Text on Image

The hardest part of putting text over a photo is keeping it readable. Busy backgrounds, bright skies and mid-tone areas can swallow even large type. Designers fix this in a few standard ways: a solid or semi-transparent box behind the text, a drop shadow, a thick outline, or moving the words onto a calm part of the picture. WCAG accessibility guidelines recommend a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text, and those numbers are a useful benchmark for social graphics as well.

When you open a photo, it becomes a locked background layer, so clicking on it never moves it by accident. Each text box sits above it as its own layer. Drag a box to move it, pull a corner handle to scale it, or drag the round handle to rotate it. Hold Shift while rotating to snap to 15° steps, and use the arrow keys for fine nudges. Ctrl+D duplicates the selected text, Delete removes it, and undo and redo cover every change.

Six one-click styles handle the most common looks. Headline gives you bold white text with a shadow, and Subtitle is a lighter, smaller version for supporting lines. Outline is white text with a thick black edge, Banner puts white text on an orange box, Label sets dark text on a white box, and Neon adds a bright green glow. Every style is just a starting point. You can still change the font (ten are available, from Arial and Georgia to Impact and Courier New), size, bold, italic, alignment, colour, outline width and colour, shadow, background box, ALL CAPS and opacity.

Each text box also has one of 16 blend modes. Normal is right for most text, but Overlay or Soft light makes words look printed onto a texture, and Multiply lets dark text sink into a light background. The final image is rendered on a canvas at the photo’s original pixel size, so text on a 4000 px photo is as sharp as the photo itself. Export as PNG for the crispest letter edges, or as JPG, WebP or AVIF when a smaller file matters more.