As someone who creates visual, shareable content for small business owners, I love scouting for places where images can be found easily without denting the budget too much.

Yes, gourmet content on a budget can be made possible.

Every month, I’ll be sharing with you my kitchen tools that help you save time and still create a brand presence that’s spicy and sizzling!

Where to Find Free Photos for Your Blog or Website

Here are my favorite sites to find free photos and images easily and quickly:

All these sites allow you to download images for use without attribution with the exception of Free Digital Photos.

Morguefile 

Pixabay 

Creative Commons Flickr

Free Digital Photos. You need to give attribution to both the site and the photographer for this one.

Death to Stock 

Pond5

Picjumbo

Gratisography

Your Own. Yes, really. You can take photos yourself using your camera, iPhone or iPad and turn them into works of art using any of the photo editing tools mentioned below!!

How to Create One-of-a-Kind Gorgeous Images

Now stock photos is one thing but what really, really helps a brand or a business stand apart is an image that’s one-of-a-kind.

An image that helps the branding to shine while appealing to the target customer.

Here are some of the images we’ve created recently for various clients:

 

House Of Botori

Leonie Dawson

Hibiscus Moon

Lime Tree Kids

 

All these images were created using some easily available and easier-to-use tools on the web.

Here are my go-to tools for whipping up images that speak volumes:

Ready-to-Go Photo Quote Tools:

The tools below are super-simple in the sense you don’t have to really play around with dimensions, formats, etc.

All you do is pop in your quote, choose a layout you love and ta-dah, you’re done. Some of them offer you the option of choosing different fonts or colours but other than that, they’re super-easy to use and so-not-complicated!

The only downside to these tools is someone else may also have a similar layout and photo albeit with a different quote or text on it.

Recite

Pinwords 

Share as Image

Quozio 

More photo quote creating tools?

Photo Editing Tools Not Unlike Photoshop

These two tools are the ones I go to when I want something totally custom created and something that wouldn’t be replicated so easily.

They’re sorta like Photoshop but only much easier and simpler and of course, fabulously fun!

They both offer you TONS of layouts, formats, fonts, frames, textures. You name it and you’ll have it!

Canva

The upside of Canva is there are plenty of super fun layouts and overlays PLUS you can buy stock images for as little as a $1 to add even more uniqueness to the image you’re creating.

The downside is it’s a little glitchy and there have been times when I’ve gotten frustrated with trying to resize an image or save one and have moved to Picmonkey instead.

Picmonkey

The upside of Picmonkey is that it is insanely easy to use, has fewer kinks that need workarounds and the Royale version gives you lots of more options for fonts, textures, overlays to play with.

While I’d absolutely love to get into the details of how each of these tool works, especially PicMonkey and Canva since they both offer TONS of options, I’m not one to reinvent the wheel.

My friend and mastermind buddy, Karen Gunton has an all-awesome visual marketing workbook that not only teaches you how to use the tools but also to create a robust visual marketing strategy that’ll help you put together a visual marketing plan that packs a powerful punch!! Check it out if creating images that sizzle and sell is one of the things you want to do.

Next in the series: Instagram Apps we Use and Love