Fotor

Photo editing sites have one big advantage. They are available wherever the Internet is. And if you don’t need the multiple features of, say, Photoshop, and Instagram is too poor and boring for templates, then the online photo editor Fotor may be just right for you.

How to get started with Fotor

The capabilities of the Fotor web service can be divided into three not quite equal parts. You can edit images (Edit), assemble them into collages (Collage), and create “postcards” for posting to social networks (Design).

Some of the features are blocked – although Fotor is a free site, it has a premium version, with disabled ads and a bunch of additional features. At the same time, you will hardly feel constrained in your options – for example, Fotor cloud is free for all kinds of profiles!

How to start using the site? Go to it, register (or authorize through Facebook), see a few windows, and start editing. Don’t worry, for newbies the service has both tutorials and three immediately available pictures for experimentation.

Editing options

Most of the other editing tricks will be very familiar to the Instagram generation. After the basic options we have a set of filters, many of them. Most of them have customizable application levels, and some of them can even be applied separately with a resizable brush. All in all, there’s a lot here, from simple black and white, to selective pixelation.

Beautification is the next point. Here we have a bunch of tricks, like blush, acne removal, shiny skin, eyeliner, eyeliner pencil, changing the shape of the face – in general, plastic surgery after the fact. Some of the features are questionable – for example, “Weight Loss” just shrinks the picture wide open, which is fun. But of little use.

Next are the frames and stickers. Basically, exhaustive points. All there is to say about them is that there are a lot of them. Especially with the Pro subscription. However, I had some questions about the frames – some of them, the simplest options, have too low resolution. The pixelation literally shoots you in the eye nerve…

Texting is texting. Text. Four basic sizes, a gigantic number of beautiful and expressive fonts, ranging from Alex Brush and Allura to VT323, Yokawerad and a wild bunch of Asian characters. Text can be cloned, rotated, changed color, in general – a simple set of functions. One problem is that not all fonts support Cyrillic.

And the last point – cloud uploading. If you, like me, need synchronization, the cloud will be very helpful.

In addition to cloud saving, the final picture can be downloaded to a PC, take a quick snapshot for the clipboard, or share online through all sorts of social networks.

Collages and greeting cards

Creating collages via the service is simple – choose one of the many dozens of templates of different shapes and sizes, add pictures, get a collage. Designs range from juvenile-funny to corporate-solid options.

Like creating postcards, by the way. The bottom line is that you can choose from a ton of ready-made styles to post to all sorts of social networks. A themed picture in the background, plus a font that matches the style as closely as possible. And the picture, and font, if anything, you can easily change.

Other details

By the way, Fotor has a free Windows application. Its peculiarity is that it does not support cloud saving, but it can batch process pictures as well as pictures over 2000 by 2000 pixels in size.

There is also a smartphone application. And while the link to the latter is visible almost immediately, to download the Windows application you have to scroll to the very bottom of the home page. Not the most convenient thing.

However, Fotor is very convenient in other areas. The service supports a lot of languages, works with basic shortcuts like Ctrl + Z to go back, and not really pulls on the resources of your PC. Of course, this is a browser-based service, so the performance and optimization of the desktop version is only in dreams, but it’s a small price to pay for convenience and accessibility everywhere there is a browser.

Bottom line on Fotor

Don’t expect it to be a full-fledged replacement for all Photoshop controls. I’m sure Fotor will save you a lot of work and nerves. It’s good for basic editing, it’s good for Instagram, and it’s good for social media – and I’m including business accounts and public pages. If all fonts had Cyrillic, it would be unimaginably cool.