Branding is key to making stock photos fit in seamlessly with your business. Whether you are using them on your website, blog, social media or promotional stationery, you can make stock photos your own by making just some small changes.
Why Brand Stock Photos?
Some stock photo companies sell the same photos over and over and occasionally really successful stock photos will become recognizable as such, especially in industries that use stock photos a lot. If you want your company to have a strong visual brand, it is essential that you learn how to brand your images, including any stock images that you use.
How to brand stock photos?
There are many ways to add your brand to a stock image when you use it on your website or to promote your business or blog on social media. Here are a few ways that are quick and easy things you can do in most image editing software packages.
Use Your Brand Colors
Add Color Overlays
Adding a color over the top of the stock image and reducing the transparency so that image still shows through works well. Using the same color as your brand colors automatically ties the image in with your brand. Below I am using deep pink overlays to match my brand colors.
Use Templates
Consistency is key to build a strong visual brand. To keep you consistent when you are creating images for use on social media and your website, you can create and use templates. This will also save time as each time you will not have to start from scratch, just pull out a template, pop in a photo, and change any text you are ready to go!
Below I created a template that has 2 overlapping rectangles in my brand colors.
Use Text Overlays
Overlaying an image with text is a great way to pretty up your messages. You can add text overlays at the top, middle and bottom of the image. If you create separate ones you will save time as some of the text, like your url will not need changing each time. Below I have inverted the colors so the my url doesn’t get lost.
De-saturate the image
If you lower the saturation in an image it makes it look faded. If you want to use an image that has strong colors, but they don’t fit in with your branding, you can decrease the saturation (as shown in the image below). The colors will be muted and will not clash!
Another option is to use a white overlay on top of the image and reduce the transparency until you are happy with it.
Use the same filter
Coming back to consistency 🙂 Using the same filter will give all the images a similar look and will become your brand trait. The 2 images below are an example of what can be done to an image if you use a filter. Filters are used a lot in Instagram feeds. You will find the most popular Instagram accounts have a consistent theme, often a color scheme running through the feed.
Change the Color Balance
In some photo editing software you can change the colors balance. Below is the result when I change the color balance to increase the pink to match my brand colors.
Oh and please don’t forget to use images that match the mood and personality of your brand. It won’t work if you use busy, rustic or shabby chic images when your business aesthetics are minimalist and cutting edge! The word to remember is consistency. Consistency is the THE key to a strong visual brand 🙂
Do you have any other ways that you make stock images your own? Or do you have a favorite editing package that you use to brand your stock photos? let us know in the comments.
