PicMonkey Mondays: Creating Graphics and Printables
Edit: This is an old post with outdated instructions. The good news is that PicMonkey is much more user-friendly than it was way back in 2013. Have fun playing with your pictures!
Here we are at the end of our 4-part PicMonkey series. Today we are covering how to create a graphic or printable from scratch- totally free and 100% custom made to your fit your needs!
First you will need to create a Blank White Starter Image. If creating graphics is something that you will be doing with any regularity I suggest creating this image and saving it to your computer instead of recreating it every time you need to make a graphic. You are basically going to use a white Overlay to cover up a picture. This will become your Blank White Starter Image. You can use any photo but I would suggest that you start with a picture with a high resolution so that your final image isn’t blurry when you try to upload the graphic to your blog or website.
Open up PicMonkey and select “Edit a Photo.”
Upload any image you want. I snapped a picture of my son’s room and used that. Go to the 5th tier down on the left sidebar and select the Overlay menu (it looks like 3 stickers/badges).
Choose the “Geometric” Overlay.
Select the rectangle.
Drag the corner of the rectangle to cover up your entire photo.
Click on the Overlay and change the color to white (either by dragging the color selector to the upper left corner or by typing FFFFFF in the upper right box).
Save your Basic White Starter image to your computer! Check the dimentions and be sure the quality is high. Or save as a PNG file.
Now you have a Starter Image. You can do anything you want with it! Remember if you want to add custom images to your graphic you will need to have the image saved to your computer. Then choose the option to Insert Your Own in the Overlay menu. We covered using Overlays to create graphics in Part 3. You can see some examples of graphics I’ve created from a Basic White Starter Image:
When you want to make a new graphic you just need to open PicMonkey and choose Edit Photo. Choose your Blank White Starter Image and go from there. You can Insert Text, use Overlays, Textures, etc. The possibilities are endless. Here I opened up my Starter Image and covered it with an Overlay which I then changed the color to pink.
INSIDER TIP: After each layer that you add to your image be sure to use the Merge Layers button at the top of the screen. It looks like papers being stacked on top of one another. This is especially helpful when you are adding text on top of an Overlay for example. Also notice the undo and redo arrows along the top as well.
Also take note of the gear to the far right. I always work with my photos in the largest size. Here is an explanation from PicMonkey about best photo sizes for printing.
Speaking of Textures- we didn’t cover that in this series of tutorials but I hope you play around with them. Look along the left toolbar and click the 7th tier down. This will bring you to tons of Textures that you can add to your graphics or photos.
Here you can see how a “Weave” texture affects the design all with just a click of a button:
Remember how we talked previously about how to right click on PC (or Control +click on Mac) to duplicate text. Here I wanted to add a little emphasis on the word “own” so I right clicked and selected Duplicate Text. I changed the text color and offset it to look like a shadow:
INSIDER TIP: Bring up the menu again by right clicking (or control +click) and select Send to Back. This is a helpful tip when you are adding layers of Overlays and Text.
Can you see how it sent the teal text behind the white text?
Continue to add text, layers, overlays, etc:
Have fun creating your own graphics and printables! As always I invite you to leave questions in the comment section. Chances are if something is not clear to you someone else will have the same question.
Don’t forget to check out all of the tutorials in this 4 Part series.
Inserting Text | Creating a Collage | Using Overlays | Creating Graphics
Disclosure: I told the awesome people at PicMonkey.com that I was putting this series together and they gave me a free Royale membership and said good luck. All opinions are 100% my own (and I had actually already bought and paid for my own membership because I heart PicMonkey so much). Everything I’m showing you in this 4 week series can be done for free without access to any Royale effects.
48 Comments on “PicMonkey Mondays: Creating Graphics and Printables”
I just came across your blog and this is great information. I noticed the comments on this post are from 2014-15 so i’m almost sure PicMonkey has made some updates since then. Would you be able to tell me if this method was in place of the “blank canvas” option that picmonkey currently has? Thanks!
