There’s no denying it: this is the visual age.
Videos, photos, infographics, GIFs, screencasts, online presentations – these are the new way to communicate. This is what your audience craves. Whether it’s a snazzy Facebook cover photo, a stunning Twitter header, appealing Pinterest photos, or impressive Instagram images, marketers are tasked with creating visually engaging content to capture their audience’s attention. And it’s no easy feat; today’s audiences are often discerning, and they know an aesthetically pleasing, high quality image when they see one.
So, give them what they want. It doesn’t have to be difficult, or complicated, or even pricey, thanks to the abundance of free image creation tools at a marketer’s disposal. Below, we’ve rounded up 50 of the best, feature-packed, and easy to use image creation tools for every marketing need that you can use for free:
- Image design tools
- Social media image creation tools
- Infographic generation tools
- Logo design tools
- Quote creation tools
- Collage creation tools
- Screenshot tools
- GIF creation tools
- Image resizing tools
- Meme generation tools
- Online presentation tools
Image design tools
If you’re looking for a quick-and-dirty kind of tool – you know, the kind that doesn’t require you to give up your info, log in, or log all your drafts – then you’ll love BeFunky. There’s no registration required, so you can just jump in directly – a huge plus, if you’re just trying to create an image quickly and with minimal hassle. And yet, they still offer plenty of robust tools, including a collage maker and batch editor.
Key Features:
- Great for: Almost any type of image, including social profile & cover photos, infographics, and collage
- Available upgrades: BeFunky Plus: $4.99/mo (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
We can’t (won’t) like – Canva is, easily, one of our favorite tools on this list. It’s like the Swiss Army knife of image creation, with thousands of templates, images, fonts, and other elements to help you build absolutely any kind of image, from a Facebook cover to a book cover. In particular, we love that Canva includes presets for most major image types, including social media images, business cards, infographics, and more.
Key Features:
- Great for: Almost any image type, including logos, collage, quotes, cover photos, and more
- Available upgrades: Canva for Work: $9.95/mo (billed annually) or Canva Enterprise (coming soon)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
With more than 3 million users, CloudApp is a pretty big name in online images. The premise is simple: This tool makes it easy to create quick, shareable images and video, via their simple screen recorder. In a nutshell, this tool allows you to improve the customer experience by sharing videos, screen shots, and even GIFs.
Key Features:
- Great for: Image creation, especially video, GIFs, and screenshots
- Available upgrades: Pro: $9/month (billed annually), Team: $16/month (billed annually), or Business: Contact for pricing
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Crello is a robust image creation tool designed for just about anything your imagination can dream up. With over 40 formats, 16,000 templates, and 260 fonts, plus a huge library of photos and illustrations, you’re sure to get inspired – and empowered to create striking images you can use on your website, social media, and everywhere else.
Key Features:
- Great for: Almost any type of image, including social media cover photos, profile photos, logos, quotes, collages, and more
- Available upgrades: Basic: $5.99/month (billed annually), Pro: $9.99/month (billed annually), or Team: $24.99/month (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Your experience with Fotor offers three basic options: edit an existing image, create a new one, or build a collage. We feel this is a good metaphor for the entire experience, which is rooted in ease-of-use – no graphic know-how required. There are plenty of fun elements, including stickers and photo effects, but the real value here is in jumping right in, no login or paid account require.
Key Features:
- Great for: Almost any type of image design, although geared more toward social media, cover photos, quotes, and collage
- Available upgrades: Pro: $3.33/month (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
You’re probably familiar with Google Photos, but did you know that you can easily create collages with Google Photos? That’s right, everyone favorite free online photo album also has some great editing tools, which allow you to create complex photo collages, which you may then save to Google Drive.
Key Features:
- Great for: General image design
- Available upgrades: Image storage starts at $1.99 (100GB) and runs up to $299.99 (30TB)
Price: Free
Infogram (aka Infogr.am) is a robust tool designed to visualize big data in easy-to-build and ready-to-use charts, maps, and infographics, among other uses. We love that you can build interactive and live content, as well, including shareable business dashboards and interactive maps. Plus, their template library is large and fully customizable, so you’re sure to get started on the right foot.
