Fotor Review

Having a simple program that delivers high-quality results is the perfect way to improve your online presence and social media profiles. Fotor is just such a program that allows you to edit your photos and create custom images for all of your image and design needs. 

Fotor is a completely online photo editor and graphic design tool to allow you to create custom pictures that can be used on a plethora of different platforms. From YouTube and Instagram to your own website, Fotor will keep you creative. 

Fotor: At a Glance

Fotor is a product that can be used either for free with limited access, or with a Pro subscription and unlimited access to their tools.

Price:

• Fotor Pro - $39.99 per year
• Fotor Pro+ - $89.99 per year

The Score

Fotor

Ease of Use: 9/10

Features:  10/10

Pricing:  9/10

Overall:  9.5/10

Features

To better understand Fotor, here are some of the features and functions that set it apart as an online photo editor and graphic design tool.  

Fine-tuned editing is not what Fotor was made for. That being said, you can get great results with the tools it has. If you go into the Advanced Editing portion of the Adjust menu, you get more in-depth tools to work with. 

While this feature is helpful, it probably won’t satisfy the needs of professional photographers and editors. But if you are looking for a way to improve your simple photos for social media or thumbnails, Fotor’s got you covered. 

The background removal engine on Fotor has 2 options. The Smart Portrait cutout automatically takes out the background. This feature can be good or bad depending on how well the program recognizes what is to be kept or removed. More often than not, you will probably have to do some touch-ups. 

The second option is the Custom Cutout option. With Custom Cutout, you draw 2 lines to designate what is to be kept and what is to be removed. Unfortunately, the entire background removal function of Fotor is only available with Premium once your free trial has ended. 

Fotor offers one of the best selections of tools for image correction and enhancement of all online photo editors. It provides tools like blemish remover, red-eye remover, photo reshaper, photo retouch, teeth whitening and many other features to skillfully edit your photos. 

A good portion of these tools are premium-only options, but it also has quite a few available to the free users out there. Every beauty tool that Fotor has to offer is easy to use and adjust, making it hands down one of the absolute best options for image correction in online photo editing.

In the Effects menu, Fotor has grouped together Filters and Effects. It has a decent selection of filters, with some being limited for Premium users. Fotor even has connections with GoArt for AI photo effects; you can find a link at the bottom of the filter menu. 

As far as the effects themselves are concerned, its 5 effects — Color Splash, Magic Brush, Lens Flare, Festive and Funky — look gorgeous. Each has a unique vibe to it, but only Color Splash is available to free users. The effects alone are well worth the cost of Premium.

The sizing in Fotor is relatively simple. You set the dimensions when you first open a project, either with custom dimensions or preset templates. An example of this action would be the 600x600px for a logo or the 1280x720px for a YouTube thumbnail. This feature is perfect because you don’t have to guess the dimensions you need.

Cropping is a simple process on Fotor. You can either click and drag the edges to the desired positions, or you can type in the dimensions that you want to use. The key component to remember is that you are only cropping the image within the project, not the project itself. Once the project dimensions have been set, you can’t change them. 

You can access many templates for almost any kind of project that you could think of on Fotor. That includes advertisements, wedding announcements, posters and other projects. It is super easy to customize the template you have selected and replace the stock images and phrases with what you want to be displayed. 

Right alongside Templates is the Collage option on Fotor. A lot of these offerings are technically collage templates, but they act as inspiration to help you come up with new ideas and formats. Presenting multiple pictures in creative ways — whether you are trying to get a point across in advertising, tell a story or just have a nice collage for display — enhances your photo editing.

An exceptional aspect of Fotor that really sticks out and sets it apart is that it has tutorials for its own product and for editing and graphic design as a whole. Rather than jumping back and forth from Googling tutorials and tips, you can look at what Fotor has to say. This smart approach allows Fotor to offer a product while teaching individuals who come across its site. 

Factors for Success

Fotor, founded in 2012, is a fairly recent program. You can use it on your computer or mobile device with the app. The great part about it being completely online is that Fotor makes any projects you start on your computer completely accessible to you on your mobile devices. 

All in all, Fotor is a capable program that, while much of it is limited to Pro subscribers, is priced fairly for anyone wanting to try it out. When in doubt, you can play with the free trial to see how it holds up for your creativity.