Katrina thank you so much for this info!! I have a question I’m hoping you can help me with. I’m trying to create some printables for my blog using pic monkey. However once I go to print them, they are a bit blurry. That’s with & without a graphic. I’ve also tried printing as both a PDF & a jpeg. Any idea what the problem might be? Thanks again!! I’m a new fan!😀😀
Hi, I am an avid picmonkey user and love it…..question the text looks so pretty and clear then when it is actually printed it looks a bit blurry? do you have that problem? any suggestions for that?? Thanks!!
Hi, I have a question. If I want my printable to fit an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper when I print what size should my white starter picture be?
thanks so much
This is awesome post .Thanks for sharing.
One more question…sorry! If I create one rectangular image of the water bottle label that I want – – can I copy it paste it 4 more times on my 8×10 blank image so I don’t actually have to recreate it each time? Thanks! xoxo
I would create am image and save it. Then you can replicate it as many times as you want.
You are soooooo awesome. This is my first attempt at creating graphics using pic monkey.
Awesome! Thanks for stopping by.
Hi Katrina,
I am very new to blogging and I love these tutorials on picmonkey! I have been trying to create similar graphics in MS Word without much luck, then I figured there had to be an easier way. All the better that it’s possible to do for free!
I also love the look of your blog. I was wondering how you made the social media icons at the bottom of your page? I love that they are pink and sparkly. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make similar icons and put them on my blog, but I haven’t had any luck.
Thanks,
Rachel
Hi Rachel! Thanks for stopping by. I hope you will enjoy making graphics on PicMonkey. As far as my design you an find a link in the bottom right hand side of my footer to Purr design who did my website.
I love pic monkey too, but am having a problem with the text resolution. My text does not come out as high-res. as my pictures, and so looks a tad blurry in contrast. Does this happen to you? Any fixes?
Thanks a bunch!
Rebecca
@EcoOutfittersOL on Twitter
Hi Katrina!
I love PicMonkey, too. However, when I create images on a blank canvas, the final product appears blurry when I upload it.
I need my images to be sharp so what am I doing wrong?
Thank you so much for this series! These posts are really helpful for someone who has just started blogging and knows next to nothing about using editing software like this. I can’t believe the versatility picmonkey has!
You will love PicMonkey. It is so user-friendly. Thanks for reading!
Hi, I just created my own Christmas card 4×6. With the pretty white snowflake border etc and some snowflake layers. But when I just sent it to walmart 1 hour photo, the pure white turned out grey. This is not good. Can tell me why that happened ?
I am having trouble with saving images. I always select to save the image at the highest file setting offered, but when I upload to Facebook the images look blurry. Can you please advise on how to save these pictures and upload them without them looking blurry?
Thank you,
I caught my own mistake! I failed to save as a PNG file. whoops! 🙂
Hi there!
Great tutorial! I love using picmonkey to create text graphics like this! I’ve recently noticed that when I post them on my blog the white background of the graphic created is a few shades darker than the background on the website (for example -the entire image of the created text image shows darker than the white background of the blog post background) where it once appeared virtually transparent when using a white background for text images. Have you observed this? Any tips??
Hi Katrina!!
Great PicMonkey series you are doing! I’m always in such a hurry when I do my pics that I need to slow down and play a little to learn more fun STUFF do with it! Thank you!
You Rock!
Blessings!
Thank you for these tutorials! I am a newbie for sure and they have helped me a lot. I do have a question I am hoping you can help me with. I see many sites have freebie printables you can download, but I was wondering how to save your own scrapbooking papers to use. I scan them in but do I need to save in a specific way to be able to use them on PicMonkey? Thanks in advance for your help! 🙂
I googled how to create printables and you were the second thing that popped up. I am in love with your site.
I came on here to find printables and now I have about 3 different tabs open with recipes and other great things!
You are someone I am following now! Thanks for the awesome knowledge – oh and delicious food 🙂
I’m so glad you’re here!
I finally subscribed to the paid version because I wanted to have all the options. This post is SO helpful. Thank you!
You will love it! I know I do. Let me know if you need any help. There are LOTS of cool things you can do with the paid version.
