PicMonkey is the Best!

I recently discovered what might be one of my MOST favorite web tools yet.

The tool is called PicMonkey and its FREE. 🙂 if you don’t know about PicMonkey already, you really need to pay attention to this post. Trust me, you are going to love this little gem. 🙂

A few weeks ago, I decided that I should probably start watermarking my photos.

I’ve placed a gazillion photos on this blog, and would like to make sure that my website’s name is on said photos when people are viewing them either on my blog or through media searches.

My search for a watermarking tool led me to PicMonkey. But, what I found was not just a watermarking tool, but a wonderful, seamless, robust, and easy to use graphics tool for my photos.

I thought the best way to share the details of this tool would be through a tutorial.

I know when I am introduced to a new tool or software, I really appreciate a hand holding approach to teaching. 🙂 The photos below will guide you step by step with an example from my Rocky Road Brownies post.

So, here you go…..let the hand holding begin…….

STEP #1: Click on “Edit a Photo” on the main home screen of PicMonkey. You can see the spot where the bright blue arrow is pointing. You will then be prompted to upload a photo from your computer to PicMonkey.

STEP #2: On the left side bar, you will see the Editor area. Click on the “P” to indicate you want to add text to your photo. There is a small purple arrow indicating where the P is located.

STEP #3: A list of font styles will pop up and you choose which one you would like by clicking on it. It will highlight for you in aqua as you can see below where the purple arrow is pointing. I have grown fond of Chelsea Market, but there are many great ones to choose from for your text needs.

STEP #4: Click on “Add Text”, then a box will appear over your photo, as you will see in the next step.

STEP #5: You can see the box in the middle that the purple arrow is pointing to. This is the box that pops up after you click “Add Text” on the left. Also, the color, size and alignment box pops up where you can make your text appear exactly as you’d like. This box is highlighted with the blue and orange arrows. For this photo, I chose a bright aqua color for my watermark. I change the color up based on the colors of the photo. Its more fun that way. 🙂

STEP #6: The orange arrow is pointing to my lovely watermark. After I typed it into the box in step #5, I dragged the box down to the lower right hand side. Very easy to maneuver. No worries.

STEP #7: The next step is to add some whimsy if you’d like. For most photos, I just watermark it, then move on, but sometimes, I might want to add a little extra. You can do that too with PicMonkey. Below, you will see the yellow arrow is pointing to some shapes in the left bar. When you click on it, several different types of shapes pop up. For this photo, I chose “geometric”, the first choice in the list.

STEP #8: When you click on the “Geometric” section, 8 shapes will pop up. I chose the one where the orange arrow is pointing. When you click on it, it will show up over your photo as you can see below with the black rounded edge rectangle over the marshmallows. I decided to choose a lavender color as you will see in step 9.

STEP #9: I chose lavender for the strip and started to stretch it out to touch both sides of the photo by grabbing the box and moving to the left and right.

STEP #10: I wanted to remind people making my recipe to add the marshmallows immediately to the brownie after removing from the oven. This is an important step to ensure proper melting of the marshmallows to stick to the rocky road brownies. In order to highlight this step, what better way to alert readers than with a lovely strip of instructions right in the center of the photo. 🙂 I placed orange arrows with the six steps involved in putting the text on the geometric strip. Really, its just like the watermark steps – you’re just placing the text on a shape now and centering it or left or right aligning, whichever you prefer. I centered my text. Step #6 is pointing to the little circles on the corner of the text box that you click and drag to place the box exactly where you want it.