modifying-images-smallAdjusting the size, look or format of images can be very important when you share images through your blog or social media channels.

Do you use any tools that will help with this?

In this article we outline 5 tools you can use to optimize your images.  This is the first of 3 posts on using images on the web, come back next Monday for the next one!

1. Adjust the size of your images using Smush.it

Smush.it removes unnecessary bytes from your images to reduce the size of them.  It’s a lossless tool which means that even though the size of the image is reduced there is no change to quality.

Here’s an example of the image size adjustment with a few random images I tried.

 

smushit
Smushit reduces the size of each of the images but no reduction in image quality

 

Smush.it is also available as a wordpress plugin.  When it’s installed the images will automatically be smushed in the background!

 

2.  Focus attention with Color Splash

Color splash is an iphone and ipad app that changes your image to black and white and then allows you to color in a section of the image.  This means that the piece you color in will really stand out within the image.  It’s a cool app with very simple editing capabilities.

 

color splash
You can color in parts of the image to make it standout

I originally came across this app when Amanda from Spiderworking wrote about it.  Read her article for more details on how to edit images using Color Splash.

3.  Modify your images using Picmonkey

Picmonkey is a great tool for modifying images.  You can add text, place borders on the image, sharpen up your image, add shapes, arrows and much more.

Here’s an example of an image before it was edited.

 

Headfirst image
This is the image before we edited it..

 

This is the image adding a nice border and some text which took about 10 seconds.

 

picmonkey
Picmonkey provides an easy way to edit images

 

When you are sharing out images on social media text on the image can be very useful.  Text on an image captures attention and is particularly important if people are sharing the image to sites such as Pinterest.

 

4. Placeit – Add your image to pre-defined templates

With Placeit you can select an image or provide a web address and add it to one of their templates.  The images are displayed within iPhones and iPads with different backgrounds.  This is cool to show off a new product or service you have or just your website.

Here is an example, I just entered the web address of our site and Placeit embeds this onto an ipad with an image of an office in the background, cool?

 

Breezi
Breezi provides a range of templates where you can add your own images into.

5. Autoreplanete – Social Media Image Maker

Autoreplanete provide a free tool for adjusting the size and touching up an image you want to use for your social media profile.

 

Select the social media platform and upload your image
Select the social media platform and upload your image

 

The interface  is quite simple.  You select the platform, the image type you are uploading (e.g. header, profile etc), upload the image and then start adjusting the size and touching it up.

 

Social Media Profile Adjustment
It’s a very simple tool for editing your profile images

Final Comments

Images are becoming increasingly important.  You see how quickly Pinterest is growing and there are other visual type platforms such as ‘Fancy’  that you will hear of soon.  I know that we are going to spend more time improving the quality of our imagery, what about you?  Any tools you’d recommend? Do you like the ones above?

Note:  A site I’d highly recommend if you want to know more about using images is Socially Sorted which is run by my friend Donna Moritz.

photo credit: Taylor Dawn Fortune via photopin cc

 


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