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.

CAMERA GEAR WE USE & RECOMMEND. CLICK TO VIEW ON AMAZON↓

Nikon D5300 24.2 MP CMOS Digital SLR Camera

Canon PowerShot SX50 HS 12MP Digital Camera

ZoMei Z818 Light Weight Heavy Duty Portable Travel Tripod

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Megan is an Australian Journalist and award-winning travel writer who has been blogging since 2007. Her husband Mike is the American naturalist and wildlife photographer behind Waking Up Wild; a website dedicated to opening your eyes to the wild & natural world.

Committed to bringing you the best in adventure travel from all around the globe, there is no mountain too high, and no fete too extreme! They haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on their list.

If you enjoy getting social, you can follow their journey on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram.