A Couple Free Alternatives to Photoshop

The gig economy tends not to leave much room in the budget for fancy programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign. Whether you're a broke college student, a freelancer who is just starting out, or a dirty hippie who really doesn't want to pay The Man (sorry, Adobe), you're not entirely out of luck if you're unable — or unwilling — to fork out the dough for a subscription.

While these alternatives may not have all the bells and whistles, they'll get the job done for your basic social media marketing, bloggery, and email headers — and yes, you can use them to make memes.

PIXLR

(https://pixlr.com/)

Pixlr is a free photo editor that draws a lot from its much more expensive cousin, Adobe Photoshop. Be sure to turn off your ad-blocker before using, because the pop-ups can get annoying. Pixlr comes in browser-friendly and mobile-friendly versions, and it's perfect for a quick photo crop, resolution switch, or red-eye fix. It can get a little clunky in older browsers, but their newest edition (Pixlr X, so you know it's fancy) fixes a lot of the old bugs.

CANVA

(https://www.canva.com/)

Canva is a broke graphic designer's daydream. Pre-loaded with hundreds (if not thousands) of gorgeous templates — most of which are free! — Canva offers a quick fix alternative to struggling through InDesign. The learning curve is practically nonexistent. Just pick your favorite template, plug in your own pictures and text, and voila! You've got a Canva masterpiece. The only major downside is that literally every freelance social media manager in the entire world uses Canva (that's probably not true), so your designs can get repetitive. But once you've got the hang of it, you can shy away from templates and start creating your own Mona Lisas on the fly.

PEXELS and UNSPLASH

(https://www.pexels.com/ and https://unsplash.com/)

Okay, so they're not photo editors. But where are you going to get all your pretty editable photos to put into Canva and Pixlr? Unless you've got a massive stockpile of European tourist photography from when you were a teenage ex-pat (not that I know anyone like that), Pexels and Unsplash offer you a free and professional way to source stock photography without breaking the bank. Both sites run into the same originality problem as Canva — there are only so many times you can use the same stock image of a pair of baby shoes before you start wondering what happened to that poor child to make its feet so small. But both sites offer a huge database of professional-level photos that are open for public use. Just make sure to credit the artist! You can do that easily, by adding a quick "Photo by Unsplash" at the bottom of your social post, and linking back to the relevant artist's profile.

Header photo by rawpixel on Unsplash.

See? Easy peasy.