Do you love Instagram?  Who doesn’t?!  Do you want to learn to create cute graphics and text overlays so that your Instagram feed looks more chic and professional?  We all know about photo editing in the Instagram app, but Picmonkey.com offers really cute and easy ways to customize photos or create graphics for your blog, Pinterest, or Instagram.  You can watch my video or follow along step by step by scrolling down.

Step 1:

Go to Picmonkey.com.  You can start a free trial, but to save your photo keep in mind you will need at least a free trial or subscription to Picmonkey.  Click on the Edit box and then select Computer to upload the original photo you want to use.

Step 2:

Once you have clicked the Rectangle icon (you can also choose a square or circle or any other shape you wish), it will appear over your photo.  You can drag it to resize and move into place.  On the Overlay panel, set Color 1 (the shape outline) to No Color (unless you want a border around the box, then you can pick a color).  Set Color 2 to #FFFFFF (the hex color for white).  You can choose any colors that you wish here.  Then set the Fade to around 25% if you want the box to be transparent over the photo.

Step 3:

Now you can add text over the transparent box.  Start by clicking on the Tt icon on the left hand panel.  Then click the Add Text button.  A text box will appear over your photo.  You can choose to use your own fonts (the fonts already installed on your computer) or use Picmonkey’s default fonts.  Just like in an email or Microsoft Word, you just need to place your cursor over the text and highlight it, and then you can use the box on the right to choose the color, size, style and effects of the text you just added.

Step 4:

You can add a new line of text by repeating the above steps:  Click on the Tt icon and then click the Add Text button.  A new block of text will appear and you can use the Text panel on the right to style your text.  Make sure that you are on the correct text layer in the Layers panel.  You can switch back and forth between layers to edit each line of text.

Step 5:

If you want to go a step further, you can click on the Magic Wand icon in the left panel and choose a photo filter effect similar to Instagram.  You can change the intensity of the effect using the Fade slider, and then click Apply to apply your changes.  The effects panel is fun and easy, so feel free to play around with it!  Also, you can get really creative with Picmonkey and add sorts of other graphics and effects.

Step 6:

To save your image just click on the Export button in the top panel.

Step 7:

You can choose the quality and size of your photo and then click the green Export to Computer button to save your image to your computer.  You must have at least a Free Trial account to save your photo so be sure to sign up and create an account or you won’t be able to save.

Picmonkey has many cool options for adding text, graphics and effects to photos!  If you want to add custom graphics to your photo, you can check out my tutorial, How to Add a Watermark in Picmonkey.  You can use this tutorial to add other custom graphics to your photo besides just a watermark, so feel free to play around with it and get creative, and if you have any other questions, please leave a comment below!