Where do you get your images for storytelling?”

“I don’t know how to use photoshop or powerpoint – is there an easier way to put text on images?”

“My image is never the right size for my Facebook post. How do I make it look good?”

We get these questions so often from clients that we’ve compiled a quick list of our favorite 5 websites for creating cool images. Using these will help you get comfortable with the process of taking an image and adding text to it. Once you get comfortable doing that, have some fun exploring other design techniques you can add to images. Pretty soon your visual storytelling will grab everyone’s attention.

Websites With Free Design Tools

Canva

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Canva is one of our favorite go-to-design sites. You need to create a free account to use it, but it will give you access to so much more than their free design tools. Canva offers their very own design school with bite-sized lessons for the small business owner who wants to know more and do more with their visual storytelling.

You can create images for social media posts, special events, documents, eBooks, marketing materials, just to name a few. They have pre-designed layouts already set up. You choose the layout you want to use, for instance, the “Facebook Post” design, and then you either upload your image into it or upload one of their images, which range from free to $1.00 each. You add text, tweak the font style and size, adjust certain colors to your liking and either download it to your computer or share via social media and email

If you are new to graphic design, you really cannot go wrong starting out with Canva. They understand that a lot of business owners never took an art class in their life and their purpose is not only to make graphic design skills accessible for everyone but enjoyable to learn.

 

Picmonkey

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Picmonkey is still a favorite quick go-to for uploading an image and adding text. They offer free design tutorials as well and their photo editor has an easy-to-use interface for the beginner.

The free version of Picmonkey offers simple editing tools like textures, frames, and basic photo effects that you can play around with. It’s great if you want to make a quick quotable to share or download to your computer. You can also make photo collages – which is a lot of fun. Their paid version, the very affordable Picmonkey Royale, gets you a a wider array of editing tools – like special effects, filters, and graphic overlays.

This is a nice site to keep in your design toolbox. Just upload your image and in less than 5 minutes you can create a really nice quotable to post to Facebook or Twitter. Easy peasy.

Websites With Free Images

We can hear you saying, “Yes. I get it. All that design information is really swell, but what about those Free images? Where do I find those, asap?”

First, let’s just say that you should never pull an image off anyone’s Facebook page or website and try to use that as your own. Copyright laws are something you need to be aware of and if you have a tendency to “borrow” images from all across the internet without checking to see who owns them and whether or not they are free to use – you might open your mail one day and find a big fat bill from one of the stock photo companies. Or the individual who owns those images. Or a lawyer for the individual who owns those images. So, maybe don’t do that “borrowing” thing anymore.

That being said, here are 3 websites we love to pilfer from when we need free images – we hope you find one or all of them useful as you build your own portfolio of photos to use for future design needs. But here’s one tip: the very best free images are the ones you take yourself. Use the ones from these websites to simply round out your own collection – you’ll be surprised at how quickly it takes shape.

 

Death to the Stock Photo

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When you bring up the site you will see that you need to sign up to have access to their collection. No problem. It costs nothing. Sign up with your email and they send you a pack of free photos once a month. Yes. Free. Download the pack and start your own stock photo collection.

Some of the photos will be perfect for you  – and the ones you think you won’t need? Keep them. There will be that day you find yourself unexpectedly writing about “generating ideas for blog posts” – and you’ll be thrilled that you kept that image of the table covered with sticky notes that each have the word “Idea” handwritten on them. Yup.

 

Pixabay

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You need to set up a free account. The images are really nice quality and don’t cost a thing. There is also no attribution required for using them. You can use keywords to search for images – which makes it easier for those of you who are on a deadline to create a blog post…she typed – while glancing anxiously at the clock.

Quick note – definitely have a quick read of their FAQs page to make sure you understand how to use their images properly. For instance, you should be aware that they do have some images from Shutterstock on their site – those images have the Shutterstock logo marked on them and they do cost money to purchase.

 

Morguefile

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The creepy name aside, this site is loaded with free photos. Not all of them are great. But they have so many photographers who take the time to contribute to their stock – you are bound to discover several images that are quite suitable for some of the design projects you are working on. 

You can use the Search bar to type in basic keywords related to your topic like “Cowboy” or “Violin” or “Brownies” or even the color “Purple”. Not necessarily in that order. But this site is definitely worth thumbing through – although it can become a bit of a time suck…Don’t ask us about our Blue Bubbles period of 2012. Just. Don’t. We’re still recovering.

There are dozens of sites for free images and design that are alive and well on the internet. But we aren’t using all of them – are you kidding? That would drive us nuts! And we figured it would drive you nuts too. Do you need a list of “50 Best Sites for Graphic Design”? No. What you need is someone who will tell you “I use this site and this site and this site. For these tasks. Right now. They’re reliable. They’re free. And they help me do exactly what I need to do!”

So. Consider yourself informed. Go create fabulousness all across the web.