For a long time, Adobe Photoshop had a tight grasp on the graphic design world. While it’s a very helpful tool that’s equipped with tons of features, it costs a fortune – often times way too much for businesses to afford. While Photoshop is still a dominant force, companies do not need to spend hundreds of dollars for this software. Thankfully, there is new software that anyone can use at a fraction of the price.

We’ve tried the following tools and they’re quite impressive! As you create imagery for your social media marketing, try the following tools available at little to no cost:

Piktochart– Infographics are all the rage these days. They are simple and creative solutions for dishing out a ton of information into fun, digestible chunks. Piktochart is a great tool to help you make your own stylish infographics, complete with fun vector illustrations.

Social Media Resize Tool – One annoying aspect of social media marketing is that every platform requires different image dimensions. If you don’t pay attention to this, an important part of your graphic, logo, or cover image may get cropped. This handy program will adjust your imagery to fit the platform you’re currently using.

Make A GIF– Are you looking to make unique and engaging GIFs? It can be trickier than you think. This new program makes it easy and provides a simple layout and toolbox full of creative goodies.

Smush.it– You want to use high-resolution images so your blog, Facebook, and website appears crisp, clear, and professional. However, with high resolution comes huge files. With huge files, comes slow load times. With slow load times, come impatient customers. Smush.it is your answer. It will compress images in a way that doesn’t take away quality.

Paint.net– Ah, remember when Windows 95 came out and we were all blown away from the Paint program? You could doodle on that thing for days! Go back to the basics with this free download that has the simplicity the old Microsoft Paint used to have, albeit with a touch of advanced options.

Recite– I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – a perfect social media post needs a balance of text and imagery. Now, you can take that balance even further with Recite, a quick and easy program that allows you to make awesome visuals that incorporates quotes or other bodies of copy into the design.

You need visuals in your social media marketing. It’s just a fact. But, you don’t have to break the bank in order to achieve creative greatness. Try these programs today!

Are you lacking the creative gene? Our graphic designers can create eye-catching visuals for our clients every day! Contact us today to get on board.