Most people have heard of Photoshop, but probably a fraction of those people have heard of Pixlr. A free alternative to Photoshop, Pixlr is an effective image editor that should be in every small business owner’s marketing toolkit. In this edition of “Prospect Genius Reviews…,” we’ll explain why.
First, let’s establish the importance of images in the context of online advertising. When it comes to the appearance of your website, social media profiles, and online directory listings, high-quality photos are a must. They tell a clearer story about your company, boost your credibility with potential customers, and even make your site more appealing to search engine bots. They don’t have to be professionally shot, but they need to be bright, focused, and compelling. You can read more about the necessity of photos in our blog post, “Quality Photos = More Phone Calls!”
However, if you’re a die-hard DIYer and handle your own website and web presence, then you may be at a slight disadvantage in this regard. Unless you’ve invested in a professional-grade camera for your company’s online photos, you’re probably relying on your smartphone or point-and-shoot digital camera to take pictures. Unfortunately, these devices can be hit or miss in terms of resolution, brightness, and focus.
But just because you don’t have professional camera equipment, that doesn’t mean you can’t reap the benefits of professional-grade photos. Pixlr makes this possible.
A free app you can use in your web browser or download to your desktop, Pixlr makes editing images super easy, even for people who have little-to-no experience with image editing. It performs the same basic functions as more advanced tools like Photoshop, minus the bells and whistles. For a small business owner who just wants to enhance the overall quality of their online images, Pixlr is more than enough.
Pranav Dixit of Gizmodo puts it perfectly:
If you’re a heavy Photoshop user, you won’t be able to jump ship; Pixlr’s aimed more at the person who just needs low-level tools… If you’re someone who just needs to crop, resize, and throw the occasional overlay on there, it’s one of the best free alternatives.
As Dixit mentions, when editing an image on Pixlr, you can make all of the usual adjustments like cropping, rotating, resizing, brightening, and red-eye correcting. However, you can also make countless, more advanced alterations, too. These include filters, borders, textural overlays, color splashes, and text. So whether you want to make a photo of your staff pop off the page or you want to create a captivating infographic to share on social media, Pixlr can help make that happen. For free.
The “free” aspect is what seals the deal for us. Prospect Genius reviews Pixlr so favorably because it’s a budget-friendly way to get around a hurdle that trips up countless small businesses. With the help of Pixlr, you can make your website and overall web presence look so much more professional. Heck, even small Internet marketing companies could take advantage of it to keep their overhead low!
Next time on “Prospect Genius Reviews…,” we’ll take a look at Instagram’s new business tools.