With social media and sharing content with friends becoming the norm of the day, people keep coming up with new and unique ways to say what they’re trying to say. The closest example we can cite for this case is animated GIFs. All you need to do is scroll down your Facebook page a little to spot at least one hilarious GIF someone has shared. Even on WhatsApp, GIFs are the new craze. From commenting on posts to reacting with witty one-liners, everything is being achieved with custom GIFs these days.

If you’ve ever wondered how people seem to find the perfect funny GIFs to share on the exact right moment, well, you’re not alone. A lot of people (including us) have been looking for a way to create our very own GIFs with custom images and we’ve found just the tool that can help. Say Hi to ezGIF – the online GIF maker and image editor. Let’s find out all there is to know about this tool.

ezGIF – Suite of tools for GIFs

ezGIF started off as a simple online GIF maker tool but has evolved into a whole suite of tools for GIF editing. Creating, resizing, cropping, reversing, optimizing, and applying some effects to GIFs, you can do anything with it. Classified as one of the best post production tools, this is the go-to product if you really want to turn your GIFs around. It works with images as well as videos (not YouTube links, yet), lets you play around with GIF size, make them more effect-y flip them horizontally or vertically, add overlay texts, change their speed – basically do almost anything you can think of when it comes to GIFs.

Here’s a quick look at the different tools packed within the ezGIF suite:

• GIF Maker – Allows you to combine separate image files as frames to create your own animated GIFs.
  • You can also edit, shorten or merge existing GIFs.
  • Additionally, you can upload JPG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and they will be converted automatically
  • Supports PDF files or ZIP archive with images
• Video to GIF – Allows you to upload your mp4, AVI, WEBM, FLV, WMV and many other popular types of video and rich media files to turn them into animated GIFs.
  • Source video file can be uploaded from your computer or Smartphone or fetched by URL
  • Lets you crop the video by entering start and end time
• GIF Resizer – Lets you resize, crop, or flip animated gifs and other images, with the same quality and speed as professional software, without the need to buy and install anything.
  • Lets you select the action to perform if the aspect ratio of the source image and your chosen size does not match
  • Supports resizing of animated WEBP, APNG, FLIF and MNG files (and any other common image type) without losing animation
• Optimizer – Lets you optimize GIF images in one of 4 ways:
  • Reduce GIF file size by compressing them using Lossy GIF compression
  • Reduce GIF file size by reducing the number of colors in each frame
  • Reduce GIF file size by removing every second, third, or fourth frame to reduce frame rate and, therefore, file size
  • Reduces GIF file size by keeping the first frame in the background, and making unchanged parts of the following frames transparent

In addition to these primary tools, ezGIF also includes GIF to Sprite Converter and Sprite Sheet Cutter to play around with CSS Sprites that can be posted directly on websites.

How the various tools within ezGIF work

Visit ezgif.com and choose one of the 4 primary products indicated in the upper center of the screen. Let’s pick each up one by one.

GIF maker

1. Click on “GIF Maker” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the files with which you wish to create GIF. You can choose multiple files by pressing and holding ctrl / command key
3. Click on “Upload and make a GIF”
4. You will now be redirected to the editing page. Here, make the desired changes like:
   1. Change image order (drag and drop)
   2. Set time delay for each image (in milliseconds)
   3. Resize to make all images of the same size
   4. Toggle the range of frames
   5. Set Loop Count (how many times do you want the GIF to repeat playing)
   6. Additional effects (crossfade frames to include a smooth transition effect, or remove frame stacking)
5. When all edits have been made, click on “Make a GIF”
6. After a few seconds your GIF should display in the a box a little lower on the page
7. You can make changes to the GIF (crop, resize, optimize, speed, etc.) after it is created

Video to GIF

1. Click on “Video to GIF” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the video (from computer or Smartphone) with which you wish to create GIF
3. Click on “Upload Video” (maximum upload size is 120 MB)
4. You will now be redirected to the editing page. Here, make the desired changes like:
   1. Cut any undesired parts of the video
   2. Enter start and end time (if you don’t select anything, the GIF will be created with the first 5 seconds of the video)
5. When all edits have been made, click on “Make a GIF”
6. Depending upon the size of the video and your edits, after a little while your GIF should display in a box a little lower on the page
7. You can make changes to the GIF (crop, resize, optimize, speed, etc.) after it is created

GIF Resizer

1. Click on “GIF Resizer” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the image you wish to resize (GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, WebP, APNG, FLIF, MNG)
3. Click on “Upload”
4. Once file has been uploaded, click on “Resize”
5. Depending upon the size of the image after a little while your resized image should display in a box a little lower on the page

Optimizer

1. Click on “Optimizer” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the image you wish to optimize (GIF, JPG, PNG)
3. Click on “Upload”
4. You will now be redirected to the editing page. Here pick which technique you wish to use to optimize the image:
   1. Lossy GIF Compression
   2. Color Reduction
   3. Removing every nth frame
   4. Optimize Transparency
5. When all edits have been made, click on “Optimize”
6. After a little while your optimized image should display in the a box a little lower on the page

That’s pretty much it.

