It’s can be a tough gig being a blogger. These days we need to be crazy multi-talented writers, photographers, cooks, stylists, web developers, TV presenters, video editors and designers too. And while most of us are a pretty skilled lot in a fair few of these areas (pats on the back to you all!), if you don’t have some pretty mad design skills (or a pretty substantial design budget), you can easily get left behind in this era of image-sharing madness.
Being able to touch up, re-size and add meme-style text to our images is just something that bloggers need to be able to do. And luckily, thanks to the awesome apps and websites below, you no longer need a degree in design to be able to do it.
5 super cool design tools & apps that are almost as good as the real thing
Page modo (www.pagemodo.com)
Spruce up your Facebook page and post images on the fly with this handy tool, which allows you to easily add beautifully designed text to your post images, as well as create gorgeous Facebook cover images, logos and even custom tab images too. You can even schedule you posts directly when you are done. Pretty darn clever!
Cost: $6.25 (US) per month
Canva (www.canva.com)
The interwebs have been buzzing about super-cool design site Canva for a few months now. Created to help the complete design novice be able to create amazingly shareable images for their websites, blogs and social media. Canva has a lot of preset templates for the different types of images you can create, or you can go freestyle and start from scratch. Everything is drag and drop, and once you have played with it for a minute or two you’re going to be hooked!
The only downside is that they are only allowing a certain amount of users to join per day, so there’s a wait list (but the wait doesn’t seem to be too long).
Cost: FREE to use, but some features, images and graphics you will need to buy as you use them, these are usually $1 each.
Picmonkey (picmonkey.com)
Picmonkey is probably the second most visited website on any give day at the DDG office (other than our own of course) . In Picmonkey you can retouch photos like a pro (lighten, brighten, remove wrinkles, add a spray tan, whiten teeth, you name it), you can also crop and re-size your images, and add text, filters and graphics as well. You can even create collages of multiple images if that’s your thing. And it is all super-easy, with no special Photoshop or retouching skills required.
It also has weird special effects like “Zombification” just in case you want to have a bit of fun around Halloween.
Super easy to use, the only thing it doesn’t do is let you save templates, or batch retouch images, but for day-to-day stuff it’s pretty hard to beat.
Cost: FREE for most features, $5 per month for pro (removes adds, allows extra tools)
Pixcapp (www.pixcapp.com)
If you love the look of professionally retouched and cut-out images (aka deep-etched, you know, the ones with the perfect white background), but don’t have the time and or skill to do it yourself, then Pixcapp is going to be your new favourite thing.
All you do is upload your images, and sit back and wait (turn around time is 24 hours or less).
Perfect for anyone who sells products online too, as it makes even the most DIY photos look totally pro!
Cost: $2 (US) per image
Word swag (www.wordswag.co)
Want to turn your happy snaps into something your readers and followers won’t be able to resist sharing? Then Wordswag is for you. This iPhone app is super easy to use, and also slightly addictive, and I am pretty sure even my 4-year-old neice would be able to master it. You just choose your image, tap in your text, and then scroll through the hundreds of preset typography options until you find one you love.
If you share images on social media, then this app will change your life! No really!
Cost: $3.49 (US) from iTunes
Main image via H Sterling Cross @ Flickr
