Image Editing for Website Owners (Without Buying Photoshop)

If you run your own website, you'll eventually need to edit an image. Crop a product photo, resize a hero image, remove an awkward background, swap out a colour. For most small business owners, that doesn't justify an ongoing Photoshop subscription. Here's what actually works.

What you'll typically need to do

For most small business websites, image editing comes down to a handful of jobs:

• Resizing a 4MB camera photo down to something a website can load quickly
• Cropping to a specific shape (square for Instagram, wide for hero images)
• Compressing to keep file sizes small without visible quality loss
• Removing backgrounds from product shots so the product sits cleanly on the page
• Simple touch-ups — straightening, adjusting brightness, basic colour fixes

You don't need professional retouching software for any of this. You need something with sensible defaults that doesn't take three hours to learn.

The tools worth knowing about

Canva — easiest entry point

Canva (built in Sydney, no less) is the answer for most small business owners. It's free for the basics, browser-based, no installation, and forgiving if you've never touched design software before. The templates take care of correct sizing for social media posts, web banners, and the like. Where it falls down: pixel-precise edits and complex compositing.

Photopea — Photoshop, in your browser, free

Photopea is essentially a free browser-based clone of Photoshop. Same layout, same shortcuts, opens .PSD files. If you've ever used Photoshop and don't want to pay for it any more, this is the one. No download, no account, just open it and start editing.

GIMP — free desktop heavyweight

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) has been around since the 90s and is genuinely capable of professional-grade work. Free and open-source. The catch: the interface is famously clunky, and the learning curve is steep. Worth the effort if you're a power user; overkill if you just need to crop a few photos.

Affinity Photo 2 — pay-once Photoshop alternative

Affinity Photo 2 is a one-time purchase rather than a subscription. It sits at roughly Photoshop's level of capability and is what plenty of designers I know switched to when they quit Adobe. Worth it if you'll use it regularly enough that the one-off cost makes sense.

Photoshop — still the industry standard

If you genuinely need it (and you'll know), Adobe Photoshop is the most powerful option, with the ecosystem of tutorials, plugins, and integrations to match. It's also the most expensive, and the cost is ongoing for as long as you use it.

remove.bg and Photoroom — for one specific job

If background removal is the only thing you need (e.g. for product photography), don't bother with full editing software. remove.bg and Photoroom do that one job in seconds, often for free.

What I'd actually suggest

For most small business owners I work with:

• Canva for day-to-day social media, simple resizes, and any time you want a template doing the heavy lifting
• Photopea when Canva isn't enough and you need real layer control
• remove.bg for product photo backgrounds

Total cost: zero. That covers 95% of what most small businesses need.

If you find yourself bumping up against limits (huge files, complex retouching, batch processing), that's the point to consider Affinity Photo or Photoshop — not before.

The bottom line

You don't need professional image editing software to run a small business website. You need a couple of free tools that do the everyday jobs without fuss. Pay only once you've outgrown the free options.

Get in touch if you'd like a hand setting up a workflow for managing your own website's images, or working out which tools fit your business.