The Good VS the Bad

The good points of this tool are many and don’t need to be recounted.

There are no bad sides as such, only some features that would be good to have, like the ability to upload videos larger than 120 MB, or YouTube link support.

• Create, edit, resize, & optimize animated GIFs easily with @ezgif_com ezgif.com/ via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

Considering that the tool lets you do everything for free, we’d say it’s definitely worth it. It works great and does exactly what it promises – delivers great GIFs! Double thumbs up.

Gone are the days when shopping needed people to step out of the comfort of their home. With facilities like multiple choice, cash-on-delivery payments, free first-hand trials, and easy returns, shopping for anything, from everyday essentials to luxury items to clothes and accessories, has become a sit-at-home thing. All you need is a hand held device or a laptop with an active Internet connection and you’re set to go. Even leading product vendors realize the immense potential of the mobile device market which is why they come up with novel ways to entice more customers and make online shopping easier than ever before.

One of the newest trends to overtake the online shopping market is that of displaying shoppable images on websites. A shoppable image is one where you see a still photograph of a product in use and can click on it directly to see its price and purchase link. This setup saves you from the headache of having to browse through product catalogues and makes things a lot simpler. Some of the most popular clothing, accessory, make-up, and home decor brands are making use of this kind of direct marketing by simply putting shoppable images as advertisements on various blogs and webpages. If a user sees something he likes, he doesn’t need to click on the image and be redirected to the vendor website where he has to browse through products. Instead, he is straightaway given small clickable icons on the exact products on display which when clicked give him the price of that product and the link to its purchase page. Direct and simple!

Wanna try out this brilliant sales mechanism? Visit LinkLay!

LinkLay – Quickly make product images shoppable

LinkLay is a unique online tool developed with the aim to give bloggers, content creators, online marketers, and even businesses to increase their profits by increasing the click-through rates to product sales pages. It introduces website visitors to a new way of shopping – picking out the exact product they like from the advertisement they’re attracted to.

How many times have you come across an advertisement for a dress or a bag maybe which you really liked but which on clicking led you to the vendor website where you had to sift through thousands of products to find it? Well, say goodbye to that with direct links to the “buy now” page of the exact product you click on in an advertisement, thanks to shoppable images created with LinkLay.

Getting the drift? For some more clarity, here are the best benefits of LinkLay at a glance:

• It caters to the growing needs of internet users who want instant results and a seamless experience
• It gives vendors the chance to keep their audience engaged by directly leading them to the sales page for the product they like and thus prevent a hot sale from going cold
• With LinkLay, embedding a shoppable image on your site is as simple and copying and pasting code snippets where you want it to appear
• Shoppable images created with LinkLay are kept free of any logos
• The platform is Pinterest friendly, Google compliant, and mobile responsive. Plus it integrated with Google Analytics to let you monitor the user impact of your shoppable images
• It is a great way for bloggers, content creators, and e-commerce vendors to convert more sales

LinkLay is compatible with all website builders and e-commerce platforms that accept HTML code like WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Magento, etc. It is powered by an extremely user friendly interface which makes creating shoppable images a matter of a few clicks.

Here’s how it works

To start using the tool, visit linklay.com and click on the red button that says “Start your 14-day trial”. This should lead you to a signup page where you’ll be required to fill in the usual new user information. Once through you’ll reach the dashboard with the following options:

