Photo Editing Software

The Best Free Photo Editing Software

Now that we have a few months' worth of tips and tricks to take better photos, I figured it was time to start diving into editing your photos! Before you get all worried or bummed out that you don't own Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, take a deep breath and hear me out. There are a handful of pretty great FREE photo editing programs that you can use to make your pictures look fantastic. Whether you are a fellow blogger aiming for beautiful photos to draw viewers in, or a mom making a photo book of your kids, these editing programs will help you get closer to your end goal; photos that stand out and look great. 

Here are my top three free photo editing programs:

1. PIXLR (Works on Windows, Mac, Mobile & Web) 

Pixlr is a fun program that has many tools to edit with, a huge library of filters to change the look of your image and similar layering options like photoshop has (grouping your edits by steps in layers). The sidebar has a lot of the same tools that photoshop has to offer as well! You can either download it free for your desktop, get the app for your phone or quickly access it right inside your internet browser (the only negative about that is you have ads that take up space in your editing window). All you have to do is open your image and get started!

Best Free Photo Editing Software Programs - www.mommatography.com

Go to PIXLR.com!

2. GIMP

GIMP is often referred to as one of the closest free editing programs to Photoshop. It is pretty powerful and offers many tools to edit. The tools on the left hand side (shown by icons) have descriptions that come up to help familiarize you with what each tool does. GIMP's website also offers a page of tutorials to help you understand some of the tools and get you started with editing. 

Best Free Photo Editing Software Programs - www.mommatography.com

Go to GIMP!

3. Adobe Photoshop

You thought you read that wrong, right? It's true! Adobe has recently released a free download for Adobe Photoshop CS2. Yes this is outdated, and old, and sometimes unsupported... BUT you can still have access to a version of Photoshop for free. All you have to do is go to adobe.com, create a login, sign in and accept the terms and conditions (they say that adobe doesn't recommend that you download older versions of the software..) and pick your preferred language. You can also download the other Adobe CS2 suite for free, including Illustrator, InDesign and more.