There are a few social media and web marketing blogs that I follow pretty regularly. Social Media Examiner is one of them. They consistently produce relevant, easily digestible articles to help you get a better handle on your social media efforts. Their recent article, “6 Simple Photo Tools for Creating Social Media Visuals“, offered up several easy-to-use Photoshop alternatives that could not only be used for creating graphics for social content, as the article suggests, but for blog articles and web pages, as well. In the article they quickly outline the strengths of each tool and show an example of what can be created with it. Read the article to get the list (most of them are free!) and see if any of them could be beneficial to you.
Need More Power?
To this list I would add another option for people who are looking for a more robust Photoshop alternative: GIMP. The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is a free image editor with many of the same advanced tools you might find in Photoshop, like distortion correction, cloning and healing tools, layer masks, and a long list of others.
Their website has an extensive tutorial library to get you started along with full documentation in several languages. GIMP is available for download for several flavors of Windows (including Windows 8) and Mac OSX.
If you have a few bucks to spend, I can also point you towards Adobe’s low-cost alternative to their flagship product: Adobe Photoshop Elements. Full disclosure – I’ve never used this program. I know a few people who have (and they seem to like it) but I can’t speak from any real experience here. All I can say is that the features look pretty good, it’s supposed to be much easier than Photoshop, and the low cost ($99.99) makes it very approachable for most people.
Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing…
In my opinion, nothing will ever replace the full version of Photoshop. I’ve been using it since version 2.0 (currently on v.14) and have seen it grow in both features and power. But I can certainly understand if many feel it’s a bit too much. The feature list is enormous, the tools can be confusing to use, and the cost can be prohibitive (around $50 per month for the new Creative Cloud subscription). But if you’ve got the time and desire to learn the grand-daddy of all image editors, Photoshop will never let you down!
The list of resources for mastering Photoshop is pretty long. Just google “photoshop tutorials” to see how much quality content there is out there for this uber-popular program. Adobe has tons of stuff on their own site, but you’ll also find great tutorials and how-to’s on sites like Psdtuts+ and deviantART. I encourage you to check them out.