Are you tired and bored of looking at other people’s amazing pictures on social media and being jealous? Don’t allow a lack of expertise in editing or shooting to prevent you from succeeding. You can turn your photos into pieces of beauty without breaking the bank if you use the correct free photo editing software.

We’ve researched and collected the best photo editing software for beginners, and these programs for Windows PCs are listed below. They range from basic to modern, enabling you to edit photos to your heart’s content. So why hold out? Begin posting your memories on social networking sites confidently and participate in the photo editing changes right now!

List of best photo editing software for beginners

1-Photo director Essential

2-pixlr

3-Promeo

4-Fotor

5-Photopea

Quick Comparison Of 5 Best Photo Editing Software For Beginners

Feature	PhotoDirector Essential	Pixlr	Promeo	Fotor	Photopea
Best For	Versatile editing	Layer editing	Social media ads	Profile pictures	Budget Photoshop
Ease of Use	5/5	4.5/5	4.5/5	4.5/5	3.5/5
AI Capabilities	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Compatibility	Mac, Windows	Web browser, Windows	Windows	Mac, Windows	Web browser
App Rating	4.3/5	4.5/5	4.6/5	4.2/5	4.6/5
Cost	Free, $3.75/month	Free, $0.99/month	Free, $2.50/month	Free, $3.33/month	Free, $8/month
Stock Photos	Premium only	Free	Free	Free	Free
Advanced Editing	Yes	Yes	Limited	Yes	Yes
Templates	Limited	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Advertisements	None	Banner ads	None	Pop-ups	None

Features of 5 best photo editing software for beginners

Here are the features of photo director essential that are given below

1-PhotoDirector Essential

Best For: Allows artists with varying degrees of expertise to transform images into masterpieces worthy of a studio

Photo Director Essential is the best free image editor available for both PC and Mac because it blends the photo processing and organizing features of Lightroom with the robust editing, enhancing, and changing tools of Photoshop. With only a few clicks, you can create professional-quality picture effects using this free PC photo editor’s guided modules and AI-powered tools, which ease the learning curve.

You can eliminate bothersome items and people from the image with content-aware fill, which automatically fills in the blank space in the image once an object has been eliminated. Easily restore outdated photos, erase flaws, whiten teeth, add blur effects, make breathtaking panoramas, and a lot more with just one click. This free imaging editing program offers options for image modification in addition to content creation.

Explore millions of premium stock photos for your projects, or use AI to create images in response to text prompts. PhotoDirector Essential is the best free picture editing program. Although it contains all the sophisticated editing features for more seasoned editors, it is still incredibly beginner-friendly.

It is usually at the forefront of the newest technological advancements and photo trends. With AI Scenes, the most recent upgrade offers more generative AI power. With a text prompt, your photographs can be transformed into a variety of settings, including beaches, factories, jungles, and more. Additionally, PhotoDirector has additional backgrounds for product photography.

Pros

• Easy-to-use features that make editing simple
• Fantastic tools for organizing and managing photos
• Offer manual tweaks and sophisticated features for those who want more creative control.

Cons

• Stock libraries are exclusive to the paid edition.

Key Features

• Use text-to-image tools to create original content or generate the power of AI to immediately enhance photos.
• With photo retouching tools, you may enhance, mend, and reshape your skin tone, figure, and general appearance.
• Easily add anchor points to your photos to animate them and create custom GIFs.

Compatible: Mac and Windows

App Rating: 4.3 out of 5

User-Friendly Instruments: 5/5

Cost: Free, A premium subscription costs $3.75 a month. 

2- Pixlr

Best for: Novices learning layer editing

Pixlr is also the best photo editing software for beginners. You can edit photos, make product mock-ups, build graphic designs from templates, and create AI graphics from text with this feature-rich free photo editor for PC. Although Pixlr has always been among the greatest free photo editing programs for creating collages, the addition of the Photo Grid Maker feature has elevated it to a new level. It is an AI-powered collage maker that arranges your photos into various grid configurations on its own. Aspect ratio selection, grid line size adjustments, backdrop color changes, and corner shape adjustments are all available.

