THE BEST TOOLS FOR IMAGE DESIGN FOR SOCIAL NETWORKS

If you don't know about Photoshop and you don't have the time or desire to learn it. Also, you have considered hiring a professional graphic designer, but the budget is holding you back. The good news is that you don't have to hire a designer or spend hundreds of dollars on software. 

There are some great free graphic design apps that you can use to create amazing social media designs. Whether you want to create an image from scratch, make memes from your photos, or just want a cool background photo, we bet you'll find an image maker here that can help.




Desygner

It's one of the best tools for creating compelling images for social media with relatively little effort (although if you want to dig deeper and spend more time on your images, this app also has enough advanced features to satisfy you). 

There are plenty of templates to work with, but you can also do it manually by importing designs from popular formats like PSD (Photoshop) and SVG (open). This app is great at remembering your favorite color combinations, brand logos, and other settings, making it easy to create multiple images and designs with the same look. 

It's friendly to beginners and those with a lot of experience, but users with limited time will also appreciate the ease of use. You can create everything from banners to blog headers, social posts (automatically sized for a specific platform), physical cards, and stickers. 

The basic version of Desygner is free and offers some amazing benefits without spending any money. Pro+ subscriptions start at $9.95 per month and give you access to millions of Shutterstock images, unlimited content storage, design and animation. There's also a more affordable enterprise tier for $20 per month that includes features like sharing company assets, setting up user roles, and other useful business features.


Canva

Canva has been a household name in graphic design for many years, and for good reason, it allows you to create professional-looking designs very quickly. The first time I used Canva, I felt like I had mastered Photoshop overnight. I used the free version. 

One of Canva's strengths is its huge library of professionally designed templates and layouts, including a wide variety of social media graphics, from Facebook covers and YouTube thumbnails to Tumblr banners, animations, and animations. Instagram photos and Twitter headers. But what separates the tool from the pack is its smooth drag and drop interface. In fact, it is very fluid and allows you to create social media graphics in minutes. Canva's library is so large that browsing the web can be confusing. 

Fortunately, the tool comes with a search feature to help you narrow down your options. Once you select a template, you can do anything with it because you'll be using the Canva editor. If you have any content or assets you'd like to use, simply upload and drop them into the editor and let your creativity run wild. Canva gives you plenty of room to add style and personality to your designs, thanks to the tool's elements. 

Objects are divided into categories, including lines, shapes, graphics, images, video, audio, diagrams, tables, frames, and grids. Text is an important part of creating graphic designs, and not just on social media. Fortunately, the free version of Canva has dozens of fonts in its library. Just click on the text in the side panel and browse the selections. If you are looking for something specific, you can always use the search function. 

For the price, Canva offers a free version. Other than that, pricing starts at $12.99 per month for up to five users on the Canva Pro plan. Additionally, Canva offers free Pro subscriptions to nonprofits and educators.

Pablo

Pablo is a simple text on image generator from the team behind the social media scheduling app Buffer. It couldn't be simpler to use or design. It's a plus for me, but if you need something with more options, check out one of the other great apps on this list. Seriously, Pablo is an essential app for creating posts. Open the website and you will be taken directly to the app. 

No need to create an account because there is no account. In the middle of the screen is a preview of your photo. On the left, you can search for images via Unsplash or click Upload Image to add your own. At the top of the screen, click Templates to choose one of six default settings. On the right side, you can choose the size and shape of the canvas, add filters, set text, and insert your logo or other graphic. Click on the text to modify its format and double-click on the text to edit it directly. Oh, and click Reposition to reposition and crop the background image. 

When you're happy with your message image (and it won't take long), click Share & Download to save your image, or post it directly to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram (or queue it with Buffer). Pablo is completely free to use, but its creator, Buffer, offers other design tools for landing pages and other forms of engagement for just $5 per month.

Snappa

Of all the apps on this list, Snappa is the only one with a free plan that has access to the same templates, graphics, images, and other design resources as the paid plan. The point is that instead of having to carefully check the model you're using, you can only download three each month. Despite the quality of Canva and Desygner, many of the free plans tell you that there is a paid plan that they want you to use. 

Snappa is much less aggressive, but no less useful. Another small difference from Snappa is that its templates, while great, aren't quite as themed as some of the other options, and there's no easy way to find them either. You should treat the defaults as a rule that you can customize and create, rather than something pre-made where you just need to add an image and change the wording. For example, if you want to create a birthday message, you have to look at the templates and choose the design that you like best. Then open it up and add your own image using the Bkgrnd tool in the sidebar, uploading an image, or finding one of the included royalty-free images that works for you. 

You can customize it further by clicking effects and adding a color overlay, blur, or other adjustment, most of which make any text on top of the image easier to read. When you're happy with how everything looks, tap Download to save your photo or Share to send it directly to your social media accounts—as long as you don't run out of your free posts. If so, you'll need to update or save it to keep the file until the monthly limit is reset. 

The free version of Snappa allows you to use all available templates. The only problem is that you can only upload three images per month, but this is quite manageable for people who don't need to draw a lot. Otherwise, the paid version is only $10 per month.


I hope this list has been helpful to you, of course there are a lot of applications that are similar and seek to do the same, but in our opinion these are the best for the time they have been working on this and for the number of users they manage, the who are very satisfied with what they offer. We are sure that any of these tools that you use, whether it is the free or paid version, will not disappoint you.