Image editing is important in our day and age. Every site has images, you even need to create custom thumbnails for YouTube if you want to get any views. But, if you’re starting off without much money, it is impossible to just go and purchase the Adobe suite and have everything you’d ever want in image and video editing software (except stability).

But for everyone else who has a limited or no budget at all, what else is there, surely not Microsoft Paint? While it might seem laughable, people managed to create entire replicas of Mona Lisa and other famous works of art. Given that it is part of an operating system which you have to pay for, it is not exactly free. Here is the best free image editing software you can download immediately.

GIMP – The GNU Image Manipulation Program

GIMP started off as a very difficult tool to master. You had to try your best just to find all the tools and get around all the menus and windows just to make a simple digital drawing. Today, given that GIMP is open source, it has improved so much that it is a must have program if you want to do anything related to images. It is fast and can handle just about any file format you throw at it.

Oh, and the user interface and experience is that much better than it used to be that it is like a completely different program.

To be realistic, given that it was released in 1996, it most certainly is a completely different program, but the basics are there. You get a free, and not just free, open source program which you can use to your desire, and it is not just a basic tool, at that.

FOTOR – Easier Version of GIMP

Since GIMP still needs getting used to, but to be honest, so does every powerful tool, FOTOR is there to pick up the slack for you, but with less features overall. FOTOR is an image editing tool, but one that focuses on the user having fun while editing and not actually working. While this has its benefits, it also takes away from some of the features you would get with a more feature packed tool. It also has some advertisements, but that is the nature of most of freeware software. Note that freeware is definitely not the same as open source.

InPixio – An Even Simpler Tool

At what point can we say that a tool is so simple that a child could use it? InPixio gets very,very close. It is a free software which comes packed with features, most of which are locked and you have to pay to unlock them. But, for simple edits, it is the best free tool out there if you do not want to get into learning it at all. One click edits are possible, as well as exports, and you have a neat window showing you the original and the edited version for comparison.