1. First, you’ll be prompted to take a 37-second video demonstration of how to use the tool (first time users should take it). Close the video dialog when done.
2. Play around with the sample image provided by LinkLay to get a better hang of the product usage. Hover over the image to see 4 options – edit, copy code, analytics, and delete.
3. Since you’ve not added any clickable points on the image yet, select the ‘edit’ option.
4. You should now see the enlarged version of the sample image in the right-most panel of the screen and editing options in the middle panel.
5. To start adding click-points on the image, click anywhere on it. An instantaneous pop-up will appear containing the following fields
   1. Product name
   2. Price (indicating price with the appropriate currency symbol is recommended)
   3. URL to the buying page for the product
   4. Option whether or not you wish the user to open the link in same tab
   5. Option to enable / disable a no-follow link
   6. Option to enable / disable affiliate link disclosure
   7. Option to delete this click-point
6. When you’ve filled all fields in this pop-up, close it. The cursor will automatically take you to the next required setting which is color, shape, and size of the clickable icon. Make the desired changes (you’ll see the effects instantly on the image to the right) and click on ‘Save’.
7. Scroll down and give the Call-To-Action button an appropriate name like “But Now” or “View on Vendor Site”
8. Give the shoppable image a name (this is for identification purpose only, the name will not be displayed on the image)
9. Select the gallery on your website where you wish to place this shoppable image
10. When everything looks the way it should, click on “Save and Get Code”
11. This will open a floating pop-up with the HTML code for your shoppable image. Copy this code and paste it into the HTML section of your blog post or webpage where you want the shoppable image to appear.

That’s it, you’re all done. To create a new shoppable image, click on “Create New” from the left hand panel of the dashboard and you’ll be given the option to upload the image which you wish to edit with the same editing options displayed in the middle panel. To have a look at all your shoppable images, click on “Gallery” in the left hand panel.

Pricing & Licensing

For a tool that holds the potential to boosting direct sales, a monthly price of $7 (billed yearly) for a standard account is actually not bad. With an investment as low as that, you get to create 10 shoppable images a month that you can use on 1 website with Amazon Cloud Services backup, Google Analytics integration, no-logo images, as well as email support. Advanced higher priced packages come with even more features.

Not bad at all!

• Boost product sales with shoppable images created through LinkLay linklay.com via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

Quite as expected – a straight double-thumbs up!

One of the most effective ways to market your brand online is through banners. Attractive, eye-catching banners don’t just play the part of getting customer attention they are also one of the most traditional-but-still-relevant methods of promoting your brand image. The easiest example of effective banner marketing is affiliate program banners. They have all the relevant information squeezed into a box sized attractive banner that’s so catchy that a significant percentage of people viewing them end up either visiting the affiliate marketer’s website or actually enrolling for it.

While using banners is one thing, designing them is an entirely different story. Actually, the way your banners perform depends to a large extent on the way they are designed. That’s probably the reason organizations really wanting to reap a significant advantage hire banner designers and marketers dedicated to the end. However, affording good banner designers is not everyone’s cup of tea.

So if you’re a professional just starting out, does that mean you have to lose out on online marketing? Of course not! With Bannerwise, you can design and use engaging banners at an affordable price and capture all the audience attention you want.

Bannerwise – Easily create beautiful banners!

Bannerwise is a tool that lets you easily design ad banners of different sizes for different devices like mobile, desktop, and laptop. Suitable for businesses of all sizes, this cloud-based tool provides users with an interactive online interface where users can either upload images and design custom banners or choose from a rich library of pre-built templates. With users across the globe raving about it, Bannerwise is well on the road to grabbing the spot of the most coveted online banner designing product.

Key advantages Bannerwise offers include:

• Allows thousands of businesses to scale-up their banner production
• Optimize their display campaigns
• Improve their workflow

Here’s a quick glance at the best features of Bannerwise:

• Enables users to create professional HMTL5 banner ads quickly and easily
• Intuitive interface means no coding skills needed
• More than 100 professional animated banner templates
• Allows you to create one design and scaled it to fit all sizes and formats automatically
• You can edit all your banners simultaneously and monitor the changes keenly
• Banners designed with the tool are compatible with most popular ad networks
• Banners are high resolution but low in size
• Professional animations in a few clicks
• Allows easy banner optimization and testing

How the tool works

Trying a tool out before putting money on the line is the smart thing to do. So start using Bannerwise through the free 14-day trial by clicking on the dark pink button that says “Get My Free Trial” on the home page; doing that will redirect you to a sign-up page where you need to fill in your details. Once done, you’ll reach a login activate page with the message “We’re very excited to have you on board!”

But this is where the story sadly took a halt. Quite surprisingly, this message was followed by another one stating that we’ll be contacted by one of Bannerwise’s display experts soon. We weren’t sure why we were rebuffed like that when the next screen we should have seen was the tool’s dashboard. One reason we could think of was that we filled in dummy details since we simply wanted to check out how the tool looked in action.

But even after trying with legitimate details the message was the same. Either the platform was under maintenance or they weren’t accepting new registrations at the time, or maybe that was just the way they operated. But it was unusual. There was nothing more we could do except wait around to be contacted.