Instead of putting a big square over a picture, I’ve saved a blank file in paint. I can open it in pimonkey and resize to fit my needs.
That’s great! Just be careful with the file size- you want a good quality so the final graphic isn’t grainy. Thanks for stopping by!
Hello, thank you for your post! I love PicMonkey and use it all the time for my blog. I can’t seem to find the answer anywhere on the internet, so because you’re more familiar with it, I thought you might know. Is it legal to use one of PicMonkey’s “graphics” like the drawn flowers, smiley faces, etc. on a blog’s public banner? I inserted one of their flowers in the middle of my banner and it looks adorable, but upon second thought I wondered if that was legal under their terms and conditions. Your answer would be of so much help! Thanks.
You are one smart cookie! Thank you so much for this tutorial. I was just about to go use Pixlr but decided to do a search one more time and here I am! Thank you, thank you again for such a great awesome info!!
You are a life-saver!! Thank you for this tutorial. I can’t wait to get started!
THANK YOU!!!!!! Fabulous tutorial for a newbie blogger!
I’ve been playing around with PicMonkey for awhile now, but your tutorial is totally amazing and will no doubt boost my use and understanding of it to a new level. Thank you so much!!!!
Thank you SO MUCH, girlie! So sweet of you to put these tutorials together for us and PicMonkey.com. Such a fun & easy site! Now, I know how to do those fancy-schmancy overlays, etc. You can check out your star pupil’s (ha!) first PicMonkey-ized pics at my Flickr stream. I used PM for my upcoming tutorials. Pedaling as fast as I can to catch up with blogging and blog love after being ill. Once again, thank you Katrina! xoxo
Awesome series of tutorials, Katrina! Thanks for “over”laying it out, especially for us PicMonkey newbies.
PicMonkey is the best and creating graphics is so easy–great tutorial and really, great series!
Great tutorial! I use PicMonkey for graphics all the time, and I was so sad when the custom overlay feature became a paid feature. Bummer! You’ve created some great graphics!
Hey Jen- the Custom Overlaqy Feature is free! I tried to make sure that everything I showed in this tutorial was available for free without paying for a Royale upgrade. Have fun creating!
My brain isn’t ready for this so early in the morning 😉 I’ll totally come back and check all of the posts again when I’m stuck and you’re not available lol
Love this one!! I already have something in mind that this will be so helpful for – Thanks!
wow, girl! You’ve gotten so good at this. I keep meaning to read all of your tutorials because your stuff is…awesome!
Oh how cool! AND EASY! Thanks SO much for sharing, Katrina!
Hey Hunny, the quality on the graphics wont be good enough to print and not pixelate, as these graphics will save out at 72dpi and most high quality need to be at least 150dpi or ideally 300dpi. You need to be using something like Photoshop where you can alter the resolution of your canvas for printables.
Hello Nicola. Thank you for stopping by! I have never had a pixelization issue printing up to 8×10 with PicMonkey. I understand where you are coming from- and there are limits to an online photo editor (no RAW files, etc.) however I think many people can use PicMonkey to create reasonably sized photos and graphics with no problems. I’m not *against* Photoshop; I’m just not of the opinion that everyone needs it.
I always work with my photos in the largest size.
https://help.picmonkey.com/customer/portal/articles/430682-photos-are-resized
And here is an explanation from PicMonkey about best photo sizes for printing.
https://help.picmonkey.com/customer/portal/articles/633730-best-photo-sizes-for-printing
I’ve had great success creating and printing Christmas cards, gift tags, cupcake toppers, and Valentines in fact! Thanks again for reading and taking the time to comment. I love hearing from you.
This is SO helpful. So grateful for this series!
Wonderful post, Katrina! So much great info here 🙂
This is awesome, Katrina! Thanks so much for these awesome posts, Katrina.
Hi Katrina,
I just had to take a moment to thank you for this wonderful series of PicMonkey tips. They have been a huge help. One day soon, I will actually make my first attempt at trying them:)
Thank you so very much for sharing, Louise
Great Tutorial! I just google+ your post! 😉