If you’re going to be successful with social media and blogging, using photos is an absolute MUST. You can use an image found on Creative Commons. You can purchase your own images from a stock photography site. You can create a simple text image from scratch with Pinwords. You can use an attribution and royalty-free image from MorgueFile (as long as you modify the image). Or you can use PicMonkey to create a free image from scratch, or to edit, modify and improve an existing image.

We’ve been using PicMonkey’s free online photo editing tool for a long time to add text to, crop and colorize MorgueFile downloads. But what this post will cover is using PicMonkey’s special Facebook cover tool to create your own free, custom Facebook Cover image.

Creating a Free Custom Facebook Cover Image using PicMonkey

For this example, I made a simple Facebook cover image for my parenting blog’s fan page. Using a photo I had of both of my daughters from a professional photo session last fall, I began on the PicMonkey home page.

Step 1. Click on the Create a collage button.

Step 2. From the menu on the left, click on the Layouts tab (second from top). You’ll see the FB Cover option about halfway down the list.

Step 3. You are given a few different Facebook Cover layout options. None of them by default come with a single rectangle. But as you can see from the image below, you can hover your mouse over the top right corner and an X with the words, “Remove cell” will appear. Remove all unnecessary cells to achieve a single rectangular layout.

Step 4. If you don’t already have an image to use, check out PicMonkey’s Swatches. There are several pre-made background designs you can use as your base image, and add text and other images to in a later step.

If you already have your image you want to use for your Facebook Cover, upload that now. Click on the Photograph icon to do so (top of the menu on the left). Use your mouse to adjust the portion of the image you want shown. Make sure your image is positioned exactly as you like before moving on to the next step.

Step 5. Now you’re ready to add some text and design elements. To switch to that part of the PicMonkey photo editing tool, click on the Edit button in the top nav bar. PicMonkey will verify this step with you first.

Step 6. Now this is where your creativity can run free. PicMonkey does has a paid version (paid items notated with a gold crown), but you get a lot with the free tool.

For my purposes, I wanted to first add a thick line as a bottom border of my Facebook Cover image. I selected the rectangle located under Overlays to do so.

You can adjust the width, height and color of any of these shapes. I stretched mine to the width of the Cover image, then changed it to a green.

Next, I wanted to add an arrow to the bottom right side, pointing down to the “LIKE” button. So I navigated to the Arrows section of PicMonkey’s editing tool and tried a couple styles.

You can change the color of the arrows and rotate them so they are pointing in the direction you need. To rotate, hover your mouse over the “–o” sticking out from the image’s white border. Two circular arrows will appear, and you can spin that image with a turn of your mouse.

A few other editing features to mention…using your right-click, you can bring up the additional options seen on the right, below. The button with the opposing arrows pointing horizontally will reverse your image (so if I wanted my blonde daughter on the right instead of the left, I could make that happen). Also, you can adjust the transparency of any shape you add.

After a green rectangle border, blue arrow and semi-transparent circle were added to my photo, I moved to the Text area. Select your desired font, click Add Text, then type your text into the text box that appears. From there, you can resize, change the color of the font, and change the font itself.

Step 7. You’re done! Save your completed Facebook Cover image.

You’ll see when you upload it to your fan page, that it fits perfectly!