We live in a time where anyone can quickly snap a photo with their phone, edit it with their phone and then immediately post it to thousands of people on social media. So it’s safe to say that simple text-based social media updates just don’t cut it anymore. You need to create images for social media.
(Don’t want to create your own images? We’ve got you covered! Download our graphics pack of holiday social media images to use this holiday season.)
Of course, that doesn’t mean you can just post any old graphic and trust the post will take off with likes and comments. You need eye-catching, on-brand scroll-stopping social media graphics. This is no problem for big companies with huge art departments or even companies with just one graphic designer.
But what’s a busy solo business owner to do when they are already doing, well, everything else in their business? First, get yourself educated on a few simple but powerful design tips that will transform your social media graphics. You can find those here.
How to create images for social media that WOW your audience
You need to find the tools that will make it even easier to create those stunning create social media images. Here are 14 of our favorites here at MeetEdgar.
1. Canva
Canva is an ideal start-to-finish graphic design tool that is perfect for non-designers. It’s a drag and drop tool that offers hundreds of templates, fonts, and images. One of our favorite features of Canva is you can resize any image with just the click of a button, making it easy to resize and create social media graphics for each platform.
Price: Free tier and paid plans start at $9.95/month
2. Easil
Easil is similar to Canva as it’s a drag and drop tool that makes it easy to make social media graphics from start-to-finish. Easil offers its own library of templates, fonts, and graphics. You can even save your brand kit and favorite designs for quick access. Easil is also fantastic for micro-businesses or anyone who works with contractors as they offer various team tools.
Price: Free tier and paid plans start at $7.50/month
3. Crello
Crello is much like Canva and Easil. However, not only can you create graphics for social media, but Crello also makes it easy to create animations. Crello has thousands of animation templates and animated objects to give your social media graphics an extra pop of excitement.
Price: Free tier and paid plans start at $7.99/month
4. Snappa
Snappa is another drag and drop tool but it is especially useful for creating image-based text to create quote graphics or promotional graphics. You can upload your own image or one of Snappa’s, edit it then add text, vectors, or effects to the photo.
Price: Free tier and paid plans starting at $10/month
5. Infogram
infogram.com
If you are looking for an easy way to create infographics, Infogram is perfect for you! This tool is ideal if you have a lot of data and want to showcase it in a visual way for your website, blog, social media, or presentation. You can simply choose a template and drop in your data to create a custom infographic or presentation.
Price: Free tier and paid plans start at $19.99/month
6. Over
If you are mainly creating images for Instagram or on mobile, then you need Over. With the Over app, you can quickly brighten or edit photos on your phone. You can add fonts, colors, and layers to your images.
Over also has a library of videos and graphics you can use to create images or videos – great if you want to find a free social media image!
Over is available for iOS and Android.
Price: Free with in-app purchases available.
7. Unfold
If you want beautiful stories, then you must turn to Unfold. Unfold has hundreds of free social media graphics designed especially for Instagram and Facebook stories. You can add your own images into the templates and then add text and stickers on top. You can do all of all this from inside of the app so you can create beautiful stories from anywhere.
Price: Free with in-app purchases available.
8. Wavve
Wavve doesn’t create social media images but they do create fantastic audiograms that are perfect for social media and are much prettier than adding a link to a SoundCloud or audio snippet so we included it on the list.
You can upload your own audio or video then add animations, GIFs, text, images or whatever you need to create the perfect audiogram. It’s perfect to showcase snippets of a podcast, music track or interview.
Price: Free tier with paid plans starting a $10/month
9. Logo Maker
If you need a logo design to brand your social media image or are looking for some logo inspiration, check out Namecheap’s free logo maker. Choose a design, icon, and colors and you’ll instantly have a professional-looking logo!
Price: Free
10. PlaceIt
If you need something for a mock-up with your custom graphics or logo, check out Placeit. You can create mock-up images of apparel, books, Facebook images, phones, computers and more!
Upload your logo or custom art, browse through their library and upload your image onto the image you like and have a gorgeous mockup without needing a photoshoot!
Price: $14.95/month
11. GIPHY
What’s a fun social media presence without a few GIFs? Giphy has the largest library of GIFs you can use for your blogs, emails and social media pages. You can even create your own channel and create your own custom GIFs to use!
Price: Free
12. Creative Market
Creative Market is a marketplace for designers, artists, and creators. Browse through and shop for fonts, photos, graphics, templates, and anything you need to create gorgeous graphics or design for your social media pages!
Prices: Prices vary by product
13. Unsplash
Unsplash is a free stock photo website. Photographers, artists, and creators add to this growing library of free stock photos. It’s perfect if you need to find free images to use on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or your website.
It’s really important you don’t use images online without permission as you could end up with a lawsuit and a massive fine. Unsplash is a perfect way to avoid this as all their images are public domain images.
While not mandatory, try to credit photographers when you share their images! Unsplash makes it easy when you download your image to copy and paste the credit.
Price: Free
14. Adobe Color
If you are creating your own images or color schemes, use Adobe’s trusty color palette tool to find the perfect color schemes for your project. You can also upload a photo to identify the colors and color schemes within the photo. If you are an Adobe user, you can sign in with your Adobe credentials and save your color palettes to use in future Adobe projects.
Price: Free
Use Images with Creative Commons Licenses
Haven’t found what you’re looking for in any of the above resources? Not to worry: you can continue your search by looking for images that have Creative Commons licenses.
A Creative Commons license is essentially permission from the owner of the image to use it for free. Isn’t that just so nice of people? There are different versions of the Creative Commons license; you can read all about them here.
I suggest looking for images that only require to attribute the image to the owner(s) in some way and are free to use for commercial purposes.
Here’s how to find images with Creative Commons Licenses:
- Head over to search.creativecommons.org.
- Insert a keyword for the kind of image you’re looking for.
- Make sure you check the box that says “use for commercial purposes;” it’s a good idea to also check the other box, “modify, adapt, or build upon” in case you want to add your logo, some text or anything else to the image.
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Choose where you’d like to search (like Flickr or Google Images). Once you click on one of these options, you’ll automatically be taken to the results.
- >Select an image you like and then look very carefully for the information regarding copyright, Creative Commons, license, and/or attribution. If you can’t meet the requirements of the owner, do not use the image. If you aren’t sure if you meet the requirements, email him or to ask.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Do NOT confuse your company’s blog with a noncommercial blog.
Many people think that because they don’t directly make money off their blog, they’re free to fill it with images that have licenses restricting their use for “noncommercial” purposes. This is an extremely grey area, but if your blog has any link to your sales page or to another site that has your sales page (or anything encouraging people to give you money in some way – yes that includes a “Work With Me” link), in my eyes that makes your blog commercial.
Don’t risk getting slapped with a fine just because people can read your blog for free – it’s still a piece of your marketing.
In the case of a license that requires you to attribute the source, read to see if the owner gives specific instructions on how to make that attribution.
Start creating professional graphics for social media
As you can see, making gorgeous social media images is much easier when you have the right tools! These are just a few of our favorite tools for creating incredible social media graphics but we know there are many more.
So we want to hear from you! What are your favorite tools? Let us know in the comments section.