Add Text to Photo
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Add Text to Photo, free and private
Put a caption, title or quote on a photo, a poster or a thumbnail. Each block of text is its own layer, so you can change the words, font or colour any time before exporting. Your photos are edited on your device and never uploaded.
How to add Text to Photo4 steps, all on your device
- Open a picture or a blank page. Drop in a photo, or start from a preset canvas such as a 1080 × 1350 Instagram portrait or a 1280 × 720 YouTube thumbnail.
- Type your words. Choose Text, tap the image and type. Pick Inter, Playfair Display, Caveat, Lexend, Fira Code or the system font, then set size, colour, bold or italic.
- Make it readable. Add an outline or a shadow, set alignment and line spacing, then drag, scale or rotate the text into place.
- Download. Export as PNG for crisp lettering, or as JPEG or WebP when the photo matters more than a small file.
Making words on a photo easy to read
Text on a photo competes with everything behind it. Light letters over a bright sky, or dark ones over shadow, simply vanish, so judge the patch directly under the words rather than the picture as a whole. The web accessibility guideline of at least 4.5:1 contrast for ordinary text is a useful target here too; white lettering on a mid-tone photo usually falls short until something darkens the area behind it.
An outline gives each letter its own edge, so it reads against light and dark parts of a busy background alike. Keep it thin, in a darker shade of the background, or the lettering starts to look heavy. A soft shadow does a similar job more quietly. Another option is a shape layer: a black rectangle behind the caption, with the layer’s opacity lowered until the photo still shows through.
Match the typeface to the job. Inter and Lexend are clean sans-serifs that stay legible at small sizes, and Lexend was designed with reading ease in mind. Playfair Display is a high-contrast serif for titles and quotes, Caveat looks handwritten for invitations and notes, and Fira Code is monospaced for code or a typewriter feel. The fonts are bundled with the site, so nothing is fetched from a font service while you type.
Leave a margin. Platforms lay their own labels and buttons over the edges of images: YouTube prints the video length in the bottom-right corner of a thumbnail, and stories show the account name at the top and a reply bar at the bottom. Keeping the important words in the middle area, clear of the edges, means nothing gets covered.
Check the words at the size people will actually see them. A thumbnail is often shown only a few hundred pixels wide in a list, so a headline that looks bold full-screen can be unreadable there. Zoom the editor out to judge, and prefer three to five large words over a full sentence. Because text stays a live layer until export, and a saved .bdphoto project keeps it that way, a typo is a quick fix rather than a redo.
Good to know
- WCAG 2.1 asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between text and its background, or 3:1 for large text (18 point, or 14 point bold). Source: W3C: WCAG 2.1, Success Criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)
- YouTube’s help page lists JPG and PNG as thumbnail formats and a 640-pixel minimum width for videos; the editor’s thumbnail preset is 1280 × 720. Source: YouTube Help: Add video thumbnails
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I edit the text after placing it?
Yes. Select the text layer to change the words, font, size, colour, outline or shadow, or to move, scale and rotate it. It only becomes pixels in the exported file; the project keeps it editable.
Which font works best on a thumbnail?
A bold sans-serif such as Inter or Lexend, set large, with an outline or shadow. Thin, decorative or handwritten styles look lovely on a poster but blur into the picture when the image is shown small.
How do I make text stand out on a busy photo?
Darken or lighten the area behind it. Either give the letters an outline, or draw a rectangle under them with Shapes and fade that layer until the caption reads clearly. Moving the words to a calmer part of the scene, such as sky or a plain wall, also helps.
Will the fonts look the same on other devices?
In the exported image, yes: the letters are turned into pixels. Inside a project, the five bundled fonts load the same everywhere, but the system font is whatever your device uses, so a project made with it may look different opened elsewhere.