7 tricks to improve any stock photo for your brand

Yes, I’m starting off this posts off with a moldy cliche, but only because it is SO true, especially when it comes to generating traffic to your website. Images are a POWER method for traffic creation, and if you think about it, Pinterest alone is like the powerhouse of images and that alone drives 100’s and 1000’s of people to my website everyday, simply because of the combination of niche related keywords and powerful, colorful, and curated images.

Images are method you can start using today [ RIGHT NOW ] and start building a flood of targeted niche traffic to your website and products.

It doesn’t matter what type of business you’re in, chances are, you use images. Whether you’re sharing images on social media, using images to create promotional material like banners or flyers, or posting images on your blog to go along with your articles, you’re probably using images.

Once you have a strong idea of what you’re all about and what you want your brand to say, the next challenge is to start
creating an image for your business that will communicate this strongly.

But are you using your images to their fullest potential? You can get some tips for creating photos for your brand here and below are even more idea’s you can use to start improving your image and the way you use them for your brand today.

1. Use a frame around your stock photos 

When placing them as is, images sometimes lose their power. One way of making them shine and pop, and be generally attractive to a visitor of a website, is to use a frame in which you place the photo. It adds formality to an image, and familiarity and draws viewers in.

2. Make it fun and pair stock photos with fonts

Sometimes your project will call for using text. But just because it’s text doesn’t mean it can’t fit the photo or have a style and flow to it. You can get various font packages from Creative Market and upload them into Canva for work – a lot of them come from hand letterers,
who deal with letter designs all the time, making it unique and fun.

If you’re a creative who loves to support other creatives, then don’t forget about Creative Market because just like that is my affiliate link up there, other artists make a full-time income through their shops and love to support our blogger community.

3. Resize / change your fonts on the same stock photo to make it eye catching

Sometimes you want to make a line or a word eye
catching to grab your readers attention to the subject. Resize the word or phrase you think is important to the subject when putting them on your graphics.

4. Darken or lighten photos to change mood

Sometimes the effect you want to get from someone who’s viewing the
image can’t be achieved by using the image as is. A good example is a
house or a small church with a cloudy sky in the background. If it’s Halloween, for instance, you may want to make it
ominous, and darkening the image would be a good trick to get that affect. You can read more tips for creating your own brand photography.

5. Creating interesting GIF’s from your stock photos

By layering images in Canva for work, you can create interesting small animations – instead of moving an entire photo, you will take several photos or graphics, upload them into one Canva project, and when going to download, you can choose an animated GIF you want. This GIF was made using the Styled Prop Kit PNG files.

6. When working with a stock photo that doesn’t quite match your brand, turn it into black and white (then try going through steps 1 – 5 again!)

Sometimes you may think an image you took is unusable and that you can’t use it – either because they are so poorly photographed or lit, that they are barely visible, or because their quality doesn’t fit the rest of the photos you have, and any modifications would be visible. In that case turn the photo into a gray one, or purely black and white in the worst cases.

7. Add a gradient to improve stock photos

Sometimes it can be difficult to add text to an image you want to use. It can be tricky. One thing I like doing is adding wants called a gradient. This trick allows you to cover only part of the image with a dark, light, or colorful fade and retain much of the image. Canva offers a black gradient – but I didn’t think that was enough for me, which is why I eventually just created my own to use. The cool thing is, you can use them too!

I hope this post was helpful!? Leave a comment. I’d love to hear what you plan to do for your brand and images.