BY MIKE FALKOW
Creating interesting, original visual imagery has become an important skill for PR people. Google is cracking down on duplicate content – and that includes images. There are many ways to make an image uinque – it does not have to be one you took yourself. You can edit stock photos and make them unique.
As technology develops it becomes easier and easier to do this without the the sometimes-pricey services of graphic designers or the hit-and-miss route of hiring someone on sites like Fiverr. You can create incredible looking visuals right on your phone.
Here are some great apps to do just that.
PHOTO EDITOR (iPhone)
Photo Editor is an amazing all-in-one photo editor! With Photo Editor you can enhance your photos, apply effects, add stickers, paint & draw, remove blemishes, whiten smiles and much more!
Choose from around a dozen photo filters and frames or a handful of stickers/stamps to add to your photo or edit your photo via classic functions such as rotation, reflection, cropping, light filter adjustments, color filter adjustments, sharpness, and blurring or select from a handful of fonts for adding text to your photo. Meme style print font can also be added to your photos.
The program is succinct and more than sufficient for most minor editing of mobile photographs. Its smooth interface is intuitive and user friendly for individuals new to or not yet fully familiar with other less intuitive photo editing software options. Despite the recent addition of video advertisements to the free version of the program, I find it to be a quick and effective option for photo editing.
AUTODESK PIXLR (Android)
Autodesk Pixlr is a highly rated and popular photo editor app and one that comes highly recommended by users. There are a host of editing options including red-eye removal, a whiten teeth option, a one-click enhance tool, borders, filters, and you can even preview effects using the Pixlr Live feature. Of course, there is also the range of basic tools like crop and rotate. It’s a solid editor with a lot of options and it’s from Autodesk, a big name in graphic design.
RHONNA DESIGNS (iPhone)
Add personality and flare to your images with a ton of options ranging from text, masks, color and more. This is a really great app and the designs are really professional looking to make your imagery look awesome.
CUPSLICE PHOTO EDITOR (Android)
Cupslice is a free photo editor with a little more tact and polish, even if the features aren’t as heavy as some of these others. It comes with over 50 effects to start along with your basic editing tools. It also includes a number of stickers you can add to photos and that number gets updated every week. It’s a nice, simple app that should suit the needs of most people.
PHOTOSHOP TOUCH (iPhone)
If the above apps seem like child’s play to you, then Photoshop Touch might be more to your liking. This is one of the most powerful image editing apps around. If you use Photoshop to edit and create images on your computer, then you’ll feel right at home with this app.
This app contains many of the tools that Photoshop users will be familiar with, including layers, blending modes, gradients and text tools, as well as the usual adjustments and filters. It’s fantastic for creating artistic montages, blending different photos together in unique ways to create double or multiple exposure images.
So whatever phone you use and whatever level of technical expertise you have there should be something here to help you improve the original images needed to attract readers, media and even get better ranking in Google.
If your team needs help with learning how to create unique visual content that Google loves check out our visual content training classes.
