5 most useful websites for online photo and video editing

A professional video editing setup (Image via Reddit/u/isaac_anaya)
A professional video editing setup (Image via Reddit/u/isaac_anaya)

If you don’t want to spend a fortune purchasing editing software, fear not, the internet has a host of websites that have professional-level tools for photo and video editing. In some cases, an online video editor will be easier to use than full-fledged software because of its simplicity.

With templates, presets, effects, and ease of use, multiple websites on the internet can be used to add effects to a photo quickly or edit a short film. This article lists five of the best platforms for online editing that you can use today.


1) Vrew

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Powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Vrew.voyagerx.com is a video editing platform that can caption videos using speech recognition. The program extracts audio from the video, then recognizes the speech and creates captions for it. Other than that, it offers a unique style of editing videos, such as a document in a 2D space instead of a 1D timeline.

Besides making use of its online features, the program is also available for download on Windows, Linux, and macOS, which enables several more features at no extra cost.


2) Adobe Express

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Adobe Express is a free platform for users to edit their photos using the web or on mobile. It offers thousands of unique templates, design assets, royalty-free photos from Adobe Stock, and more. The platform is great for beginners as it has intuitive tools that remove background, animated text, adding your brand name, and more, without needing expert-level editing knowledge.

It has a premium plan as well which adds some interesting templates and design assets, 20,000 licensed Adobe Fonts, and other features such as refined cutouts, resize, graphic groups, and the ability to convert and export as PDFs, along with a whole lot more. Adobe Express costs $9.99 per month.


3) Animoto

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Animoto is a cloud-based video creation service that is fairly easy to use. It has in-built video templates, video and text styles, screen recordings, and Getty Images Stock Library. The website also has a video slideshow maker that can be used by students for free to make presentations.

Users with no editing experience can simply add photos and video clips to make a video in a few steps. A vast music library is also available to use with licensed music tracks. The basic features are available for free, whereas some advanced features can be unlocked by subscribing to the professional plans which start at $8 per month.


4) Magisto

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Magisto.com is an online video editing program that also uses AI to help users edit their videos. The website brands its program as "Smart Video Maker," which makes use of an algorithm to analyze video clips uploaded by the user on three levels: visual, audio, and storytelling. It detects in-frame action, object detection, and camera motion after which the AI constructs a script for the final cut after which the user simply needs to stitch the cuts together.

The website also offers marketing features powered by AI that helps users distribute their videos, increase brand awareness, generate leads, and increase sales. The premium plan costs $4.99 per month, the professional plan is priced at $9.99 per month and the business plan at $34.99 per month, all with varying features.


5) Canva

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Canva.com is an all-in-one website that comprises of a graphic design tool, photo editor, video editor, and presentation maker. The website can be used to create professional videos without prior experience by adding a template, adding your footage, adding audio and transition effects, and stitching it together. The photo editor also has thousands of free templates and effects, as well as some advanced features that compete against some of the top applications in the industry.

The free plan for Canva has all the basic features necessary for photo editing. However, enabling its video editing features comes under the pro plan, which also unlocks various advanced features. The pro plan costs $119.99 per year per individual.

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