Social Media Design For Dummies

Chapter 3

Advanced Design Concepts

In This Chapter

• Use free, web-based photo-editing software to create a customized image.

• Use an image editor to extract a subject from the background.

• Use a template to create a social media design in Photoshop or another image editor.

This chapter shows you simple image editing techniques that you can do to make your social media design shine. Then we show how to take your social media profiles to the next level by shooting eye-catching photos, extracting the subject from a photo, and then blending it into a new photo collage that will impress your friends and contacts.

For much of what we demonstrate in this chapter, access to professional tools (such as a good dSLR camera and professional photo-editing software, such as Photoshop) is pretty much standard operating procedure to achieve good results. Yes, you can probably achieve graphic designs that look a lot like what we’re showing off in this chapter with the types of cameras built into smartphones, processed through free software — but that route requires a lot more ingenuity, time, and effort.

This chapter is for when you just want to stretch your boundaries and do something out of the ordinary, like create a collage of images to dress up your social media pages. In her Facebook design, coauthor Janine Warner combines three images to share her personal and professional story (see ...