5 Types of Killer Images: Free or Low-Cost Tools and Tricks of the Trade

HubSpot cites evidence from 3M showing that 90% of the information the brain processes is visual, which is processed 60,000 times faster than text. People also remember images much better than words. No wonder the old adage says that a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s why your need to craft killer images for your website, social media, email marketing, offline marketing, and a variety of other marketing purposes.

Killer images also drive engagement (as you can see from the data cited above), build excitement over your posts, induce clicks, and drive traffic. Google uses information about your images as part of its ranking algorithm, so posts that contain good quality images help your rank (and thus the amount of traffic that visits your site). Supporting this, Jeff Bullas states,  “Articles with images get 94% more total views.” Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or so, you know this.

The bigger issue is how do you go about creating killer images that support engagement, ensure your message is remembered, and improves your search rank? Until now, you had to spend a lot of time and money to hire a graphic designers unless you already possessed these skills, which I don’t. In this post, we’ll discuss the tools and tricks available to non-designers in 2025 to help you create killer images.

Crafting killer images

I frankly feel unworthy to even approach this topic because I’m such a novice — I don’t even feel like I have an artistic bone in my body. But, I know there are lots of you out there facing the same challenge I do every day. Hence, sharing the tools and tricks I’ve learned over the years to become a successful blogger and build my digital marketing brand, should help the rest of you at least improve your use of images to support your brand.

Sure, you can use some stock images like the one I shared at the top of this post, but they get expensive — especially since it’s common practice now to add multiple images to your blog content, not just a single image in the beginning. Using free stock photos often means using something that’s not quite right, plus it messes with your branding because these images are so overused you start to look like everyone else.

Sometimes you’re just forced to create your own images. But, how?

I recently published a post showing 5 tools to create images without spending hours and buying expensive tools like Photoshop. If you didn’t see it, check it out here. To recap, here are some of my favorite tools:

• Canva – which gets better (and more expensive) every year. It now includes various types of visual content to share wherever you need images, including video on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram Reels.
• Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign are tools that come in Adobe Creative Cloud for a monthly subscription. A free version from Adobe is Adobe Express. These are relatively expensive, and, with the execption of Express, take a lot of time and training to learn.
• Preview comes installed on Mac computers and Apple tablets. While it’s not good for creating images, you’ll find it useful for editing stock images to make them your own.
• Originally, I mentioned Pablo as a tool. While it’s very limited, it was useful and fast. It’s now been depricated.
• Dall-e was also part of my original list. Dall-e was the image creation part of ChatGPT. It’s functions have been enhanced and it’s now part of ChatGPT and available for all users, although use is limited for unpaid users. See the image below for an example.

Image types

Variety is the spice of life, so try using different types of images in your posts. I tend to use photos or images on an everyday basis, then spice things up with video, infographics and data visualizations, screenshots, and memes. I’ve used comics very rarely because I don’t think they fit my audience well.

That brings up an important topic we should consider before rushing off to craft killer images for our posts: branding.

Every image contains not only subtle clues about the content but impacts your branding as well. So, think about the image you want to project and your target market when choosing images to share. I recommend clients create a design guide (also called a style guide) to ensure a consistent brand across various social networks and other communications.

At a minimum, the design guide should include:

• • color scheme containing dominant color and at least three complimentary colors
  • fonts, including sizes in both px (pixels) and em (proportional for mobile). I highly recommend either a custom font or something unusual so your posts don’t look like everyone else’s. Google fonts are free and contain a vast variety of fonts. You’ll need several fonts — a dominant one you use every day and several fancy versions such as a script to use to highlight.

• photo filers to create consistency — I use PicMonkey to add some pizzazz to my photos (like the one above) and create a consistent brand. I took my original image (taken at the DC Cherry Blossom Festival) and added color and made the image pop against the background. You could do the same with Adobe Express or Photoshop. OK, so I exaggerated this a little, but you see how I was able to add my dominant color to improve my branding. Plus, I increased the shadows on the people in the picture to avoid any privacy issues.
• I also add different sizes of the business logo to the design guide since you use these so often. That eliminates hunting for them every time you need them.

Here are some tricks of the trade for each type of image:

Tricks for crafting killer images

1. Photos and images

With smartphones everywhere, photos are easy to come by. And, they’re great for bringing a human touch to your posts. Folks love seeing pictures of your team in action or your cute little dog — for my part, I have a monster dog who outweighs me, so I tend to avoid posting pictures of him. But, I also have a little Pittie that’s always doing cute things and two very cute daughters.

