As you may have heard, our previous image editing provider, Picnik, is shutting down on April 19^th.

Google purchased Picnik a couple of years ago and has decided to no longer support the program, which is a bummer. Our users had grown to love Picnik and how easy it was to create awesome looking images.

We’re sad to see Picnik go, but luckily for us, some of the original Picnik engineers decided to take their expertise and start up a new image editing program, called PicMonkey. PicMonkey’s UI and features are very similar to Picnik, which means that you’ll feel comfortable using PicMonkey right from day one.

To try it out, simply click the “Edit Image” button while you’re inserting an image. PicMonkey will open up and you can make all sorts of cool edits to your image, like adding text, cropping, or adding a number of cool border options.

When you are done editing, just click “Save” in the bottom left section of the window and a copy of the image will be saved to your image library. You don’t need to worry about overwriting an image that you’ve already used in an email. Yes, it’s really that simple.

Some of my Favorite Features:

Text

One of the features that we loved in Picnik, which is just as easy (if not easier) to use in PicMonkey, is the ability to add text to your image. Here is how you do it:

1. Once the PicMonkey window is open with your image, click on the “P” icon in left-hand margin
2. Add your text in the text box above and hit “Add”
3. Now you can resize, position, change fonts and colors, and number of other cool options, like “Blend Modes”
4. Once you are happy, hit “Save” and the image will be saved back to you Constant Contact account.

Borders

A great way to make your images stand out is to add a border. PicMonkey makes this super easy. To add a border, do the following:

1. In PicMonkey, click the border option in the left-hand navigation. It looks like a square with a border around it so it’s easy to spot.
2. Select from one of their border options – my favorites are Museum Matte and Drop Shadow.
3. PicMonkey gives you the ablity to customize things like color, border thickness, and on certain borders, like “Simple Edge” you can even leave a spot to add a caption (using the text tool described above). Awesome!
4. Save the image back to Constant Contact!

We hope you like all of the functionality that PicMonkey provides and that the transition from Picnik is smooth and easy. Let us know what you think!

PicMonkey is free to all Constant Contact email marketing customers. Check out how you can make images for your email newsletter with Picmonkey or find out more about our email marketing product.