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Top 5 photo editing tools for online course creators

In this era of visual marketing entrepreneurs cannot overlook the importance of images for their business. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words — and that's exactly what you need to complement your online course.

So, you should give images the place they deserve, that is at the core of your content marketing strategy.

The internet is a never-ending source of images. You will definitely find the one you want. If not, you can create your own. Pay attention to copyright if you choose to use something you find online. Just as your online course, most images are the property of their creators, so you should respect and give credits to the real authors.


Read more: What you need to know about copyright for online courses


Anyway, assuming you find the picture you like, it may need some retouching to make it perfect. That, though, can be time-consuming since not everyone has the skills or the creativity to do so. But you should make this a priority.

Thankfully, there are a lot of free photo editing tools that make editing look professional. When choosing one, you should consider some features that are commonly necessary.

What you might need to edit

Editing a photo can contribute to your ability to highlight the key subjects and transform an average image into an incredible one. The most common features of photo editing software are:

  • Crop — Trim off some of the edges to bring more attention to the subject of the image;
  • Resize — Too large images may look great but they may take a toll on your page loading time, increasing chances of a bounce back;
  • Adjust brightness — Along with highlights and shadows to add contrast to the details and lines within your photo;
  • Increase or decrease saturation — To enhance colors or to calm them down;
  • Blur details — To protect sensitive data within a photo;
  • Create transparent backgrounds — So that you can use the subject of an image in more than one place;
  • Retouch portraits — No more red eyes, shiny foreheads or unfortunate shadows or blemishes on people’s faces;
  • Create collages — Because sometimes it’s best to have more pictures into one;
  • Add watermarks — To protect your brand and ensure consistency;
  • Add filters — To enhance your visuals in a predetermined way;

and so on, all with the purpose of telling your stories in a creative manner.

5 Awesome photo editing tools for the visuals in your online course

To your advantage, there are numerous online photo editing tools to choose from if you need to do all the above edits or more. Whether you want to edit your own pictures or you select them from the Internet, these solutions have got you covered. You don’t have to be a professional photographer and there’s no need to break the bank either.

Here you have five awesome photo editing tools that you can use to make your online course look stunning. They vary from free to reasonable priced, and can be used by both professional and amateur designers.

  1. Canva

    Canva is probably the best and easiest to use with its intuitive design. Having diverse features and templates and the possibility to export files directly into your computer or social media, this is the go-to editing tool for graphics, social media branding, ads, logos, and more.

    After creating an account you have free access to most templates and preset designs or you can choose an image from a million image database. Also, you can add icons and shapes and even use hundreds of fonts for you text.

  2. Piktochart

    Piktochart is a free image editing tool for social media, ads, collages and much more, that helps you tell stories with a visual impact. Moreover, it's a high quality tool specifically for infographic creation and editing. You can show your creativity with this tools since it helps you develop your design skills.

  3. PicMonkey

    PicMonkey promises everything you need to make images that "inspire, persuade and motivate". It offers a lot of graphics, fonts and templates. With options such as Photo Editing, Touch up, Design Tools, you can add filters, blur, retouch, add curves and levels, add overlays and other effects to your images, directly from your computer or from social media. You can also collaborate with others in real time and share designs, comments and impressions. Everything you edit is stored into your Hub, the cloud storage.

  4. GIMP

    GNU Image Manipulation Program — or GIMP — is a great entry-level alternative to Photoshop which provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done. This program promises high quality manipulation, original artwork creation, graphic design elements, programming algorithms, extensibility and flexibility.

    It allows you to be creative offering integration with many programming languages like Scheme, Perl, Python and more, which translates into high-level customization. It also ensures high-fidelity color reproduction across digital and printed media.

  5. Pixlr

    Pixlr is a convenient and user-friendly tool for the more advanced, if you really know what to do in front of a blank canvas. Use it to create designs from scratch or add one from your computer to which you can add detail filters and layers and to which you can bring any adjustments necessary using tools like crop, resize, cut out, remove background, add text, effects, icons and overlays or customize a template.

    It has cutting edge technology that offers quick and professional edits. You can also spice up your photos by using their versatile drawing tool that includes Draw, Doodle and Scribble. It also allows you to retouch your photos easily. You can fix a blemish, remove spots, duplicate parts of your image or make unwanted objects/people disappear.

Over to you

What else do you use to edit the visuals for your online course? Share your preferences in the comments section below!

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