Come all ye PicMonkeyers, from old pros to Level 1 users! We’ve got something here that you definitely want to see. We’ve scaled high mountains, convened with the spirits, and dug under some pretty big rocks to attain all this knowledge and now we are so generously gifting it to you. Watch the following video (or read the following words) and behold the time-savingest, most bad*ss list of photo editing tips and design magic the world has ever known.
Rotate and straighten objects
You can rotate objects in 15 degree increments, by holding the Shift key and pulling the top rotate handle to the right or left.
To straighten an object that you’ve rotated, right-click and click Straighten. The line is taken to the nearest 45 degree angle.
Change the dimensions of text and graphics
This tip works on any graphic or text. If you want to, say, stretch a speech bubble to make it wider, drag the side handles to make it wider or narrower and the top/bottom handles to make it taller or shorter. This will let you both resize it and change its shape. You can do the same thing with a corner handle, if you hold down the Shift key, but on their own these handles resize the image without changing the aspect ratio.
To return to your original shape, right-click and select Original aspect ratio.
For a deeper dive, see How to Edit Graphics.
Duplicate text or graphics
There are two ways to duplicate objects in PicMonkey:
Right-click and choose Duplicate. This is useful if you’ve already customized (size, color, etc.) your object and want to make a copy of it.
Select the object and hit Control + D on your keyboard. (That’s Command + D on a Mac.)
Group and multi-select objects
To select multiple layers in your canvas, hold the Shift key and click each object you want to select on your canvas. To select all the layers in your canvas, hit CMD + A (or CTRL + A on a PC).
To select consecutive layers from the Layers palette, hold the Shift key and pick the first and last layer you want. Everything in between will also be selected. If you only want certain layers, instead of consecutive layers, hold the CMD key while you’re selecting, instead of the Shift key.
To group several layers together, right-click and choose Group on the Multiple Layers palette. Now they’re one layer and you can move them together and add the same effects and textures across all of them. To separate back into distinct layers, click Ungroup on the Group palette.
Pro tip: This is really handy if you want to apply a drop shadow across multiple objects.
Special effects
Use these photo editing tips to get extra special effects looks:
Select all your layers and apply one effect across all of them for a unified look. You can apply as many effects as you like.
Replace an image in your design with another image by clicking Replace in the Graphics palette. The new image will still have any effects you applied to the original.
Click Revert on the Graphics palette (accessible from the three dots in the lower right corner) to remove any edits that you applied to a photo.
True alignment
In PicMonkey text and graphics align to each other, instead of the bounding box, so it’s super easy to get clean looks.
If you have any grids or alignments turned on, hold down the Control key and you can move your object freely.
Use a color palette
You can bring your brand colors into anything you’re designing as long as you have them saved as a graphic color palette. Just use the eyedropper tool and delete the palette graphic when you’re done.
