App of the Week – FotoJet

Published on March 30, 2017

There are more online options for would-be graphic designers than ever before. From Adobe’s powerful suite of industry standards (now available on mobile!) to social media-specific tools like Pablo, there are countless options available for pros and novices alike.

One of the standouts in the crowded design sphere? FotoJet, a powerful tool that bills itself as “an all-in-one free online tool for graphic design, photo collage and photo editing.”

Starting from scratch or using pre-made templates, users can put FotoJet to work for projects ranging from Facebook cover photos to cards to flyers. What advantages does it offer? How does it stack up to competitors in the field?

After spending some serious time fooling around with FotoJet, Geek’s resident graphic design guru Cally Kopplin had a few thoughts:

“The photo editor is fairly impressive for a free tool. Fairly advanced, but not quite Photoshop or Lightroom. 

In my opinion FotoJet would be a great tool for creative people who aren't willing to commit time or money to learning Adobe products and also want to do their designing themselves. Lots of good options to make variations on their TONS of templates, or to start from scratch. They also give you quite a few ways to add your own images or use their preloaded clip art.

I'm thinking of it like a Photoshop that holds your hand every step of the way with very little learning curve… I would suggest it to a friend or family member that I couldn't help due to time constraints or whatever. It could be useful for people who want to send birth announcements or post a cute collage of their trip to Facebook.”

For hardcore design geeks, the app may be a little simplistic, as the functionality is geared more toward novices than people with a more thorough, professional understanding of hierarchy and color; in particular, Cally advises users looking to really play around with adjusting multiple layers to stick to Photoshop.

“All in all,” Cally says, “this is an impressive tool.”

Want to give FotoJet a try for yourself? You can explore the free version of FotoJet on its website or via its available Chrome extension. You can also upgrade to a premium version of FotoJet for $2.91/month, billed annually, or $4.99/month, billed monthly.

Think there’s another design tool we need to get our hands on? We’d love to hear your thoughts on Twitter or Facebook, where we keep the conversation on tech, social media, and design going 24/7.