Add Text to Photos Like a Pro – How to Use Our Free Online Editor

Heleana Tiburca

6 years ago

What is it about a photo with text on it that grabs our attention, and why do all the billboards in town stick out to us so much?

By adding text to a photo, you can change an image’s story completely and shine a little more light on the message you’re trying to portray.

The combination of a great photo and eye-catching text will grab the attention of any by-passer. All you have to do is combine the two perfectly.

Source: InspirationDE, The Culture Trip, Iq Agency, Inspiration DE

How to Add Text to a Photo

Create an account
Choose an Image or Upload Your Own Photo
Choose a Font
Add Text to Your Photo – Negative Space
Save and Download

To learn how to add text to photos, follow the tutorial directly below!

For more tips and tricks on how to add text to photos and how to make it look amazing, scroll down towards the bottom.

1. Create a Bannersnack account

The first and best thing you could do for adding text to your photos is to create a free Bannersnack account.

Creating an account is an easy as 1-2-3. And it’s absolutely free.

What are you waiting for?

We have tons of amazing things to enhance your photos and ads. Go make your account now and have a free app to add text to photos! And not only text but much, much more!

2. Choose an image from our 2 million+ stock photos or upload your own photo

Now that you’ve created your Bannersnack account, you have access to over 2 million photos. That’s a whole lot!

Select the “Create New” button in the top left corner, and then select the size of the banner you want to create.

Once you have done the following, it’s time to get the creativity flowing.

Click on the image icon on the left side of the page to instantly see tons of beautiful, high-quality images. Scroll through and choose whichever one you’d like.

Have your own photo you want to use? Not a problem!

Just click on “My images”, click on the “upload” button, select your photos to upload, and then you’ll see your images in the workspace called “My images”.

After your photo is selected and ready to go, it’s time to move on to step number 3.

3. Choose fonts that match the style and tone of your message or upload your own

Once your image is ready for some spectacular lettering, it’s time to pick out the tone of your message. What is your message? Why are you putting text on this photo?

By answering these questions, you can start to narrow down the type of font you should use. In my example, I’ll be promoting a lunch special.

So what I’m going to do is look through all the amazing font presets that Bannersnack has to offer, and then I’ll choose the one that matches my tone best.

The text preset I chose matches the message I’m trying to portray. So by adding text to this photo, it makes my message much clearer.

Bannersnack also gives you the option to upload your own fonts, if that’s something you’re interested in!

If you’re feeling stuck and don’t want to use the same old fonts, or you are lacking inspiration on what font to use, definitely check out our article about cool fonts to use on your photos!

Just having a great font on your picture isn’t enough. The placement and color of your font make the true magic happen. Let’s talk about that.

4. Where to add text on your photo | Negative space

Most designers would recommend that you place your font where it’s most visually pleasing and visible. That place, most times, is in the negative space. “Negative space”, as described by Creativebloq, “is quite simply the space that surrounds an object in an image”.

Inspect your image, and look for that negative space. By placing your font in the negative space, you’ll look sleek and professional. Just follow my lead.

In this photo, I’ll be trying to promote my “Monday Special”

As you can see, I simply selected a font preset that matched my tone of voice for the message of my image, scaled it down and placed it in my photo’s negative space.

Your reader’s eyes will be drawn to the text automatically because of its perfect placement. The contrast of the black font combined with a white-ish/grey background really makes the text pop and stand out at you.

It’s impossible to miss this message.

When adding text on your photo, you need to be short, sweet and to the point with what you’re trying to tell your reader. Don’t overload the photo with text.

Just put out your main idea, and maybe a few extra details. Don’t overload your readers with text. They’ll simply ignore your image and keep scrolling right on down.

And remember, placement is key. Try to find negative space in the photo and place your text on the image there.

5. Save and download the new image to your computer

Now that your work is done and you’ve put text on your image, it’s time to download your art to your computer. The process is simple.

Just click on the “Save” button at the top right corner of the page, name your artwork, and hit “save” again.

Bannersnack will automatically take you to your workspace, where you can see all of your designs. Click the “download” icon on your latest work to download your new image to your computer.

Download it as a JPG, PNG, HTML5, GIF, or whatever your heart desires. We have it all.

Once you’ve downloaded your work to your computer, you’re done! You’re officially your own graphic designer. Congratulations!

Now go on all your social media accounts and start posting your awesome work for everyone to see!

What adding text to photos looks like

For a little bit of inspiration for your artwork, I thought I’d show you a couple of my favorite examples I found online of what it looks like to add text to images.

There are a lot of different ways to add text to pictures, so I’m going to show you a few of the many different ways to do this. Adding text will give your photos that special and unique flair you were looking for. Take these images for example:

This Nike Basketball image is simply mesmerizing.

Source: Nike Basketball

Then, we have this delicious restaurant ad, that you can almost taste just by looking at it.

Source: Hotel Crown Palace

And the last of my examples, for now, is an inspirational quote; because we all need a little encouragement sometimes.

Source: Preppy Wallpapers

No matter what style of text you want to add to your photo or the reason why you want to add text to your image, I’m sure you can get a little inspiration from this article.

Why add text to photos?

There are plenty of reasons for adding text to photos.

