As a WordPress expert with over 15 years of experience, I‘ve seen firsthand how images can transform blog posts. But finding and creating visuals takes time.
The good news? Advancements in graphic design tools now make it simple for anyone to make professional images, even with zero design experience.
In this post, I‘ll share the top 13 tools I recommend to create better, more engaging graphics for your WordPress site.
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Why You Need Great Visuals
Compelling images grab readers‘ attention and break up walls of text. But the benefits go far beyond that:
- 94% more views – Posts with images get almost twice as many views as non-visual content (Orbit Media)
- Increases dwell time – Articles with images keep visitors on site longer, boosting SEO rankings (Search Engine Journal)
- 650% higher engagement – Tweets with images get 6.5x more retweets than text-only tweets (Buffer)
- Easier to digest info – Visual learners retain info better with a mix of text and images (Velentina)
As you can see, incorporating visuals into your posts provides tremendous value for both users and your blog.
Now let‘s dive into the top tools to help you create better images without needing to be a graphic design expert.
1. Canva
With over 50 million users worldwide, Canva is the most popular DIY graphic design platform. I‘ve used it for years and can personally attest to its capabilities.
The drag-and-drop functionality means anyone can create professional visuals in just minutes. Simply choose from one of their many templates or layouts.
From there, it‘s easy to:
- Customize colors
- Add graphics, icons, or shapes
- Insert text boxes
- Upload your own photos or illustrations
Another advantage of Canva is its massive library of over 75 million stock photos, graphics, and illustrations. You can use these royalty-free images without worrying about copyright issues.
Canva also makes photo editing a breeze. The enhanced tools allow you to:
- Remove photo backgrounds instantly
- Adjust brightness, contrast, saturation
- Apply filters and touch up blemishes
- Cropping and resizing
And templates are already optimized for every need – social media posts, blog graphics, YouTube thumbnails, infographics, posters, menus, and more.
Pro Tip: Install the Canva browser extension to easily turn any image on the web into a customizable Canva template with one click.
Canva empowers amateurs to make pro-level visuals. It‘s by far the most versatile and user-friendly tool available.
Pricing: Free or paid plans from $12.95 per month
2. Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark offers powerful graphic creation with the ease of drag-and-drop. As their slogan says, "Graphics made easy."
Like Canva, simply select a template and customize it by adding your own text, photos, icons, graphics, and more.
I appreciate Spark‘s simplicity while still providing professional results. The graphic capabilities outshine Canva while maintaining extreme ease of use.
Some of my favorite highlights of Adobe Spark include:
Photo Enhancement – Their one-click optimization tool uses AI to automatically adjust color balance, lighting, and other elements. Quickly enhances images with the right edits.
Integrations – Directly pull in photos from Adobe apps like Lightroom CC. Streamlines your workflow.
Animation – Make your graphics pop by adding animations and video overlays. Create engaging visual content.
Collaboration – Team members can work on the same projects. Commenting and sharing builds efficiency.
Brand Kit – Define your branded elements like logos, colors, and fonts to reuse across visuals. Maintains consistent branding.
Social Graphics – Templates sized for every social network – Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and more.
For beautiful graphics that help tell your story, Adobe Spark is a stellar free option.
Pricing: Free
3. PicMonkey
PicMonkey is one of the best advanced photo editors available today. While at its core, PicMonkey simplifies graphic design like Canva, its photo manipulation capabilities outshine most competitors.
I‘d say PicMonkey combines the ease of Canva with close to the editing prowess of Photoshop. Some examples include:
- Layering effects
- Retouching blemishes
- Adjusting shadows and highlights
- Color balance corrections
- Sharpness and blur control
- Remove backgrounds
PicMonkey also makes sizing images for different platforms simple. Blog posts, YouTube videos, social networks – templates are pre-sized for every need.
Additional useful features include:
- Hundreds of fonts, graphics, borders, textures
- Animated effects like confetti or fireworks
- Video slideshows from your images
- AI-powered image generation
- Hubspot integration
- Multi-page layouts like flyers or presentations
While the free plan is limited, PicMonkey delivers professional photo editing tools at an affordable price. Ideal for bloggers who want to get creative with custom images.