Pricing & Licenses

Bannerwise can be used in one of 3 flavors:

• Starter plan that gives a single user access to create about 25 banners for €99 per month
• Standard plan that allows up to 2 users to create unlimited banners for €239 per month
• Professional plan that lets up to 5 users create unlimited banners for €399 per month

There are additional benefits associated with each plan with more features being available with the higher priced plans, obviously. Steep prices if you ask us, but then, if you strike the right cord with your audience through banners created using the tool, you’ll end up making much more that you spend.

• Design creative, elegant, catchy HTML5 banners within a few clicks with @BannerwiseNL bannerwise.io/ via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

We actually couldn’t find out any pros or cons with Bannerwise because we didn’t get a chance to use it. At the time of writing this review, we were waiting for someone from Bannerwise to contact us and take things forward. So saying anything at this point would be futile. But we promise to put up a review of the tool’s working with its pros and cons as soon as we get the chance to experience it.

What does every writer-in-the-making need? The right inspiration, the right plot, helpful tools, or the proper environment? Truthfully, all of these! But there’s something he needs when he’s done with all of these, and that something eventually proves to be more critical than everything else. That’s a qualified, patient, and honest editor.

While there are heaps of professionals out there who can do the job of an editor extremely well, every small time writer might not be able to afford them. What he needs is someone to do the job for him equally well, but at a much reasonable price. And that’s where the Hemingway App steps in.

Hemingway App is a one of a kind online editor that allows you not just to pen down your thoughts, but helps you improve your writing performance by highlighting grammatical, syntactical, as well as prose and voice related errors so that you can make your writing bolder, stronger, and clearer. Check out the amazing features and working of this tool in our complete review here.

Hemingway App – Making your writing bolder and clearer!

Hemingway App is an online writing and editing tool that offers users a distraction-free environment to jot down their creativity. It is a rather simplistic tool with only and only what’s needed for it to do its job. When you visit the tool’s homepage, you land up right in front of the editor with a sample text written within it and suggested changes highlighted in different colors. Each color is associated with a kind of change that the tool suggests you should make. The tool indicates what kind of edit you should make to make your text more descriptive, meet it’s intended goal, hit the audience in the way it is supposed to, and be interesting too!

For example, in the sentence “You can utilize a shorter word in place of a purple one”, the word utilize is highlighted to indicate that the user should make an edit here. If the user hovers the mouse over the highlighted word, an appropriate suggestion is made by the tool to make the sentence more readable and easily comprehendible. In this case the suggestion was to replace the word “utilize” with a simpler word like “use”. So basically, the tool helps you tone down your content where needed and also makes it more forceful where applicable.

The key features of Hemingway App are:

• It cuts the dead weight from your writing by highlighting wordy sentences in yellow and fiercer ones in red
• Highlights adverbs, passive voice, and dull, complicated words while suggesting you to change them thus making your writing more powerful and clear
• The tool can be downloaded as a desktop app and used without Internet
• Includes text formatting options like bold, italics, headlines, and bullets
• Supports one-click integrations with Medium and any WordPress blog
• Handles everything you need for a web page, including HTML headings, formatting and links
• Once you’re ready to publish, it allows you to export your content as HTML or Markdown for your blogging platform or CMS
• Can work alongside other editors like Notepad, PDF, or Word by facilitating direct import options

This is how the tool works

Much of the tool’s working has been described in the previous section, however, here’s a concise account of the steps to use it:

1. Visit hemingwayapp.com and start writing in the middle of the screen
2. Wherever you make errors, words or phrases will be highlighted with one of the following colors indicating appropriate edits as described below:
   1. Yellow for length, complex sentences. These should be shortened or simplified to help readers understand them easily
   2. Red for extremely complicated sentences. This sentence should be edited to remove typically difficult words.
   3. Purple for words that have a simpler alternative
   4. Green for passive voice. This should be replaced with active voice words
   5. Blue for adverbs. These words can be omitted to make your writing stronger.
3. By default, the “Edit” mode is selected which will highlight errors on the fly. If you’d like to finish writing first and then make all the edits at one go, switch to the Writing mode by clicking on the “Write” tab on the top-right corner of the screen. This actually helps focus.
4. Text formatting options can be found in a horizontal menu placed at the top of the editor. Highlight the text you wish to format and click the appropriate formatting option to apply. Standard keyboard shortcuts also work.
5. Interestingly, the tool also displays a summary of the kind of read your writing is. To see this click on the “Show more” label from the right hand panel of the screen. You should find the following attributes:
   1. Reading time
   2. Letters
   3. Characters
   4. Words
   5. Sentences
   6. Paragraphs

This should help you get an idea of how your readers will perceive your writing.

