7 Tools for Creating Social Media Images in 2024

Today, social media stands as a primary marketing and communication channel that the world's top brands rely upon. 

However, it's a noisy, crowded, and competitive space, with 77% of businesses using social media to reach customers. Beyond businesses, the big social networks are flooded with millions of individuals, companies, and even governments vying for attention at any given moment. 

That's a big reason why social media marketers must lean heavily into creating visually appealing content, which helps to capture audience members’ attention as they scroll through their newsfeeds. The challenge, however, is for marketers to create compelling images at scale, even if you aren’t an artist or designer by trade. With the right tech stack, this challenge becomes surmountable.

Here are seven of the best tools for creating different types of social media images in 2024.

1. Stylar

Stylar is an AI-powered image creation tool that specializes in applying filters to existing images. For example, if you had a standard photograph and wanted to turn it into a cartoon, Stylar can handle the job. It features a slick, intuitive interface that makes learning to use it a snap. However, there are plenty of customization controls available for advanced users, making Stylar a tool whose utility will grow along with your skill set.

Stylar comes with a variety of predefined filter styles that make getting up and running simple. Plus, it offers layer-based composition, so you can fine-tune its output. It also excels at face replacements and generative fill tasks. It can even generate images through textual prompts using its text-to-image functionality.

2. Photopea

If you've ever used Adobe Photoshop, you already know that it boasts one of the most impressive photo editing feature sets in the world. However, did you know that there's a free online tool that offers a comparable feature set? It's called Photopea, and it's a powerful social media image creation tool. Photopea even works in Photoshop's native PSD format.

At its core, Photopea looks and acts like Photoshop, down to its near-identical user interface. It's perfect for all-purpose photo editing and illustration creation. Plus, its ability to convert between a variety of image formats makes it a great starting place for any social media image creation process. You can use it to import materials from a variety of sources. Then, you can combine and work with them in the app itself or by exporting them for further manipulation elsewhere.

3. Photoleap

If you have even light drawing skills, Photoleap by Lightricks is a powerful tool you can use to take your scribbles to new heights. Photoleap relies on a powerful AI sketch-to-image generator that can turn even the roughest drawing into designer-quality artwork. You can start with a sketch that's as simple as a stick figure and give Photoleap prompts to transform it into whatever you imagine.

Plus, Photoleap can perform AI transformations of photos depicting real-world spaces to alter their visual style, a great feature for social creators who focus on interiors. Photoleap can also transform selfies into a variety of AI-generated artwork based on your prompts. It can even alter hairstyles, generate tattoos, and create new backgrounds for your images.

4. Desygner

Sometimes, all you need to produce a stunning social image is a little help. Desygner offers that in spades, in the form of thousands of ready-to-use image templates. Desygner features a category-sortable template library with a variety of social channel-specific designs. For example, it has a section for Instagram Stories, another for Snapchat geo filters, and even Tumblr templates.

Desygner is great for creating basic social images, especially when time isn't on your side. Its template-driven design features focus on simplicity. After choosing a template to work with, you can add your own images and videos or choose from Desygner's massive library of free-to-use work. You can even use Desygner to create basic brand logos, too.

5. NexSnap

If your social strategy is information-dissemination heavy, there's a good chance you need a feature-rich screen capture tool. NexSnap is that tool. It allows you to take screenshots from your desktop web browser, and its paid version even comes with mobile apps for Apple and Android devices. 

On all platforms, NexSnap makes it simple to grab whatever's on your screen, add some visual flair, and share it. While it's a niche tool for sure, it's one that any social media marketer should know about. You can use it to turn tweets into Instagram posts, create reactions to others’ social posts, share visuals of your digital products and more.

6. Flourish

Turning complex data into compelling imagery helps people to easily understand complex concepts. Doing so generally requires getting familiar with charts, graphs, data visualizations, and infographics. However, if you don't have a background in big data, that's not always a simple thing to do. This is where Flourish comes in. It's a no-code data visualization platform that anyone can use to create stunning data-driven imagery and interactive stories.

Flourish excels at making colorful, easy-to-understand images and animations. For example, if you need an image to show viewers how a given dataset changes over time, Flourish makes it easy. Its free version comes with over 150 pre-built image templates, and the paid version features even more. You can even use the paid version of Flourish to build animated visualizations, which instantly capture viewer attention.

7. Supermeme

Love them or hate them, memes are everywhere on the internet. They're a part of the way netizens communicate online, and a viral meme can be a marketer's dream come true. The trouble is that creating memes isn't a simple thing. It ordinarily requires the creator to be well-versed in the meme vernacular of the moment. And that alone can be a full-time job.

Fortunately, Supermeme can do all of that work for you. It's an AI-driven meme-creation platform featuring a curated meme template database. To use it, you simply select an appropriate template and let the platform's AI caption it based on your prompt. With Supermeme, you'll be cranking out the freshest, dankest memes in no time.

A Robust Image Creation Toolbox

With these image creation tools at your disposal, there's no social media image type you can't tackle. Plus, the tools make the job so easy that you won't spend any time learning a whole new trade to get your work done. Then, you can get back to doing what you do best – grabbing the attention of the most social media users possible for the brand you represent.

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