Welcome to the For the Love of Blogging series at Carrots! I often get emails and comments asking about various blogging-related things, so I thought it would be fun to answer some of them right here on the blog as a little on-going series. I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful! If you have a question about blogging, feel free to leave it in the comments and I may be able to answer it in a future For the Love of Blogging post.
Other posts in this series:
This week’s question: How do you create the images you use in your posts?
I’ve tried a few different things. I do not have PhotoShop. A) It’s expensive. B) It’s tricky to learn. I learned Adobe InDesign for my former job in publications, so I know I COULD learn it, but ain’t nobody got time for that. Or at least, I don’t have time for that right now.
So….first I tried using the editing part of Photobucket, but found it really frustrating. Then someone recommended PicMonkey and it’s so easy and does pretty much everything I need to do. You can do simple edits on photos, make collages, add overlays and text, and resize so you don’t have a giant file that takes forever to load. Easy peasy.
Some people like Picasa, but I’ve never tried it since I’m happy with PicMonkey.
For images I take with my iPhone (and let’s be real, that’s most all of them these days) I often use A Beautiful Mess app to crop, resize, and sometimes add text before posting to Instagram. And I love me some Instagram.
***Check out Richele McFarlin’s ebook tutorial on using PicMonkey: Monkey See, Monkey Do. I’ve read it and it’s incredibly helpful. Lots of clear explanations and images so you can get started right away and not have to spend a few hours clicking around figuring it out (like I did a few months ago). I highly recommend it.
I also absolutely love Kat Lee’s Blog Planning Kit. I bought it several months ago and it really helped me organize my blogging goals and priorities. I highly recommend it if you have a blog or are interested in starting one.
Canva.com is also a great place for easily creating beautiful pictures for social media. I was using PicMonkey until I found Canva and am now a devoted fan of the latter. I find it allows so much more play room within the free package. Even my laptop desktop now shows a dream collage made with Canva:)
Arg, Haley, I think you sold me on this bundle with your super-good advertising! Rats! c;
You totally sold me on Pic Monkey! I just played around with it a little bit… I see myself spending a lot more photo editing time on there. I love the effects!