Free, Professional Editing Programs

Okay, so I was kinda late on getting the Saturday Commissions post out, so instead I'm gonna talk about graphic-making. You've heard of Photoshop, right? It's basically a graphic designer's dream come true. You can crop around images in a single click, put outlines and shadows around text, and change its texture. That's all in one program, except it's not free. It can range from about ten bucks a month.

It's a good option if you want super-duper high-quality, but if you're willing to earth awhile, there are many free programs that can make just as professional looking edits.

~~~

This one is my favorite when making transparent backgrounds. It may look kinda heap at first glance, but LunaPic has a nice set of tools, you can even make something appear as if it were made from stained glass or pixels! If you're using this as a giant bucket or image cropper, I suggest that you have a fast computer and/or internet connection. Because of its slightly-meager design, you have to click aah area several times, and it reloads the page every time you make a change. If you uploaded a previous picture, you'll also have to clear the history. But you don't have to pay for any of it!

Sometimes (though it's rare), LunaPic will not read the color black correctly; like if you want to crop around a face with big, black eyes, it'll add little white dots inside of them. I've tried several things, but nothing seems to fix the problem. That's when I turn to "Edit Photos for Free." Like the other, it is completely free, but can even make GIF's, typography, and other goodies. When making a transparent background with this, you use the green marker to make a rough outline inside the area you wanna keep and the red marker for the area you don't.

Canva is my favorite for putting together all the graphics and making something from them. It's free, but has a large selection of cool fonts, lines, borders, and neat swirls. It has a simple, easy-to-use design, and is easy to control. You can change the background and has many canvases already with the dimensions you need (easy for video thumbnails and such). All you have to do is drag-and-drop, and from time-to-time a grid pops up so you know where to center your text exactly. It can even make each letter of a text a different color! It has more free features than PicMonkey, but you can't upload your own fonts for free (a problem if you want to make a text with the AJ font). 

This one seems to be the most popular, even though I find the controls a bit hard to use. However, it is filled with many tools, you can even change the texture look on your design (like make  something look like as if it were made from paper, sand, space, or even water). It comes with a few nice graphics, and I like the realistic bird and insect ones. And if all else fails when trying to make a transparent background, you can use it to zoom in on your picture, and tediously draw a line using the eraser tool to cut it out. (Though I highly suggest using this feature only as a last resort after you've made a rough cut out of it before). Unlike Canva, you can upload fonts or free.

~~~

So, these are the editors I like and use. I'm sure there are several others, as it's up to personal opinion on which one is the best! (Plus doing a paragraph-long review one acc would take too long :P ) To sum it up, if you're going for free programs, I highly suggest using multiple ones. It may take awhile, all that downloading and changing, but as a graphic designer, it is worth it.