Key Features:
- Great for: Almost any type of image, including infographics, charts, maps, graphics, and social media visuals
- Available upgrades: Pro: $19/month (billed annually), Business: $67/month (billed annually), Team: $149/month (billed annually), or Enterprise: Contact for pricing
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
The idea is super simple but its execution is worth its weight in gold: Over is the iOS or Android app you need, when you want to overlay text onto images. You can work from scratch of off a template, customize with your choice of text, font, color, and graphics, and then generate your custom image with just a click. It’s effortless and instantaneous.
Key Features:
- Great for: Simple image creation
- Available upgrades: In-app purchase options, from Over Pro Subscription: $9.99/month to Over Pro Yearly: $99.99
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
If you’re looking for basic image creation without a lot of the extraneous fluff, then look no further than Pablo from Buffer. It’s quick and easy but it’s also decently featured, including a handful of templates and hundreds of thousands of images, to completely customize your images with text, graphics, logos, and more.
Key Features:
- Great for: General image creation, although particularly for social media and quotes
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free
One of the internet’s go-to tools for infographic creation, Piktochart is actually more robust than its reputation. Used by beginners and experts alike, the tool strips away the complicated design software and steep learning curve, to deliver crisp, vibrant images that tell stories. Nearly unlimited design tweaks – including color schemes, interactive elements, and a deep image wellspring – make it easy to create exactly the image you want.
Key Features:
- Great for: Almost any type of image, including presentations, infographics, logos, and social media
- Available upgrades: Lite: $12.50/month (billed annually), Pro: $24.17/month (billed annually), or Pro Team: $82.50/month (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
If you’re looking for a robust image editing tool – and by robust, we mean fancy-pants features like layering, hundreds of controls, custom effects, and other premium goodies – then you’ll really appreciate Pixlr. Bear in mind that all these features mean it’s not quite as easy to use as other tools on our list, but when you’re really looking to customize and image, it doesn’t get much better than this.
Key Features:
- Great for: General image editing and creation
- Available upgrades: Pro: $5/month
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Home to the largest collection of mockups on the internet, PlaceIt is a great tool for generating demos of graphics you’ll use in real life. What’s more, there are some pretty fun practical applications, like placing an app screenshot into a phone, in someone’s hand – basically, really using your images the way they want to be used.
Key Features:
- Great for: General image creation, especially design mockups, logos, and videos
- Available upgrades: Unlimited downloads: $29/month
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
A product of Evernote, Skitch is a great tool for editing the photos that accompany your words. We love that it’s available for mobile, allowing you to add, edit, and enhance your photos on the fly, and appreciate even more that it’s extremely easy to use. Never again will a blog post, social share, or other interaction go live, naked.
Key Features:
- Great for: General image editing, especially for social media
- Available upgrades: Evernote Premium: $7.99/month or Evernote Business: $14.99/month
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
If you’re just dipping your toes into the image creation waters, Stencil is a great fit. Designed to build ultra-fast, ultra-easy images, this is the perfect tool both for beginners and pros who know their creation. The free version is somewhat limited – at time of publish, you’re capped at 10 images/month and limited features – but if you’re just getting started and want to see which tool is best for you, do not pass up Stencil.
Key Features:
- Great for: Almost any type of image, including quotes, collage, and social media
- Available upgrades: Pro: $9/month (billed annually) or Unlimited: $12/month (pay annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
If the visual presentation of an infographic appeals to you, then you’ll love Visme. This flexible tool is rooted in infographic images, but expands the style and general presentation to apply to other images, including charts, reports, social graphics, and presentations. The result is sharp, on-trend graphics and typography that breathe life into your words and statistics.
Key Features:
- Great for: Almost any type of image, with an emphasis on infographics
- Available upgrades: Standard: $14/month (billed annually) or Complete: $25/month (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Social media image creation tools
Adobe is a big name for a reason: They know what they’re doing, when it comes to images. And the free Adobe Spark app is here to help with one piece of it all – social media images. It’s really easy to use, despite being fully featured with sizing, editing tools, add-on elements, and other features. Too good to be true? Then, be aware that your images are watermarked, until you upgrade to Adobe Cloud membership.
Key Features:
- Great for: Social media images
- Available upgrades: Cloud storage starts at $19.99/month
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Can you rattle off, off the top of your head, the dimensions of a Facebook cover photo vs. Twitter cover photo? If not, then you’ll appreciate Landscape by Sprout Social, a tool designed to make image resizing for social media – well, easy. Simply upload your cover images, choose you given networks, and let the tool work its magic. You can even customize the cropping, so your images are as perfect as you need them to be.
