How to Customize Stock Photos For Your Brand

Sharing is caring!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Stock images can look generic on their own so go ahead and flex your creative muscle. Here are ways to spruce up stock images for better branding

If you’ve been running a business for a while now, then you’re probably no stranger to using stock photos. Stock photos make content creation a breeze! With these images, you can market your business online without spending a small fortune on professional photographers and models. 

You can use these images for different marketing purposes – as visuals for your website, as graphics for your newsletter, even as headers for flash sales, email courses, and photos for ebooks. Suffice it to say, stock images have a hundred and one uses and if you’re still making visuals the old-fashioned way, then give stock images a try.

Now, let’s talk about elevating the look of your stock photos for better branding. The stock photos look so good already; what can you possibly do to make them even more eye-catching? We suggest customizing the stock photos to fit your brand even more. Sure, the stock images were handpicked by you to suit different uses, but a little tweaking here and there will definitely make ordinary stock photos stand out. Here are some tips to try:

Add a Text Overlay

Ever wonder why you can always tell if a brand is using stock photos? The images look generic on their own. To make your stock images look intentional, fresh, and professional, add a text overlay. The text overlay could be:

• A blog post title
• Inspirational quote
• Testimonial
• Short marketing messages
• Ebook title

Choose your brand font and font colors so that the photo is consistent with your other visuals. Also, avoid fonts that are too hard to read or make the eyes itch. These will turn people off.

Experiment with Colors

Your brand colors, that is. If the visuals aren’t consistent with your brand colors, go ahead and spruce these up with your brand colors. No need to use professional editing tools; you can use Canva and other simple editing tools to do this. 

Also, don’t be afraid to experiment. While it’s essential to stick to your brand colors to build brand recognition, you can experiment with different colors as long as these are within the color family of your brand colors. The key here is to make the color scheme consistent with your branding. 

Add Your Branding Elements

If your stock photos do not look entirely “done,” then perhaps it’s missing your brand logo, watermark, or submark! Any of these design elements should be overlaid on all of your stock images to make them look polished and unique. Once your followers see these brand elements, they’ll instantly recognize your business. Any patterns, shapes, or textures that you’ve used consistently for branding, add them to the stock images to make them your own.

Use Filters

It’s a simple enhancement, but it really makes a difference – we’re talking about filters. Filters are often used for social media images but if your stock images look a little flat, give these a try. If you’ve been ~curating~ your feeds with a specific filter, use that so people will associate your business with the stock images. But if you love to experiment, go ahead and try different filters, use what looks the best. 

Product Feature

If you’re promoting a new product, you can use stock images to present your offers in a unique and engaging way. Style your stock photos with your designs, printables, and product images. Featuring your products on stock images will be helpful as prospects try to visualize what’s offered on their screen. 

Crop, Flip, and Rotate

Some stock images could benefit from a simple crop or flip. You can also rotate the image if that would help present it in a better way. Cropping, flipping, and rotating images are often done online in photo-based platforms like IG and Snapchat. Use the edited images for your blog posts, website, and marketing materials. 

On their own, you can use stock images for marketing. But a little tweak here and there — you can create professional, high-quality visuals that’s consistent with your brand. There are so many ways to spruce up stock images, so don’t be afraid to experiment. Give any of these a try on your social media channels or blog site so your visuals will always look fresh and polished! 

Sharing is caring!