Online Image Editors – Why To Use Them And 5 Amazing Ones For Designers

Author: Umut M.

16 Nov

Image Editor Icons Online image editors have evolved so much in the last few years & became very mature + functional for designers at every level.

They generally offer a similar interface with the popular image editing softwares which lowers the learning curve so much.

Almost all of them are Flash-based (no extra installations -like plugins- are required) & load/work very fast.

Why To Use Them?

You may be asking yourself why to use a web-based one when there is a powerful image editing software installed on your computer like Photoshop, Fireworks, GIMP, etc.?

Portability

There is no need to have a software other than a browser to run such applications. Also designs created with them can be saved instantly online.

This function is specially handy for anyone working at different locations/computers.

The Price Factor

Most popular image editing softwares, except GIMP, are generally not cheap & every new version requires a new license.

Online image editing platforms are free or come with cheap subscription plans.

Lower System Resources

As such applications would run on browsers & files are remotely hosted, they will be consuming much less system resources.

This makes them a good fit for older & non-strong (like netbooks) computers.

Backup

Every designer/developer, generally, experiences data losses because of hardware failures & no backups.

All the content created can be saved in these platforms which are mostly hosted in the cloud with daily backups. So, this is taken care of.

They have cons too:

As expected, they are not perfect:

you may not add your custom fonts, brushes, shapes, etc.
not being able to export designs to formats of popular applications (generally, only PNG, JPG, GIF & TIFF)
lack of some features
some of them don't have keyboard shortcuts

Here are 5 amazing applications which offer a similar functionality with your favorite image editing software & have support for creating new images (not editing-only):

Sumo Paint

Sumo Paint is an amazing application which Photoshop users will find it very friendly as the interface & functionality is very similar.

It offers most things Photoshop offers, supports layers, filters & has some awesome geometric shape tools.

There is also a huge community behind the application where you can get inspired.

Editor – all-functions included editor
Express – more basic version
Grabber – to right click any image and start editing from Firefox browser + Windows desktop