Pricing: Free plan or paid from $7.99 per month
4. Venngage
If you want to create infographics for your blog posts, Venngage is my top recommendation with millions of users worldwide.
Infographics are an excellent addition to well-researched blog posts. They grab attention while summarizing statistics or key points in a visual format.
Fortunately, Venngage simplifies infographic design thanks to hundreds of professionally created templates and the drag-and-drop editor.
Some of the elements you can customize include:
- Text boxes
- Charts and graphs
- Maps
- Tables
- Icons
- Illustrations
- Shapes
One of my favorite features is the ability to instantly turn data from Excel or Google Sheets into engaging charts and graphs. No manual Chart creation needed!
The infographics download as PNG, JPG, PDF, or SVG files. You can embed them into WordPress with no quality loss.
For presenting research data or stats from surveys, Venngage gives informative visuals to hook readers.
Pricing: Plans start at $19 per month
5. Snappa
Snappa positions itself as the graphic design tool for creators who value speed. The interface and automations focus on enabling you to produce visuals rapidly.
Some of the helpful time-saving features include:
Brand kits – Create palettes of brand colors, fonts, logos to reuse across multiple visuals quickly
Batch processing – Edit multiple images at once by applying the same filters, adjustments, or resizing to all
Integrations – Import free stock photos from providers like Unsplash, Pexels, and Giphy in a click
Photo filters – They claim you can create social posts in under 60 seconds by applying fast photo filters to templates
One-click resize – Images and templates are pre-built for every size – thumbnails, Facebook covers, Instagram posts, etc.
While more constrained than Canva, Snappa simplifies certain use cases like social media graphics, blog banners, ads, or resizing batches of product images.
The automation speeds up the process when you need high volumes of images in different formats. Helpful for ecommerce sites.
Pricing: Plans start at $19 per month
6. Adobe Photoshop
No list of image creators is complete without the industry leader Adobe Photoshop. It sets the standard for photo editing and graphic design.
I‘ll be honest – Photoshop comes with a steep learning curve. Beginners may find the interface overwhelming. But the capabilities are unmatched for pixel-perfect image quality.
Some of the many features include:
Manipulation – Seamless compositing, blending, masking, and retouching of images. Total control over every pixel.
Illustration – Drawing tools, brushes, stroke styles, and vector capabilities. Great for logos and icons.
Typography – Hundreds of fonts with advanced layout tools. Design visually stunning text effects.
Motion – Turn images into animated graphics and add overlays like snow or smoke.
3D tools – Generate and edit 3D graphics such as text, logos, or assets for websites.
Photography – Correct lens distortions, vignetting, perspective issues, chromatic aberration and more.
Workspaces – Customized layouts for photography, 3D, and video editing. Speeds up your workflows.
Creative Cloud – Seamless access to Adobe apps like Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and Adobe Stock. Work across multiple programs.
There‘s no denying the power of Photoshop. If you‘re willing to invest the time learning it, you can achieve professional-grade image creation capabilities.
Pricing: $215/month or $2100 upfront as part of Creative Cloud
More Tools to Check Out
Here are several more awesome graphic design tools worth checking out:
Figma – Browser-based design tool with incredible collaboration capabilities. Multiple users can simultaneously edit documents. Great for marketing teams. Free and paid plans available.
Inkscape – Free open-source vector editing software similar to Adobe Illustrator. Design logos, icons, diagrams, and more. Great alternative to paid vector tools.
Visme – Create stunning infographics, presentations, banners and other graphics using beautiful templates and easy drag-and-drop. Plans start at $19/month.
Fotor – Free photo editor with pro-level tools like one-tap enhance, HDR effects, tilt shift and more. Useful for optimizing images for blogs.
Vectr – Intuitive free tool for creating vector graphics like logos, illustrations, diagrams. Scalable for high-quality printing.
TinyPNG – My favorite tool for compressing image file sizes without losing quality. Speed up your site load times. 100% free to use.
Transform Your Blog with Better Images
Whew, those are over a dozen options for creating blog images without professional design expertise.
No matter what style or types of graphics you need, these tools empower you to make eyecatching visuals to boost engagement.
Hopefully this guide gave you some ideas on how to incorporate more images into your WordPress site. Let me know in the comments if you have any other favorite graphic tools I should check out!