Key Features:
- Great for: Image resizing, primarily for social media
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Pagemodo can do a lot of things, but where it really shines is in social media imagery: cover photos, backgrounds, and the like – everything you need to catch the eye and stop social users mid-scroll. You’ll appreciate the professionally designed themes, thousands of stock images & shapes, and custom text, but what you’ll love is how easy it is to use.
Key Features:
- Great for: Social media cover photos
- Available upgrades: Basic: $6.25/month (billed annually), Pro: $13.25/month (billed annually), or Agency: $33.25/month (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Stepping into the collage ring, we have Photovisi: a free and easy-to-use collage tool that sticks to its promise. Just choose your theme, add your photos, and pretty it up with some text, shapes, or other optional elements, and your collage is ready for deployment. The tool also allows for image use as social media covers, banners, and backgrounds.
Key Features:
- Great for: Collage & image design for social media
- Available upgrades: Premium: $4.99/month
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
- Snappa
@SnappaIO
If you’re after online graphics – everything from your social media images to blog headers – then you’ll appreciate the easy-of-use delivered by Snappa. With thousands of pre-made templates to get you started in almost every direction, the tool incorporates free images, icons, text, and all the other elements you need to create online images that pop.
Key Features:
- Great for: Almost any type of online graphic, including headers, infographics, and social media
- Available upgrades: Pro: $10/month (billed annually) or $20/month (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
What’s in a name? Well, if you’re Timeline Cover Banner, then it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: This tool is designed to help you develop all the social media images you (and your social followings) crave. The key is in the one-two punch of simple, auto-image generation, paired with comprehensive graphic design, helping build compelling image in minutes.
Key Features:
- Great for: Social media banners & cover images
- Available upgrades: None
Infographic generation tools
Video is a type of image, too – right? Well, we think it is and that’s why we’re adding Animaker to our list: Make animated videos quickly and easy, for immediate use with all your content. Because, it’s not just your standard video (sit and watch); Animaker also serves up video infographics, whiteboard animations, and other innovative video formats consumers love.
Key Features:
- Great for: Eye-catching video infographics, video whiteboards, kinetic typography, and more
- Available upgrades: Personal: $12/month (billed annually), Startup: $19/month (billed annually), or Business: $39 (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
With more than 6 million infographics under their belt, Easelly (previously, Ease.ly) has a pretty good idea of how the market works. And indeed, the tool claims to be so easy, a sixth-grader could use it. Sign us up! Because slick templates, cohesive color schemes, and great engagement are exactly what we have in mind for our infographics.
Key Features:
- Great for: Infographics
- Available upgrades: Pro: $4/month
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
What was once a jack-of-all-trades has now become [mostly] a master of one: Venngage is a go-to for creating eye-catching infographics. We love – LOVE! – their robust infographic template library, which features hundreds, if not thousands, of preset designs for literally any kind of infographic: general templates + plus many customized for reports, presentations, charts, mind maps, white papers, proposals, and more.
Key Features:
- Great for: Infographics
- Available upgrades: Premium: $19/month (billed monthly) or Business: $49/month (billed monthly)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Logo design tools
We know – isn’t UCraft a content management system? Why yes, yes, it is. And that’s why they’re uniquely positioned to offer this easy-to-use logo maker: They really know what content creators are after. It’s as simple as can be – choose an icon, modify its design, size, and colors, and then save to use – and it works well, if you’re after something simple.
Key Features:
- Great for: Logos
- Available upgrades: Pro Website: $10/month (billed annually), Pro Shop: $21/month (billed annually), or BigCommerce: $39/month (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Bet you can’t guess what ZenBusiness does. Yes, of course – logos! In just a couple of clicks, this tool will deliver a final logo, complete with your choice of typography, imagery, color, and other design elements. Note that, as with many of these tools, logo design is somewhat limited to a standard format. Also, only small logo downloads are allowed in the free version.
Key Features:
- Great for: Logos
- Available upgrades: XS: $9.99, S: $24.99, M: $31.99, or L: Price Coming Soon
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
With a name like this, you know exactly what to expect of LogoGarden: a tool created for the express purpose of logo creation. We love that this tool is marketed beyond the design-inclined, so those of us without Illustrator chops can build a logo we love. But, what’s more, if you just can’t get it right, custom logo design from LogoGarden’s pro team is available starting at an economical $40.
