POV: You’re a pro freelance graphic designer and you think you already know the ins and outs of your craft. You understand the best tools needed for the job, and you’re confident you have everything you need at your disposal.  But wait, there’s more! You may think you’ve seen them all, but you might just be surprised to know that there are actually few other freelance graphic designer tools out there that can actually make certain parts of your task a whole lot easier – others might even be an alternative to Photoshop. And the best part is – these tools are for free!

• Photopea.com

Great alternative to: Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, XD  Supported file formats: .PSD, .SVG, .XD, .SKETCH, .XCF Photopea­ is a web-based graphic design software. Although it’s free and sponsored by advertisements, you may also purchase a premium account. Even a single month of premium is less expensive than the majority of subscription-based design programs. There are no penalties if you decide to stop paying, which is an added bonus. There are several ways to access Photopea, including straight from your browser, from a smartphone or tablet, or by downloading it to your computer. These are all cost-free choices. If Photopea is opened while connected to the internet at first, it can even be used without an internet connection.

• remove.bg

Pro and non-pro graphic designers can relate – it’s no easy task to remove photo backgrounds. Worry no more, because you have remove.bg for that. You can choose your image and instantly download the finished product with the backdrop eliminated – perfect for quick and easy freelance gigs. You might be thinking: “This may work for photos with simple backgrounds but what about those that are complicated?” The platform is really smart and can still get the job done for images with complex backgrounds.  It’s completely automatic, which means you don’t need to manually select the background and foreground layers to separate them. To identify foreground layers and distinguish them from the background, they make use of powerful AI technologies. It’s really just upload, click, then poof! 1 image with no background order for a busy freelance graphic designer is ready!

• cleanup.pictures

Want to explore basic editing skills like removing a photobomber on an image for freelance work but don’t know where to start?  Cleaning up an image used to need specialised software and expertise, but nowadays AI has given rise to tools like Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop that anyone can utilise with just a few clicks. You can utilise Cleanup.pictures, a free Web and mobile software, if you don’t have a Photoshop subscription.

• The Font Squirrel Matcherator

There’s fun in fonts, but only if you know your way around it. If you’ve seen an image file and you’re wondering what font was used for it, Font Squirrel’s Matcherator can help you out. Simply submit any image and identify the area you’re interested in, and the AI will return the typefaces it thinks are most similar. This works excellently if you’re redoing or revising a client’s logo for one of your freelance projects and they want to retain that font used for it – but you can’t seem to identify the exact font they used. This tool is highly recommended for any image carrying a mystery font. Achievement unlocked!

• unscreen.com

Videos are almost an uncharted territory for most graphic designers offering freelance services. But just in case you’re planning to explore this challenging craft, you might want to bookmark unscreen.com for future use.  Say goodbye to greenscreen – you can record your video anywhere with Unscreen, and then you can easily remove the background. Pick, modify, and share to create stunning GIFs. Unscreen analyses your video 100% automatically and produces a high-quality result, so you don’t need to pick pixels, choose colours, paint masks, or move pathways. Easy and good.