Pros and Cons

The pros obviously include user-friendliness and utility. However, there are a few negatives too.

• Many of the tool’s features cannot be experienced with the free online editor.
• To take advantage of features like platform integrations, publishing, etc. you’ll need to buy the desktop version of the product

• Write bolder, writer clearer, with the @HemingwayApp hemingwayapp.com/ via @supermonitoring

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On the whole

Hemingwayapp is a useful tool. And priced at $19.99, it isn’t too costly either. If a basic editor with correctional abilities is what you’re looking for, this is the app for you. For advanced features however, you might want to look elsewhere.

The professional world would crumble without efficient emailing. A simple conversion between two people becomes official, substantial, and binding if converted into a properly drafted email. Letters of appreciation, job offers, projects contracts, designs, work documents, assignments, invoices, bills, etc. are all exchanged over email in the modern day and age. So it wouldn’t be baseless to say that, if you don’t know how to compose an appropriate email, you might find it extremely difficult to survive in a setting that uses tools like MS Office 365, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and the like on a regular basis.

Overwhelmed? You don’t need to be. Because tools like BeeFree have been developed specifically to hold your hand through the email drafting process. Check out how this simple yet brilliant tool can help you become an email pro in a few clicks.

BeeFree – Create Professional Emails Quickly

The name BeeFree actually stands for “Best Email Editor – Free” and is a part of the MailUp Group. The tool can be used as an online email editor and can also be embedded into SaaS applications. It is a drag-and-drop based email designer and builder for mobiles and hand-held devices which enables users to create mobile-responsive emails quickly and easily from anywhere.

Here are the most prominent features of the tool:

• Includes a drag-and-drop editor that lets you add individual email elements or entire rows directly from your desktop
• Emails designed with BeeFree are mobile-responsive so you don’t need to retest their look and feel on different devices
• Users get access to hundreds of elegant email templates
• The tool uses a 4-step approach:

1. Step 1: Pick an email template that suits your purpose
2. Step 2: Add your unique personalized content to the template you picked
3. Step 3: Download the message you created
4. Step 4: Use it wherever you like

That’s how simple it is! And if you find the free version of Bee interesting, you can always invest a little money and opt for more features with BeePro or BeePlugin.

Let’s see how it works

To start using BeeFree visit the tool’s homepage and click on the blue button that says “Start Designing”. This will direct you to the templates catalog from where you can choose the right email template for your purpose. There are a ton of categories to choose from including newsletters, events, e-commerce, and more. If you don’t find any template particularly interesting, you can start from scratch by using the first icon on the top-left corner (the blue colored one that says “Start from Scratch”). We tried out the tool both ways and here are the steps for each.

Start from Scratch:

• Click on “Start from Scratch” to get redirected to the editor
• From the right hand panel, select what kind of Content you wish to insert into your email design. Your choices include Text, Images, Buttons, Dividers, Social, and HTML. You can choose any combination of these elements too. Drag and drop each Content element into the left hand area of the editor.
• Click on the “Structure” tab in the right hand panel to decide and pick the layout of your emails. To apply a layout, drag and drop it into the left hand wider area.
• Click on the “Body” tab to pick from options like background color, content area color, font, link color, etc.
• Once you’ve designed everything and keyed in your email matter, you can preview what your final email will look like by clicking on the “Actions” drop down from the top menu and then selecting “Preview” option. You can view the preview for both desktop and mobile with this option.
• You can also choose to send a test email with your design to any email id you want.

At any point if you think you need guidance, simply click on the “Help” button from the right corner of the top menu. When your design is ready, click on “Save” button to download the whole message with all HTML and images to your device.

Start with a Template:

• Click on a template from the catalog to get redirected to the editor with the template opened in the left hand bigger panel
• All remaining options and settings for this kind of editing are the same as those seen in the “Start from Scratch” option
• Each template will have its own unique settings which you can alter as per your need using the given options in the right hand panel

The highs and the lows

The plus points of BeeFree include:

• Its drag-and-drop editor
• Responsive email-design capability
• There isn’t much of a learning curve attached to the tool which is good.
• Plus, it has ample reading material to supplement user’s understanding.
• And of course, the multitude of templates is an added bonus.

Coming to the negatives, there’s only one and it is actually quite expected of a free tool:

• You can’t do much beyond changing typeface, font size, color, photos, buttons etc. For any more flexibility than this you’ll have to go pro, which is kind of fair.

• Compose elegant emails quickly and easily with @beefreeio beefree.io/ via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

All in all, BeeFree is a nice tool. If a simple and quick email design is what you’re looking for and you don’t need any hassle, this is just what you need.

