you want to create a Facebook cover, something for Pinterest or just a birthday card for friends.
This is where the graphic design feature of Fotor comes in, a “one-stop-shop” for marketers, bloggers and social media aficionados – allowing anyone the ability to create your own amazing graphics content.
There are stunning templates for social media posts, brochures, and every type of card (birthday, holiday, “thank you” etc), with a wide range of pre-designed photos of different sizes and high resolution. You can customize any template with your own images, drag and drop the stickers, clip art, and change the font / size / position of the text.
My Screenshots
User Experience
The biggest pro of Fotor is that it’s very easy to use. All of its tools are intuitive and don’t require any knowledge of photo editing software. Even if you are a complete photo editing newbie, you won’t have any problems using this online photo editor. It’s user friendly, fast, very visual, and works really well.
Fotor is free because its creators want you to buy Fotor Pro, which removes the ads and gives you access to advanced features like full HDR support for really dramatic images. But the free version is feature-packed enough for most people’s purpose, and the ads don’t get in the way of the editing screen. You can still use the advanced features and practice editing with them, however your pictures will contain a Fotor watermark until you upgrade your account.
A great feature is the ability to download an offline desktop version of the app. However using the online editor is very convenient as it doesn’t require any additional storage for your computer. The stored edited pictures and designs can be accessed from your mobile devices as well.
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In a Nutshell
Fotor is an intuitive and simple photo editing application that lets you achieve impressive results, challenge your creativity, and encourages you to do more with your pictures without having to have extensive photo editing and graphic design skills.
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30 Comments
Omg I’m saving this to Flipboard. I’m pretty savvy when it comes to technology and can teach myself just about anything so I’m really glad you said that about photoshop and Lightroom as I find them both horrific to self teach. Why do they have to be so damn complicated? Anyway this is a great new resource I will definitely be trying out and who knows, I might give adobe a boot. I also like Snapseed by the way for adding cool effects
Appreciate the share Anne :) And glad I’m not the only one struggling with Photoshop and Lightroom – they’re so complex and involved, and you’re right, it’s pretty difficult to self teach. Even struggle following YouTube tutorials half the time!
Glad we could tell you about Fotor – I think you’ll be quite pleased with how quickly you can master all the effects :)
Bookmarked Fotor onto my Mac and about to start using it and see what its like. Thanks for this advice Meg and I see how I get on with this new resource :)
Glad we could help – let us know what you think! I’ve found it so much fun to play with :)
Fotor looks like a really helpful tool. Plus, it’s so great to offer a free version. I have partially learned Lightroom but Photoshop broke me! I’ll check out Fotor, though. Always looking for ways to simplify my travel photo post-trip process. Thanks! :)
Absolutely Jackie – so glad to know I’m not the only one who’s been frustrated with Photoshop and Lightroom! I have the basics down, but really can’t do anything flash.
Simplifying for the win! Have fun with Fotor :)
Fotor sounds gold. I’ve just been using VSCO on my phone but this sounds like it takes it to a knew level. And, it’s FREE. At that price it sounds a little hard to argue with. Have been toying with the idea of getting into Pinterest and this sounds like just the tool to help get my images Pinterest ready. Am assuming you use Fotor for your Pinterest editing?
Absolutely – a great tool for quickly and easily creating Pinterest graphics – their drag and drop functionality is so handy, it’s so easy to use! And yes, definitely can’t beat that price point!!
That’s so cool!! I’ve been using Fotor for a few years, but I downloaded the app from Windows Store. I love the quality of the edits, but I never used the online tool.
If you find you ever need to save space on your desktop definitely check out the online tool. Literally 0 learning curve since you already use the app :)
Omg I used Fotor all the time before I splurged on Lightroom. It is an excellent way to save money, and the photo editing tools (like you said) are very user friendly. And I agree that the free version had enough features to keep me happy. I never noticed the ads much, haha.
I never notice the ads either – I’m distracted by the pretty filters and fun effects lol. Glad you found Fotor easy to use too – hope you’re enjoying Lightroom :)
I love using Snapseed on my phone, but I haven’t had a good editor for my laptop. I’m definitely going to check out Fotor! Thanks for the tips and tutorial!
I haven’t used Snapseed before, will have to check that out too, sometimes I like uploading a quick photo straight from my phone :)
Definitely check out Fotor, let us know how you go :)
I love what you did to this photo of Antarctica. The outcome is beautiful. I feel like this is a great app and I would love to try it out.
Thanks Barb! I totally lost track of time, there are so many filters and fun effects!
Let us know what you think of using Fotor for your own photos after you give it a go :)
I am going to have to try out this program. I can use photoshop but it’s so big and clunky to use. Canva has always just annoyed me and I can never seem to figure out Lightroom.
Photoshop is definitely clunky, and it always takes so long for mine to load. I love Fotor because it’s fast when you want a quick edit, very similar to Canva, but you have a lot more editing control and effects :)
This is very friendly and great suggestion for those who are starting in our opinion. We still quite can’t get away from using Adobe instead. It’s good to hear it is easy to use, because again people that don’t want to get advance into Photoshop, they can use this for now!
Absolutely, such a great option for beginners :)
Happy travels Mimi & Mitch!
Wow! what a value-packed post. I’ve used Fotor before to create simple covers for my Facebook, but never thought in my wildest dreams you could do so much.
I’m definitely borrowing some of your ideas and including them on my next blog post :D
Come check it out, would you? It would mean a lot to me.
Glad you enjoyed the post Sudarshan, and that you could take further ideas for editing your photos and graphics.
Will jump over to have a look at your blog :)
I looked at it…. I will keep Photoshop lol
Haha fair enough – if you’re comfortable with Photoshop that’s awesome – I’m still slowly attacking the learning curve :)
Nice article very informative.
Thanks Emily, glad it was helpful for you :)
If you can’t photoshop,
Fotor.
Absolutely, it’s a great program for being easy to learn and use :)
Do you use the iPhone App for this too? And is it easy enough to use? I’m seriously considering using this over Lightroom for awhile to see if I like it.
Right now yes, I don’t have Lightroom. It’s a pretty low learning curve, let me know what you think if you make the switch :)