Key Features:
- Great for: Logos
- Available upgrades: Custom Logo: Starting at $39.99
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Designed for solopreneurs, startups, and small brands to design their own logos – including, cohesive logos to cover various products – LogotypeMaker is an easy-to-use tool that saves time. And hair-pulling. With custom logo sizing, hundreds of fonts, a sprinkling of special effects, and plenty of examples from which to pull your inspiration, this will have you from no-go to logo in a few steps, flat.
Key Features:
- Great for: Logos
- Available upgrades: Basic: €1.99/month (billed annually) or Premium: €4.99/month (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Quote creation tools
We’re betting you can guess what this one’s all about but hey, why not state the obvious? Image Quote is great at one thing: creating graphical quotes, mostly with the help of 20+ built-in templates and backgrounds (some premium). And, since it’s a mobile app, you know you’ll always have your images – and striking – quotes at your fingertips, to deploy at just the right moment.
Key Features:
- Great for: Quote creation
- Available upgrades: In-app purchases (background packs) from $0.99 to $3.99
Price: Free; app upgrades available
If you’re looking to leverage powerful quotes into even more powerful images, Quotescover is here to help. Beyond the simple copy+paste that many quote generators use, this tool gives you a lot more play: image dimensions (including social media presets), various designs and typography, and more than a handful of templates to get your creative juices flowing.
Key Features:
- Great for: Quote imagery
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free
Really, there is almost no tool simpler than simple-as-can-be Quozio: Simply load the site, insert your quotation + quote author, and off you go – the tool will crank out several quote images styles. We love the accompanying bookmarklet, which allows quote-image creation from anywhere you visit online.
Key Features:
- Great for: Quote imagery
- Available upgrades: None
Collage creation tools
Say hello to the simple pleasures of PhotoCollage, a photo collage tool (what a surprise!) that jumps right into action – no signing up, signing in, or download required. Simply load the site, drag your photos onto the canvas, and start designing your photo collage. You may add text, background elements, and other features, as well as choose the size of your canvas, including to fit social media pre-sets.
Key Features:
- Great for: Collage & image design for social media
- Available upgrades: None
Screenshot tools
Images are communication, at least they are if they’re from Awesome Screenshot. The premise is simple: Start with a screenshot, then edit, resize, enhance and make it beautiful, to your heart’s content. We particularly love the ability to annotate, which can really turn a screenshot into – well, a form of communication. You see what we did there??
Key Features:
- Great for: Screenshots
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
If you’re a Firefox user, then welcome to screenshot heaven. Firefox Screenshots is a built-in browser tool that makes screenshots faster, easier, and more hassle-free than ever. You can snapshot sections of your screen, the entire screen, and everything in between, in just a couple of clicks. But, that’s the extent of it; to utilize your screenshots, you’ll have to look into the other tools on this list.
Key Features:
- Great for: Snapping screenshots
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free
Kap is about to get upgraded but, here’s the deal: Created for MacOS, Kap is all about screen recording, screencasts, and screenshots that are fast to make, functional to edit, and easy to deploy to your audience.
Key Features:
- Great for: Screencasts and screenshot markup
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free
Screenshots are better with markup, as Nimbus Capture knows. That’s why this tool is all about improving your screenshots – resize and crop, blur out sections, add your own text and drawings, append shapes, and even turn your screenshots into videos or screencasts. Then, easily share with your audience.
Key Features:
- Great for: Screencasts and screenshot markup
- Available upgrades: Pro: $4.99/month
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
GIF generation tools
- Boomerang by Instagram | iOS or Android
@instagram
You can’t talk GIFs without mentioning Boomerang, the Instagram sensation that makes it easy to create GIFs on your phone. All you have to do is download the app and then get recording; Boomerang will do the heavy lifting, with regard to lopping your video on repeat. Even if this isn’t as fully featured as other tools on our list, it’s probably the easiest to use, given that it’s always a smartphone’s reach away.
Key Features:
- Great for: GIF creation
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free
If you’re after GIF creation with some added features, look no further than GifMaker.me. The tool makes the GIF process easy – just choose your images to loop into the GIF – and adds on free extras like image resizing. It couldn’t be easier.
Key Features:
- Great for: GIF creation
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Do you speak in GIFs? We sure do! And one of the most important tools in our arsenal is big-name Giphy. Not only do they host millions of your favorite GIFs but – surprise! – they make it easy to create new ones, too. Just upload some video content, loop it, and there you have it – your own, custom GIFs, stored to your account. Game. Changer.