Love playing around with images but don’t have a licensed copy of Adobe Photoshop or similar cool image editing tools? Wish to unleash your creativity by enhancing a few pictures from your latest travel trip but have very limited editing options in the tool you have? Monitoring the online space for a great tool that can help you easily bring out new shades in your pictures without having to pay too much?

Did you answer all those questions with a ‘Yes’? If so, your search should end at Photopea – the perfect free online image editor.

Photopea – Load, Edit, & Save Images easily

Photopea is a free online image editor that lets you load, edit, and save Adobe Photoshop (PSD) files, Gimp (XCF) files, and Sketch (Sketch App) files without using any plug-ins. And that’s what sets this tool apart from conventional photo editors.

Popular image editors like Picasa, Pixlr, Fotor, etc. can work with a wide variety of generic image formats like JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, etc. However, most of them fail to load and edit image files created with other photo editing tools like Adobe Photoshop, Gimp, or Sketch. So what should a user do if he wishes to edit an existing PSD / XCF / Sketch file downloaded from the Internet or one that is created by him with a version of Photoshop / Gimp / Sketch that has expired? Answer – use Photopea.

Photopea uniquely gives you the freedom to work on image files as you would using popular commercial photo editors like Photoshop. Since the tool is free to use, it is an extremely useful alternative to Photoshop or Sketch. So while professional users and organizations might want to stick to commercial tools for the features they offer, home users who cannot afford them can use Photopea to the same end. The tool doesn’t need you to download or install anything; you can use it directly from within your web browser.

Some of the coolest features of the tool include:

• It can work with both raster and vector graphics
• Enables dragging-and-dropping images into the browser to import for editing
• Allows saving work as PSD or as JPG / PNG
• It can work with layer styles, masks, smart objects, text layers and more
• Adjustments include Brightness, Contrast, Levels, Curves, Vibrance, Hue, Saturation
• It can run on any device (desktop, laptop, tablet, phone or any other computer)

Photopea can be used for tasks as simple as image resizing to complex work such as webpage design, photograph processing, creating illustrations, etc. The tool doesn’t have much of a learning curve attached so you can start playing around with it in no time.

How to use Photopea

Land up on the tool’s homepage (www.photopea.com) and you should see the editor open up in the window. Plus point one – no signup needed, it lets you get straight to the point. Since it is free of cost you might see some advertisements in the right hand panel of the screen; if they’re distracting to you, close them using the small x on the top-right.

To start editing images, you can start a new project by clicking on ‘New Project’ in the center of the screen or by going to File -> New. You’ll be asked to give your project an appropriate name, a preferred width and height, and choose a background color. Click on ‘Create’ to open up a white canvas for your first Photopea project. Alternatively, you can load an image from your computer by clicking on ‘Open From Computer’ or going to File -> Open. The third option is to load a demo PSD or Sketch file and start editing it.

Once the file opens up, editing it is pretty much the same as Photoshop. The tool’s interface too resembles Photoshop so that users can have a sense of familiarity. All editing options have clear Alt texts so if you don’t understand the symbol for any tool, just hover your mouse on it and you should see its name.

The tool is largely user-friendly except for a few glitches here and there. For example, it doesn’t let you modify any text on the image directly. To do so, you either need to hide the text layer or delete it and add a new text object on top. Similar minor restrictions should be expected at every point while using the tool.

One of the most useful editing options is the Move tool that lets you drag and position any part of the image to any place you want. This is because like Photoshop, Photopea regards an image to be composed of several layers with each layer hosting one image component. That’s the reason it gives you the kind of image editing flexibility it does.

To understand the tool’s working in detail, visit the ‘Learn’ section through its button on the top-right menu.

Pros VS Cons

Photopea scores some major plus points:

• Doesn’t require any download, install or plug-in to work
• Loads quickly and is very responsive
• Drag-and-drop support
• Very familiar to Photoshop
• Eliminates environment constraints that Photoshop or other editing tools have

There are a few drawbacks too:

• Users with no prior knowledge of Photoshop might get lost easily
• If only basic image editing options are what you’re looking for, this might be a very complex tool for you

• Load, edit, save PSD/XCF/Sketch file within your browser with @photopeacom photopea.com/ via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

True to the claims of it being a worthy alternative to Photoshop, Photopea is a very useful tool that gives users access to quite a few Photoshop features at absolutely no cost. However, it does have its limitations. It can easily get confusing for beginners or home users with no extensive image editing experience. It is ideal for users who are familiar with Photoshop, Sketch, or Gimp and who know their way around image editing terminologies.

