Marketing Tool of the Week: How to Use PicMonkey

Producing captivating visual content is a large challenge for small businesses when it comes to marketing. We understand that Photoshop is pricey and difficult to use, but tools like PicMonkey can easily help achieve the same result, for free!

What is PicMonkey?

PicMonkey is a free website for picture editing and graphic design. It’s a great alternative to professional photo-editing software such as Photoshop. Not only does it offer many intricate editing features, but it’s simple to use and doesn’t cost a hefty sum.

The majority of the editing features you will ever need are free, but there are some premium options that can only be used if you pay a small monthly or smaller yearly fee. There are countless free options, so only upgrade if you feel it’s necessary to use these paid features after getting a chance to explore PicMonkey.

How Does PicMonkey Work?

PicMonkey offers any basic edit that you may need to enhance your images such as cropping, rotating, resizing, adding text, adjusting colors, and resizing.  The choices don’t stop there—advanced features include red-eye removal, blemish fixing, frames, filters, graphics, overlays, and even makeup or weight loss! The free options are almost limitless.

PicMonkey also offer size options so you can optimize your images for size. Create long pictures, perfect for Pinterest, square pictures for Instagram, or Facebook cover photos.

Getting Started with PicMonkey

A benefit of the free aspect of this site is that you don’t need to register an account to start editing! PicMonkey’s Premium version, “Royale,” requires signing up with a username and password. PicMonkey offers a free 30 day trial for those interested in testing out the Royale version.

Once you’ve chosen and uploaded the picture you want to edit, you are provided with a toolbar on the left with a variety of different editing options. Simply click each editing category to open the options. Several few features are marked with a little crown icon, which signifies that the feature is part of the Premium Royale version.

On top of your picture there is another toolbar with options to save or share the picture. If you make a mistake, don’t worry! Simply click undo or redo in the PicMonkey toolbar.

Highlighted Features

Whether you are using a copyright free stock photo or your own original image, you want to best represent your brand and achieve your marketing goals. That’s where editing and adding text and color to your photos comes in!

If you want to size a picture to fit your social media needs, first go to the design tab on PicMonkey’s main page. This changes your picture to the appropriate dimensions before editing.

There’s also the option to create a picture collage on the main page. Picture collages are great for showing off multiple images of the same event and are perfect for social media sites like Facebook or for an email newsletter to your customers.

PicMonkey gives you the option to save your edited images as JPG or PNG to your computer, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox. You can also choose between 3 different file sizes to save the image. They range from small file size but lower quality to large file size but higher quality.

Types of businesses that should use PicMonkey

PicMonkey is great for any business that has an online presence, including businesses that blog or send out email newsletters.

Preschools in particular can benefit from PicMonkey because of the funky frames and images that can be added to pictures. Restaurants or bakeries can use PicMonkey’s watermark feature to brand photos of their delicacies with their business name. PicMonkey can even be used to create printable photos and designs for print marketing.

Check out PicMonkey for your photo editing needs and see what you think! Have you used a website like PicMonkey to edit pictures and create graphics? Let us know in the comments!