As bloggers we spend a lot of time being creative; we spend ages setting up the right shot for Instagram, putting together the perfect pin for Pinterest and editing our pictures so that they look as appealing as possible.
There are plenty of programmes, apps and systems to use – most of which are free to use, but when you’re competing with thousands of other social and digital influencers, you need to stand out from the crowd.
If you’re using the same stock images as other bloggers and vloggers, it means that you’re not getting your visual content seen as much, as repetitive images will often get missed.
There are a couple of ways around this; one is to take all your own pictures – and in an ideal world this would be preferable – and another is to utilise unique images that most other bloggers don’t have. There is a third – and that’s a combination of the above.
So when I was offered the chance to try the premium version of FotoJet Designer package (worth over £25), I jumped at the chance. Let’s take a closer look at what it actually offers…
Graphic Design
The programme claims that you can become a pro designer with its graphic design tool. How? By choosing from a whole range of templates – from invitations and flyers to cards and posters, not to mention social media graphics and banners – the list goes on.
Here’s an Instagram post that took me a matter of minutes to design…oh, and it’s one I’m planning on publishing!
Photo Editor
If you’re anything like me, then you enjoy taking photos but sometimes they don’t turn out exactly how you wanted them to. And that’s probably as much to do with not having super duper equipment as it is to do with my experience. So the best thing to do to get that professional – is cheat!
FotoJet’s Photo editor comes with powerful editing tools including the usual crop, resize and rotate, as well as the ability to adjust photos with effects, overlays, frames, text and clipart images.
Collage Maker
Making a collage is something I haven’t tried in a while, but I was intrigued – how would it turn out?!
Luckily, I had more than 800 collage layouts and templates to choose from – birthday, wedding, baby, love, anniversaries, family…
Girlwrighter’s 10th birthday has just gone, so I thought that a birthday cartoon collage would make a nice memento of her special day.
I actually had great fun making the collage and coming up with the captions for the bubbles. The great thing about make collages is that it would make a great gift for someone. It’s also a nice way of getting the creative juices flowing.
Tell me what you think of my creation…!
Downsides
Like any new programme, you’ll need to play around with it to get used to it, but if you’re familiar with other editing software it will be easy for you to navigate around the tools and systems.
I couldn’t see where my saved templates were, so I’m not 100% sure it allows you to re-edit previously designed creations, but I could stand corrected.
My final thoughts…
If you’ve ever used Canva then you’ll find this programme a cinch to use as it has a similar look and feel. I found it very intuitive and easy to use, although on the Instagram template I had a spot of trouble replacing the template with my own chosen image.
When I decided to run with one of the stock templates it took me just a matter of seconds to design the Instagram post.
One thing that really impressed me was the huge volume of templates, fonts, images and pictures that FotoJet offers.
In the photos section alone there are 580,000 images to choose from – which is more than enough. Even choosing something quite random such as ‘desert’ generated more images than I could have asked for.
The programme also allows you to share your creations via social media from the platform or to download to your PC or Mac – yes, it’s compatible with both.
And the great thing about using FotoJet’s programme is that it’s not as well known (yet!) as programmes like canva, which means that you’re at a huge advantage in having access to images that other programmes don’t use.
28 comments
This sounds like a great resource. I love what you made for Nadja – I bet she did too?
She certainly did! Thanks Cal 🙂
This looks like a really great package. I might have to try it out for myself as I love using websites like Canva to create my blog images 🙂
Louise x
Best of luck if you do Louise – I think you’ll like it!
I love the comic strip creation! what a great resource for bloggers, we do like to get creative
Thanks Charlotte – I found it quite therapeutic coming up with that comic strip! 🙂
Thanks for this post! This is such a useful post and the this program sounds great! I myself am a massive fan of using canva! But I’m not very great at it haha x
Great to hear, thanks!
The idea of mixing canva design with stock images was awesome, I am so excited to apply it. Thank you
You’re welcome – good luck!
I love the collage and the programme sounds like a great way to get versed in graphic design! One thing I would like to learn is how to remove shadows from my photos x
I think you can download apps for that too Ana, but worth having a look around..
I have not heard of this before, I really need to check it out! I love anything that can help me design things, I use picmonkey and canva and this looks similar. x
I think you might like it Yvonne! 🙂
This looks great, I had not heard of it before. Will have to check it out x
Good luck!
I used picmonkey and have tried canva but can’t get my head around it. Might have to take a look at it
Just takes a bit of time to familiarise yourself Kara…I’m usually the one not knowing what to do!
I use Canva so should be able to use this – it sounds really good & worth getting hold of a few different stock images! x
Definitely – get those stock images saved! 🙂
At the moment I am only using Canva and PicMonkey so this would be cool to try out. The competition is definitely fierce now and us bloggers we want to stand out
That’s right Anosa – it’s great to try out a different platform.
Ooh this looks great!! It looks like a fab programme, I would definitely give this a try!
It works really well, so definitely worth a try…
This program looks great. I usually use Canva and picmonkey to edit and make graphics for my blog 🙂
Thanks Dean – it’s similar to Canva so you’d find it easy to use.
Thanks Jon – it’s very intuitive so anyone would find it easy to get used to.
Really interesting package this. I think there’s always a learning curve when you take on something new but if like you’ve mentioned it is like Canva then it shouldn’t be too hard