The world is going gadget crazy. From buying groceries to designing projects to making travel bookings, everything can be done with a few taps on your mobile device or tablet. No wonder web-apps and websites are “the thing”. But as users of web-apps and websites, do we pay attention to how intricately and closely they’re built? Do we ponder on how many hours of work, research, monitoring, and testing goes into building the perfect website or web-app that you and I can use to make our lives simpler each day? Not really.

Well, application developers really toil to build those sleek, responsive, marvels of technology that we call “apps” and are happy to use. How great it would be if someone did something really nice for those application developers? Something that would ease their workload and simplify the whole application building process? Actually, that’s exactly what the makers of BootPly have done. They’ve transformed the way web-apps are built by utilizing one of the most popular frontend frameworks, Bootstrap.

Sweet, isn’t it!

BootPly – The fun Bootstrap editor and builder

For those of you who are new to the word “Bootstrap”, it is a free and open-source frontend web framework for designing websites and web applications. It contains HTML- and CSS-based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation and other interface components, as well as optional JavaScript extensions. Although Bootstrap is gaining immense popularity owing to its features, there is a slight learning curve attached to it and beginners might find it a tad uphill.

But BootPly is what makes working with Bootstrap fun. It lets you play around with Bootstrap while allowing developers to leverage their code repository, snippets, examples, and templates. The platform offers Bootstrap developers a drag-and-drop visual editor which they can use to rapidly design and build web-apps. Moreover, it is integrated with other popular Bootstrap plugins, micro-libraries and frameworks like FontAwesome, Bootstrap Select, Angular JS, Isotope, Google Maps, and others.

Some of the best features of BootPly are:

• Facilitates hand-coding with a JavaScript HTML and CSS editor
• Includes a visual drag-and-drop interface builder for rapid prototyping
• Gives access to 1000’s of Bootstrap examples, free themes, templates and layouts
• Provides a searchable and shareable code repository
• Enables you to mingle with a reputation-based collaborative community

There’s nothing flashy about BootPly and that’s one of its strongest points. It’s simple, to-the-point, and efficient.

Using BootPly

There are a number of entry points into BootPly. We’ll give you a sneak peak into each one of them. Land on the tool’s homepage and you’ll find the following clickable options:

• Hand-coding
• Drag-and-drop
• Play Now
• A button at the bottom called “Get Started with BootPly Now”
• A link at the top to “Boot Bundle”

Hand-coding, Play Now, and “Get Started” redirect you to the same page – a screen with multiple panels to start coding. There are dedicated panels for JavaScript and CSS and one for the main code. You’ll find a preview panel at the bottom and helpful links in the left sidebar. Start writing code using the options to use Base CSS, Components, Icons, etc through various drop-downs. Once your code is ready, you can execute it using the “Run” button in the file menu. The result of the execution will be displayed within the Preview panel. You can also “Save” your code temporarily using the save button in the file menu but to save the script for good, you’ll need to Register.

To register, click on the “Login” button on the top-right corner of the screen. Provide required details and sign up. The tool doesn’t ask for any credit information at signing up time. At any point of time if you feel the working panels are too small to code comfortably, you can switch your viewing mode to ‘Full Screen’ using a button for the purpose given just below the CSS panel. Similarly, to view things as they would appear on a mobile / handheld, use the appropriate ‘Smartphone / Mobile device preview’ button.

You can code, execute, test, delete, re-code, correct, and repeat everything numerous times with BootPly. No strings attached. That’s why it’s called the Bootstrap playground. However, once your final code is ready and you wish to save it to your machine through a convenient “Download” button given below the CSS panel, you’ll need to purchase an Upgraded subscription of the tool.

Another important aspect to take note of is that to simply code, execute, and test you don’t need to login. However, to use BootPly’s drag-and-drop visual editor, you do. So in effect, to see the real power of the tool you must register.

• Drag & drop #Bootstrap components with @BootPly bootply.com/ via @supermonitoring

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The Ups and Downs

Needless to say, there are several plus points with the tool. And honestly, it was quite hard for us to find a fault with it. As a matter of fact, it makes app development using Bootstrap so much fun that even if there was a con, we’d probably ignore it.

Final Words

We loved BootPly! If you’re a web designer who invests hours of their time into application and website development, you should definitely check it out. You’ll be able to use most of the tool’s features for free which makes it all the more awesome.

The modern world recognizes the power of words. With Internet being transformed into an information hub, more and more people hook onto it to monitor all sorts of stuff ranging from food to technology to travel and leisure. In such a setting, one of the best ways to make oneself useful is by being a part of the community that makes such valuable information available. Writers and bloggers are an enormous part of this community. And this post is about a tool that is bound to make the work of bloggers and writers easy. We’re talking about StackEdit here and trying to find out how much water this online in-browser editor holds.

