According to Mark Alvarado, a known graphic designer, there are several benefits to using image tools for your business:
- Image tools are easier to use than making your own graphics from scratch. They usually have a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) interface, which means it will be easy for you to just drag and drop what you need to put your graphics together.
- Image tools can help you save time, especially if you make use of their ready-made customizable templates.
- A lot of image tools are free, which can help you save money as well in making your own graphics.
What are the best image tools to help your brand be recognizable in your website and in your social media platforms? Mark Alvarado suggests using these five great tools for your graphics needs.
5 Image Tools You Can Use to Help Your Brand Stand Out
1. Adobe Spark
Whether you are planning to make a stunning photo or video, Adobe Spark is a highly customizable tool to help you create professional-looking visuals. A lot of business owners who have no background in graphic design make use of Adobe Spark to create great images and find complementing colors and fonts for their graphics. It is also helpful to use Adobe Spark to make slideshows and explainer videos to increase engagement in your content. Adobe Spark is a product of the famous Adobe company, who also made Photoshop and Illustrator. If you have no background nor experience in using Photoshop and Illustrator, Spark is a good alternative for an easier interface. For most people, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator need some form of a tutorial before one gets proficient. Adobe Spark is relatively easy to use.
2. Skitch
Skitch is very useful for businesses that need a lot of screen captures and annotations. For example, if you are a SaaS (software as a service) type of business that needs to demonstrate your use, you need to have a screen capture as a preview. Skitch can help you easily do this all in one application. Additionally, you can also customize and edit your photo based on your preference such as highlighting, encircling, blurring a section, cropping, and many others. Skitch is a product of Evernote, so if you have Evernote, you can store your images in your Evernote folder.
3. Microsoft Powerpoint
It may be something you don’t expect, but it is actually easy to edit images in Microsoft Powerpoint compared to other photo editing apps. If you need just simple features such as adding text, cropping, changing image size, etc., you may just need to use MS Powerpoint to do the work. The trick in this tool is simple. All you have to do is save each slide as an image by selecting the whole location of the rectangle. This is ideal if you need to edit a volume of photos all at once, as it would be easier as each can be accessed and created by working on a single slide.
4. Easel.ly
Do you have a blog where you need a lot of infographics? Easel.ly can help you create infographics in a breeze. They have ready-made graphs, charts, and clipart images that will help your brand stand out by providing useful information in a single image. Easel.ly is also great to use as it has a simple interface and it has a wide variety of objects, shapes and other clipart that can make your infographics more interesting. Infographics are a good way to partner with blog posts, as it can present chunks of useful information to your readers if they prefer to find summaries of your articles. Additionally, they can be shared in various social media accounts to improve engagement.
5. Social Image Resizer Tool
Often a lot of businesses struggle with engagement when they do not optimize each visual material for social media platforms. Each social media platform has the recommended size, and when this is not followed, it may be difficult to make your followers engage in your content. To avoid this problem, you can use the Social Image Resizer Tool. It helps you to easily crop and resize your photos depending on the social media platform you intend to place it.
All businesses need graphics to make their brand stand out. It’s just a matter of using the right tools and posting consistently to create engagement with your audience.