However, I did go to the Cherry Blossom Festival over the weekend and got some great shots of the blossoms in all their glory and the monuments as a backdrop. That’s where the original of the edited image shared earlier came from.

Use photos as is or edit them using a tool like Photoshop, PicMonkey, or Preview (see my earlier post for directions).

2. Video

Your videos don’t have to be Hollywood-quality, but you should ensure you have adequate lighting and good sound. Here are just a few options for the video:

• • Videotape a webinar or other training. Moz does a whiteboard every Friday and includes a transcript of the session. I love the transcript because I can scan it much faster than listening to the entire video. If I want, I can then watch the video or skip directly to the sections I’m interested in. Plus, you need text for the Google Bot to help your SEO.
  • Interview — I have software allowing me to capture an interview on Skype, or you can tape a Google Hangout to create a video of your interview. I edit these raw videos using Final Cut Pro. Still, you could use the free iMovie software to add captions and build the branding doughnut necessary for branding — a doughnut is the snippets of branding before and after the video.
  • Customers using your product or testimonials
  • Insider’s story of the company
  • Convey information in an interesting way. Check out this video I created with PowToon.

Use videos you create on your website by embedding them from YouTube or Vimeo, on your social media, or even as part of your email marketing. I’m working on creating a video series on YouTube right now, designed to help small businesses improve their marketing and grow and succeed. I’ve made three videos so far and I’m working on the fourth. Once I have five or six completed videos uploaded to YouTube, I’ll start sharing information about the series. So, be sure to check back on this website to learn more and gain FREE access to the video series.

You can get started with video marketing without a lot of expense. I created a post detailing everything you need in more detail, but here’s the short list:

• A smartphone or a video camera.
• Some lighting beyond just the lighting in your room. If possible, add a few baffles or other light sources to reduce shadows in your video content.
• A microphone, although you can use the one on your smartphone in a pinch.
• Cloud storage is necessary because video recordings take up a lot of space, and you may find that your phone’s storage isn’t enough.
• Editing software is needed because you need to edit any video you capture. I use Premiere Pro since I already pay for the Adobe Creative Cloud. You can also use less expensive tools, including Adobe Express.
• A tripod to hold your phone or camera at the right height.
• A script so the recording is succinct and flows well.
• A nice background for your video. Some folks use a green screen, others find a lovely outdoor setting. I use my office, which has a dedicated recording space, so my background looks professional, uncluttered, and attractive.

You can get all this for a couple of hundred dollars, although you can make do with a lot less than that or nothing if your funds are in short supply.

3. Infographics and data visualizations

There are many ways to incorporate infographics and data visualizations into your content. PowerPoint can easily create data visualizations from almost any type of data. I use PiktoChart to create infographics from data easily. Canva and Adobe Express are also great options for creating infographics.

Data visualizations can be done with many software tools, including Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. These tools are very limited and don’t produce the most attractive or enlightening visualizations. Plateau specializes in creating data visualizations, but it’s a little pricy. You can even export graphics from your data sources, like Google Analytics. Again, they’re not too pretty but contain a lot of data. You can even make them interactive so that you can run different scenarios. Below is a screenshot of a custom dashboard created by Google Analytics.

Or, you can just repost infographics or data visualizations published by others, as I’ve done on a number of my posts.

4. Screenshots

Nothing beats a screenshot when you’re trying to illustrate something.

Screenshots are easy with Jing, a free product from TechSmith (now deprecated), the company that brings you Camtasia. Notice in this screenshot, I was able to determine how much of the screen to capture and highlight the areas I wanted to draw your attention to. I could even add text to each of the arrows, change arrow colors, and do other great things right from the Jing toolbar.

5. Memes

I think memes do exceptionally well in social media posts because they almost beg to be shared. And, they’re super easy and fast.

I use Quickmeme. All you do is pick an image, add your captions, and share.

Of course, the downside is that the images tend to get over-shared, so your meme doesn’t look all that exciting. Of course, you can upload your own image to the caption. If I were working on the marketing team, I’d recommend they crowdsource images from users and offer the option to include the image in their library. Like Instagram, the result would be 1000’s of images available to caption.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve enjoyed some of my insights on using killer images to draw attention to your content, engage readers, improve communication, enhance the memorability of your message, and impact your rank in search results to bring in more traffic. Be sure to check out additional posts on this website to gain more insights into improving your images and video.

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