Maybe you’re a lifestyle blogger and want to further explain the story of your photo, or maybe you’re a business owner and you want to promote your brand new restaurant.

Maybe you just took a hilarious photo and are on your way to creating the newest viral meme. The reasons to add text to photos are vast and endless.

So no matter what you do or what your reasoning, there will come a point in time when you will need to add text to a photo and you need to know how to do that efficiently and what app to use for such a task as this. That app is Bannersnack, your personal text-to-photo editing app.

Before and afters of text on photos

I just wanted to show you the major difference that text makes when added to photos. Here are just a few before and afters of images before having text, and images after adding text

Each of these photos brings a totally different message to the table after some text was added. You can change the entire story of a photo by adding text to images.

Go to Bannersnack now to make your image tell a beautiful and unique story to all your readers!

Different techniques for adding text to photos

Of course, there are many different techniques when it comes to adding text to your images. Just like art, there’s not “one” specific way of doing things. It’s a way you can express yourself better and there’s not just one way to do that.

And because there isn’t just one right way to add texts to photos, I’m going to go over quite a few techniques to add text to photos.

If you are looking for more information on how to add text to images, then follow along! You’re in the right place.

Now as I said above in this article, you need to decide what kind of tone or message you’re wanting to portray.

Are you trying to show off wedding services? Maybe try a more romantic and elegant font.

Maybe something that looks hand-written and that is written in cursive, like this.

Source: Creative Market

Maybe you want to show people how important it is to follow their dreams and go traveling.

Source: Twitter

Each font will give your photo an individual vibe. So you need to make sure that you have a font that is really going to compliment your photo when you add text to the photo and that it perfectly describes what you’re trying to show and say.

There are tons of different ways to add text to your photos, so let’s go over 5 different way you can add text to your photos.

1. Adding more than one font to an image

Of course, to really wow your readers, you should find fonts that go amazingly together and really complement each other when you add them to your photos.

Source: Make time to see the world

Luckily for you, you don’t have to guess which texts go well together. You don’t need to overthink your choices and wonder if your texts and fonts are going to go well together.

Our professional designers here at Bannersnack have already lifted that weight off your shoulders and put in some hard work to pair the best fonts together as presets.

When you go on Bannersnack, not only will you get to add text to photos for free, you’ll get tons of font presets that will look fantastic on your photos.

Go sign up for free now and get access to everything you need to create the most beautiful banners and photos ever!

2. 3D fonts

3d fonts are definitely eye-catching because they literally stand out at you.

An easy hack that I practice to get 3d-looking fonts is by duplicating my original font, changing the duplicated font to a different color, and then placing the duplicated font on top of the original one.

Once I place it on top of it, I move the duplicated font a little higher or lower, and to the left or right just a notch, to get this beautiful 3d effect.

3. Handwritten text

Another great technique for you to try is the hand-written text. Hand-written text gives an uncanny effect of humanness. When someone sees handwritten text, they automatically feel comfortable and they’ll trust you.

If you run an elegant business, restaurant, or have any photography or wedding services, this technique would be amazing for you!

For this image, I just added Playlist Script to the top, wrote out my services and chose a color that would stand out on a dark background.

At the bottom of the photo, however, I used a sleek, modern font called Poppins. The contrast between the two fonts is complementary to each other, and they go perfectly together.

There are plenty of handwritten fonts to choose from when it comes to adding text to your photos. We have an article written just for you about what style of hand lettering fonts look best on different kinds of photos.

If you like this look, the font preset is waiting for you in Bannersnack!

4. Blurred background

Another great technique for adding text to photos is blurring the background. This is great for getting your message across swiftly and clearly. You should use a strong message for this technique.

Not only does Bannersnack have tons of great fonts to add to your pictures, but it also has an entire photo editing system in it!

Bannersnack is a one-stop-shop. You can edit your photos from A-Z here. Let me show you what I mean.

Open your Bannersnack workspace, upload/select your image, then select the color palette. When you select that color palette, you’ll see tons of filters and editing options.

For this technique, I’m going to select the blur scale and move it up to about 2. I’ll enhance the brightness on this photo as well.

For this photo, I wanted to portray a strong message. I also chose a corresponding font to my message. Something about a typewriter font really sparks that need to travel.

I blurred the background so that the text stands out at you, but you don’t lose the essence of the image either, because the blur is not too strong, and you still get the message.

This technique of adding text to photos is definitely one of my favorites. Try it on your blog!

5. Animated text

I saved the best technique for last here. You can add animated text to photos?

Let me answer that for you: Why yes! You absolutely can!

This will really spice things up for adding text to your photos. It’s not just any old picture with some text on it.

No, no, no! This right here will really catch the eyes of your reader and they will be absolutely mesmerized.

Let me show you how you can add animated text to photos in Bannersnack.

Firstly, click on create new, and select Banner set.

Now select your size and click on next.

Now select animated at the top, and start from blank. Or if you want to, you can start from any of these templates and edit them to your liking.

Now that you’ve entered the Bannersnack Banner Generator editor, it’s time to add your photo and text.

Now, I’ve selected the text, and I’ve clicked on the “video” icon. This will open lots of transition options. Select the drop-down menu, and choose a transition to add to your text to make it animated!