The portable, free photo editing program from Pixlr is ideal for both novice and seasoned editors looking for a quick fix. The software has customizable brushes, visual effects, and support for layers and masks. 10,000+ templates that are optimized for various purposes are available for search, including Facebook covers, the Twitch channel banner, Twitter posts, thumbnails, TikTok videos, & more.

Each time we test Pixlr, more free features are hidden behind a paywall, and the cost of the premium versions increases. There are regular export caps, however, you can still utilize a good number of technologies for free, such as generative AI. Pixlr has included new AI capabilities like an avatar generator and a product shot creator, which are much like what you get in the 3 free best photo editing software for beginners. Many of the tools are on other pages and require you to download photos before re-imposing, we also found it challenging to navigate between them.

Pros

• Gorgeous stock photos can be downloaded for free.
• Suitable for a broad spectrum of ability levels

Cons

• The free edition has obtrusive banner ads and is limited in what it can download.
• Occasionally lags, especially when rendering

Key Features

• Utilize pre-made templates to create beautiful designs in a range of social media-friendly sizes.
• Create a mockup of the product.
• Enhance your photos using a variety of skin-retouching tools.

Compatible: web browser with Windows

App Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

User-Friendly Instruments: 4.5/5

Cost: Free For additional editing, premium subscriptions are offered for $0.99/month In addition, you pay $1.99/month for premium service, and $7.99/month for team. 

3-Promeo

Best For: Social media templated graphic advertisements

Promeo is also among the best photo editing software for beginners available for internet companies and content producers. To use it, just select a template, edit it, and distribute it on the platforms of your choice. It’s that easy. You don’t have to hire a marketing firm to make a product mock-up or a high-quality social media advertisement for you. Similar to MyEdit, you may use a text prompt to create stunning graphics and backgrounds for your products, and then just click a button to set the new background across all of your stuff.

Even better, you can personalize the outcomes by creating templates from texts like “Clothing 50% off sale.” You may quickly erase backgrounds and objects with this free PC photo editor, or you can blur and white out backdrops to get rid of distractions. Promeo differs from other free photo editing programs in that it allows you to edit not just images but also short videos for posting on social media. Flyers, invitations, advertising, and static postings can all benefit from the addition of captivating animated elements.

We discovered that Promeo makes it simple to add text, decorations, LUTs, and photos to a template. What’s included in the free edition (all job titles, stickers, & LUTs, along with 1 million stock movies and 2 million photos) also impressed us. If you choose to migrate, the premium edition is reasonably priced. MyEdit may be the greatest online picture editor, but in our opinion, The greatest free photo editor available for PCs for marketing is called Promeo; it’s very useful if you need to make animated content and video commercials.

Pros

• Daily updates with fresh information
• Thousands of templates with expert designs
• Contains photo and video editing tools

Cons

• The number of templates in the free plan has been reduced.

Key Features

• Millions of stock-free photos are available.
• Animate posts by using motion titles and stickers.
• AI Auto Cutout makes it simple to remove backdrops or objects.
• Select from a wide range of LUTs and color filters to quickly alter the tone of your photo.

Compatible:  Windows

App Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars

User-Friendly Instruments: 4.5/5

Cost: Premium subscription offered for $2.50 per month; otherwise, it is free

 

4-Fotor

Best For: Making profile pictures

One of the best photo editing software for beginners for applying AI effects to photos is called Fotor. Make profile pictures into comics, Disney princesses, anime, cartoons, or Barbies. Transform landscapes into abstract art, impressionist paintings, sketches, and a lot more. You can highlight your black-and-white originals or use a color splash filter to produce a black-and-white image with just one or two colors left. Fotor is a fantastic free image editor for PC, Mac, and the web if you enjoy using AI to create and generate original profile pics, artwork, and posts.