StackEdit – In Browser Editor for Smart Writers

When you hear the name StackEdit, it hardly strikes you as an online writing tool with awesome features that can simplify the work of bloggers and writers to a great extent. But that’s exactly what it is. StackEdit is an in-browser Markdown editor that promises to deliver an unrivalled writing experience. It lets you create articles and blog posts that you can publish on a number of social platforms simultaneously. And if you’re thinking there’s nothing great about it, wait till you hear about all the controls it offers you.

The tool encompasses almost the range of capabilities packed into NotePad++ or WordPad or other offline popular writing tools. Of course it isn’t as diverse as Microsoft Word, but as far as blogging or posting articles is concerned, it lets you achieve everything you need. Powered by What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get controls, the editor helps you visualize the final rendering of your documents before you actually post them online. What’s more, you can integrate StackEdit with Google Drive and Dropbox to save your documents directly to the cloud.

Additional highlights of the tool include:

• “Scroll Sync” extension to bind the editors’ scrollbars so that you can keep a constant eye on the output’s final look while writing
• Built-in “Spell checker” to carry out multilingual spelling checks and display suggestions for correction
• Various customizable options available to personalize writing settings and create personal extensions
• Allows direct upload of documents to Blogger, GitHub, Tumblr, WordPress, etc
• Documents can be uploaded in Markdown format, HTML, or using Underscore template engine
• Facilitates collaboration on common documents, automatically merges modifications from multiple collaborators
• Supports insertion of inline comments and discussions like Word or Google Docs
• Includes an offline mode that allows you to write on the move just like a desktop application

With advanced capabilities of inserting mathematical expressions into documents and creating UML diagrams using simple syntax, StackEdit is quickly becoming one of the most popular in-browser writing editors of all time.

Here’s how to use StackEdit

Visit the tool’s homepage and click on “Start writing now!” in the top menu. This will redirect you to a screen divided into 2 panels – left one for editing and right one to preview the output. The preview window is toggle-able and you can close it if distracts you while writing. By default you’ll see some text displayed in the editor. It is dummy text that you can delete but we’ll advise against it since going through it can give you helpful pointers about the tool’s syntax.

The syntax of the tool resembles HTML with tags specifying text attributes, for example, to insert icons tags are used. Catching the other shortcuts is simple too. We quickly made out that to make some text bold we had to enclose it within asterix pairs (**text**) and marking some text as headings (H3) required prefixing it with the same number of hash signs (###). Similarly, figuring out the trick behind inserting bullet lists and keyboard button images was easy.

We recommend that you read the full dummy text displayed in the editor to know about StackEdit’s features in detail. If you do need to delete the text, copy-past it elsewhere and then go ahead. This could save many of your potential work hours that you might have to spend in the future to find out precious shortcuts about the tool (like how to insert a table of contents or create UML diagrams using text syntax).

In addition to the text you’ll find a host of other editing options in the file menu including Bold, Italics, Hyperlink, Code-Sample, Image, etc. Simply click on any of them to insert the respective tags in the text and you’ll be good to go. In the same menu you’ll find undo-redo buttons as well as a button that allows you to insert comments into the documents you create.

On the left-most corner of the file menu you’ll find a hash button which reveals additional options like import / export document, share, publish, convert to Markdown, etc. It will also give you access to account settings. Lastly, on the right-most corner of the file menu, a folder button will allow you to create new document, delete an existing document, as well as manage your documents.

Plus VS Minus

We were actually quite impressed by StackEdit. The tool was so simple, yet so brilliant. It gave us access to all options needed to create perfect looking documents and upload them to various social platforms easily. Moreover, it included a bunch of editing options and features at par with popular offline editors like Word.

But, there were also a few drawbacks we noticed, the biggest one being the absence of a ‘Save’ button. The documents were stored only in the browser’s local storage. There was no option to create an account wherein you could perhaps save the documents you create. So in case the browser crashed, we could lose all our text and changes. Another one was that although once connected to the tool’s site, you can get disconnected and work offline, to initially establish a session you need an Internet connection. This contradicts the tool’s claim to support offline working.

• Brilliant in-browser Markdown editor for writers / bloggers – @stackedit stackedit.io/ via @supermonitoring

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Final Verdict

StackEdit is actually a great tool, though with a few limitations. But then considering it doesn’t need you to pay even a single penny, not having to sign up could be counted as a benefit if the makers can provide a way to save documents.