You know, being a member of Stencil (formerly Share As Image) since 2014 has given me plenty of time. For what, you ask?

To write a review!

I use the website every time I’m writing up a blog post, after all.

Just so you know, I’m an affiliate (4 years later) and will earn a percentage if some kind soul clicks and buys their service.

Let’s hop into the Stencil Review

What is it? Stencil is a fast way to make and edit pictures. All kinds of pictures. Social Media Pictures. Product shots. Email headers. And stuff you want to put text on.

“Pick a background. Add some text. No biggie.”

Click here to visit them and take a look for yourself

https://getstencil.com/?tap_a=15281-5133bd&tap_s=40749-60d5eb

You know what else is great? The pictures don’t look like fake-stock-photo-models-smiling-for-no reason junk or Microsoft Word clip art you see on “get rich quick” blogs.

Here’s a quick overview

• 1,000,000+ royalty free pictures
• 1,400,000+ royalty free icons
• easy to make and download images
• send images directly to your social accounts
• great if you just need pictures for your site and have no design skills
• free & paid plains available (as low as $9/month when paid annually)

Let’s take a look at what’s inside.

I always start off with the photos and dig for a background I like.

1. Photos: You get 1,400,000+ royalty free photos. Just search through by whatever keyword to find pictures that fit your theme.

Then, you can add text and apply all sorts of filter to your image.

Yes, you can add your own fonts if you want.

And the filters? And can you blur and darken stuff?

Sure.

For the most part, this is how I whip up my pictures and as far as I go.

I’m a low maintenance guy.

2. Icons. You also get 1,000,000+ royalty free icons. I don’t use them too much aside from the “mouse,” “pointer fingers” and shapes like circles and rectangles that I can turn into buttons or to emphasize text.

3. Templates. If you suck at design, you’ll like these. I don’t use them much because either I’ve yet to find a need for them or… maybe I think my design skills are enough.

Probably my least used and least favorite feature. The current templates aren’t  high on the “oh, hey, this is A E S T H E T I C” scale.

4. Quotes. And, you get a database of 100,000+ quotes. Why? No clue. But, you know, people love inspirational quotes. And pictures with inspirational quotes.

5. Logo/Watermark uploads. This may be useful if you need to stick a company logo or a URL on everything. I find it useful in another way. I can upload “icons” that I want to re-use again and again. For example, the “PDF download” icon or that finger pointing one.

If you’re not satisfied with the icons offered, or if you want to stick in some other”element” into the picture, do it with this feature.

Finally, when all is said and done, you want to preview your picture, right?

Yep, you can do that too. Desktop and mobile preview.

So, how do I use Stencil? I run some blogs and for every article, I stick in a good 3 to 15 images. Well, it depends on the number of items that I write about. If I write about 15 things, I’ll do 15 images plus 1 or 2 more for the introduction.

Let’s say I want to write about “15 quotes” or “15 Japanese Phrases.”

• I’ll stick the text in, add a background and download the first one.
• Then, I’ll add new text, change the background and download the next one.
• And the process goes on.

Stencil makes it easy to quickly switch out the text (copy and paste), add in a new background, and download them one by one.

That’s how I manage to whip up the images. Now, I tried Canva but boy, despite their nice looking, bubble-gum UI, it’s slow as all hell. The download process is even worse. Might be fine if you just need one image but bad if you want a whole batch.

You might be thinking… what else?

Aside from making pictures really fast, what other benefits have you gained? Well…

• Got tons of shares on Pinterest and Facebook. Tumblr, not so much.
• Got referral traffic from Pinterest and Facebook from said pictures. Though, the referral traffic is probably also a result of my number of fans.
• Helped me grow my Facebook, Tumblr & Pinterest channels.
• Made my articles look “above average.”
• Can I say I made money with those pictures? No, I can’t make that claim. Sure, I’ve earned affiliate commission with my other blogs and while it’s impossible to tie the images directly to the ROI, I can say they helped.

Ultimately, making decent pictures and downloading them in seconds is the biggest benefit for me. It’s what I’ve been doing for the past 4 years.

The money spent on Stencil was, in hindsight, a no-brainer.

And because it has served me well thus far, I decided to write this Stencil review. I’m not sure that I’ll be going out of my way to write up more articles. I don’t care for picture making software. This is “Hey, I like you, so I’ll do it.”

Done reading my Stencil review? Then…

Click here to visit them and take a look for yourself

Or, leave me a comment and tell me what you think.