Can be tricky from time to time. For me formatting posts was a whole new thing to learn as I started on steemit a few months back. Never even heard about markup before starting to blog. I do not have an alternative I can relate to compare things but like you I find formatting, especially pictures quite difficult since there is no real option to change anything on the picture once it is in the markup text.

Maybe they will implement some user friendlier post formatting in the future.