Finding the features one needs is simple with this free image editing program, even for inexperienced users. It provides multiple interfaces, such as an AI content creator, collage builder, photo editor, and graphic designer. Among the interesting and entertaining features of this free PC photo editor are Face Switch, AI Expand, AI Face Generator, and—our personal favorite—an automatic text remover.

Fotor consistently adds features ahead of the majority of best photo editing software for beginners, staying at the top of AI technology. Nevertheless, there are still issues with utilizing the free version, such as pop-ups and obtrusive advertisements that slow down our computer, and numerous tools that are only accessible with a membership. Even if you exclusively use free tools, your downloads will still have a watermark, and the total amount of credits for AI-generated content is limited to five. Because free credits refresh every day, we recommend PhotoDirector or MyEdit as the best free photo editing software for AI material.

Pros

• A user-friendly interface suitable for all levels of expertise
• There are many tools for generating AI, together with a folder for organizing and managing your AI content 

Cons

• A computer with high system requirements may operate slowly.
• Obtrusive advertisements and continuous pop-ups are telling you to upgrade when using the free version of the app.

Key Features

• Instantly enhance photos with 1-Tap Enlargement, 1-Tap Skin Retouch, and 1-Tap Enhance.
• Use Circle Crop and AI Avatar Generator to create the ideal profile photo.
• Use radial and tilt-shift blur, among other blur techniques, to give your images more depth and focus.

Compatible: Mac, and Windows Web browser

App Rating: 4.2 out of 5

User-Friendly Instruments:  4.5/5

Cost: Free Pro and Pro+ premium subscriptions are offered for $3.33 and $7.50 per month, respectively.

5-Photopea

Best For: Budget-conscious Photoshop users

PhotoPea is the best photo editing software for beginners if you prefer Photoshop and are looking for an alternative. It repeatedly surfaced in our investigation as a fantastic, affordable choice for Photoshop users. With a significantly reduced feature set and user interface, it is compatible with Photoshop files. Use this free photo editing program to alter images or start from scratch and create graphic designs.

Along with a wide range of filters and tweaks, it includes design elements, including templates and stock photos. We adored that every tool is free to use, despite the software having a paid edition. The premium version improves rather than adds any new features. While the commercial version lacks functionality, it improves the editing process by storing more data, getting rid of advertisements, offering email help, and tracking more actions in your history.

 As Photopea is the best photo editing software for beginners it receives updates, and the most recent version included a ton of new features and enhancements, including a Magic Replace tool and better one-click background removal. Additionally, the latest Blur Gallery lets you apply various blur effects to specific areas of an image. It was ranked #12 but we bumped it up to #8 due to the increasing number of free tools available to consumers.

But Photopea is too advanced for novices. Although there is a useful Learn tab with detailed tutorials, if you are unfamiliar with Photoshop, it may take a long time for you to become comfortable with it. We had a lot of errors and trials throughout our test because there were no real-time effect previews in this free PC picture editor.

Pros

• You can use all of the tools for free.
• Supports files via Photoshop and GIMP, as well as common file types like PNG, TIFF, JPEG, and GIF. 

Cons

• The software is challenging and necessitates a lot of error and trial.
• This free photo editing software requires a robust internet connection to work properly, and even then, there could be stability problems.

Key Features

• Use a range of drawing tools, such as automatic rectangle tools, path selections, and pens and brushes.  Use spot or healing brushes to eliminate blemishes and other defects.
• Easily produce a beautiful ombre effect with only one click using gradients.

Compatible: Web browser

App Rating: 4.6 out of 5

User-Friendly Instruments:3.5/5

Cost: Free, The premium edition is available for $8 for 30 days, $15 for 90 days, or $50 for a year. Teams of five, twenty, and fifty can also purchase the premium version.  

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