Key Features:
- Great for: GIF creation
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free
For the serious GIF’ers in the house, Imgflip offers some pretty varied tools to create new favorites. You can use your own videos and imagery, or online video and imagery, to create customized GIFs that load quickly. Plus, the interface is very easy to use, so you can build an entire stock of custom GIFs. You’re welcome.
Key Features:
- Great for: GIF creation
- Available upgrades: Pro: $9.95/month
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Options and ease-of-use get us pretty excited, so it’s no surprise we’re fans of Makeagif, which promises both. Not only do you have the option to create custom GIFs from various sources – YouTube, Facebook, and your own images (including from your webcam) – but the tool could not be easier to use. Welcome to the GIF frontier.
Key Features:
- Great for: GIF creation
- Available upgrades: Premium: Currently $Free
Image resizing tools
Do you know what every image on the ShareThis blog has in common? They’re all been run through Optimizilla, an image optimization tool that compresses file size without destroying image quality. Long story short: This is an absolutely essential, cannot-skip-it step in posting photos online.
Key Features:
- Great for: Image optimization/compression
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free
If you’re looking to resize some images and maybe add a few elements, then Picresize is a great tool. Designed to resize and output your images in whatever ratio and/or dimensional output you require, this online tool also adds a handful of special effects and a variety of image formats. It’s robust, as far as simple goes.
Key Features:
- Great for: Image resizing
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free
It doesn’t get much simpler than the Simple Image Resizer, which does exactly what it promises: resizes your images to whatever dimensions you require. That’s all, folks!
Key Features:
- Great for: Image resizing, and that’s that
- Available upgrades: None
Meme generation tools
Oh hai, it’s another meme creator! We love ourselves some Kapwing, which makes custom memes as easy as 1-2-3: past a link to your image, GIF or video; add some text; then hit Share.
Key Features:
- Great for: Meme generation
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free
Who doesn’t love a good meme? We’re firmly on Team Meme – they’re such an easy shortcut to showing off your brand personality! – and so, we love this self-titled Meme Generator. You can choose from (and personalize) thousands of available memes, or you can easily create your own. Whatever you do, have a sense of humor and get ready to boost your engagement. That is, if your audience is the meme type.
Key Features:
- Great for: Memes
- Available upgrades: None
Online presentation tools
If you’ve ever struggled your way through an online presentation, you’ll appreciate the simplicity of Emaze. Templates keep the job easy and result professional, while the tools keep the logistics manageable; with just a few clicks and a bit of time, you’ll soon have a custom presentation, ready to share, embed, and present from anywhere in the world.
Key Features:
- Great for: Image-rich online presentations
- Available upgrades: Pro: $12.50/month (billed annually) or Business: $39-$125/month (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Even if you’re familiar with the Google suite of services, you may have been overlooking Google Slides. No more! This useful tool makes online presentations almost effortless, with pre-made templates, easy-to-master tools, and flexible images. Best of all, everything auto-saves and you can export your presentations for use online or PowerPoint.
Key Features:
- Great for: Online presentations
- Available upgrades: None
Price: Free
Designed for presenters who aren’t designers, Prezi is all about creating, presenting, and then tracking your online presentations. A full library of templates makes it really easy to design any type of presentation, and robust tools make it easy to adapt, change and edit them on the fly. It’s easy, it’s pretty, and it’s basically guaranteed to wow.
Key Features:
- Great for: Online presentations
- Available upgrades: Standard: $7/month, Plus: $19/month, and Premium: $59/month
Price: Free Basic account; plan upgrades available
If you’ve ever wished you could sit beside someone, to explain the story of your image, then welcome to ThingLink. This handy tool is all about interactive images: photos – fully enriched with notes, 360º views, audio, video, and other additions – that you can embed on your website, etc., for a truly immersive experience.
Key Features:
- Great for: General image enhancement
- Available upgrades: Professional: $25/month (billed annually) or Premium: $125/month (billed annually)
Price: Free; plan upgrades available
Now that you’ve packed your marketing toolkit with dozens of free image creation tools, you’re ready to start making a big impression in all your marketing efforts. So why not make it easy for your readers and followers to share your visually pleasing work? Install our social media share buttons to start getting more eyes on the images you’ve so carefully crafted!
