Social media news feeds are often fraught and gloomy. Fortunately, memes remind us that humor remains the best way to put life into perspective. Over the past year, these visual jokes have flooded our social media and nothing prevents you from compiling your own memes. With these tools, you can create your own memes in minutes without spending a penny.
Tip 01: Filmora Meme Maker
On the homepage of Filmora Online Meme Maker first upload a video, a gif or image (s) that is somewhere on the hard drive. You can also enter the web address of an online video or animation. The maximum file size is 50 MB. Then you will be taken to a new page where you add text to the image. With this Meme Maker you can place the text both inside and outside the image. The tool has a decent font library where you can determine the color of the text with a mouse click. After you have made all the settings, choose the file type for the output and click the button To make to complete the process so that you can export the meme as a png, jpg, gif, or mp4 file. The nice thing about this free service from Wondershare is that you can experiment with different fonts and the result will not have a watermark. The tool is also mobile-friendly.
Short, recognizable and with a punch line
If you do it right, memes are magnets for more online traffic and likes. The key to a good meme is coming up with some text that makes the image funnier. This is more difficult than it sounds. Rather than dwelling on the font choice, focus on improving the joke. Create a joke in two lines and put the punch line in the second line. Always go for a short joke that people can identify with. We prefer to chuckle at familiar situations. A meme also evokes the feeling of an ‘inside joke’. You know, the regular jokes that you only make to acquaintances. When you as a visitor understand the punch line of the meme, you get the feeling that you are part of a group of like-minded people.
Tip 02: ToonClip
ToonClip is a special project. If you enjoy simple script editing, creating the animation in ToonClip might be even more fun than viewing it. You place images on the canvas and then you modify the script to control the images. Start with the sample projects and have the figures say certain things, emerge and move. You arrange this to the second. Once you’ve mastered that, you can create animated memes with your own images. ToonClip has a library of templates, sounds, objects and so on… You can download the result as an online movie or as an animated gif.
You can even use a movie as a background at Crello
Tip 03: Crello
An app and web application to put together beautiful designs is Crello. Basically it is an online graphics program with a huge number of templates. Those templates are grouped by size and destination. Here you will find all the important standard sizes for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and email. Then continue with the fonts suggested by Crello designers or start from scratch. With a few clicks you can change the size, font, style, alignment and text color. You can even use a movie as a background. You also have a wide range of background music at your disposal. So Crello is focused on social media and you can create beautiful designs with a free account. If you are willing to pay a few dollars for certain images or videos, you will get even more out of it.
Tip 04: ImgFlip
One of the simplest uses to create a meme is ImgFlip. There are two tabs. You choose the tab Video to GIF and then you can upload a movie from the hard drive or paste a web address of online video. In the second tab Images to GIF, you do the same but with images. ImgFlip supports YouTube and Vimeo. Because a meme is always short (here a maximum of 20 seconds) and such a video is usually way too long; select the fragment you need with two controls. At the same time you let a piece of text appear in an almost endless supply of fonts and you determine the width of the meme. ImgFlip is free, but there is also a pro version where you don’t see the small watermark, in which you can put multiple texts and you can choose a higher output resolution.
Tip 05: ILoveIMG
Online photo editor ILoveIMG has a section dedicated to making photo memes. The generator works straightforwardly based on jpg, gif or png images that you upload from the hard drive or directly from Dropbox or Google Drive. In addition, this address has a collection of templates that just scream for a punchy text. You can design that text and place it both inside and outside the photo border.
Use Kapwing to add a simple title to a photo or as an editor for online media
Tip 06: Kapwing
One of the strongest meme generators we’ve seen is Kapwing. The tool is completely free, does not add a watermark, and you can export videos for up to 7 minutes – which means longer than eternity in the meme world. Moreover, Kapwing is built up like an onion from different application layers. You can start from the Meme Generator and keep it very simple… Upload a video or an image or enter a url of a movie and some text and you’re done. But as you upload the video, you notice there’s a lot under the hood. Kapwing optimizes the file and asks if it should extract the audio from the video file. You can also add scenes and indicate how long each scene will be on screen. Before you know it, you’ll be in an editor where you can control the brightness, contrast and saturation of the footage with sliders.
If you work with photos, various transitions are possible and you have a timeline to indicate when image A is replaced by B. Finally, it is even possible to add a direct recording via the webcam or screen recording. In short, you decide how deep you want to go into this editor. You can use Kapwing to add a simple title above and below a photo, but it also comes in handy as an editor for media you want to publish on the internet.
Tip 07: inPixio
No watermark, no advertising, free and not even a paid pro version … We’re talking about the inPixio’s meme generator which is still in a beta stage and which is super easy with images. It takes some getting used to the workflow. Of course you upload the photo file first, but if you click the button afterwards Text nothing happens. You have to open the bar on the left first and only then can you open a Quick Template drag to the photo. That is a box in which the text has already been formatted. Then select a different font, style and text color in the Fonts tab. The tab Effect use to color the background of the text box and to set the size and transparency. If you are not satisfied, use the button at the top Reset; otherwise there is the button Save your photo. We notice that it is not possible to choose another file format. If the original file is a png file, you must also save the result as png. Nor is there any option to add videos to the meme.
Tip 08: Adobe Spark
Finally we mention Adobe Spark a very strong commercial web and mobile app. Take advantage of the free trial period (14 days) to create exceptionally high-quality memes that only show a small Spark logo at the bottom right. After that, this solution is far too expensive for the home user: 24.19 euros per month or as part of Adobe Creative Cloud 12.09 per month.
First you select a specific size. You can choose between square or portrait options, landscape, or you can get creative and start with your own format. After that, you can use images from the extensive Spark library if you don’t want to use your own images.
You notice that this generator comes from the big image editors such as Photoshop and Illustrator. For example, to determine the text color, you can use the eyedropper to ‘suck’ a hue from the background image, so that the text color remains in harmony with the background. Spark works with color schemes and the templates are all to put through a ring. Moreover, you have a lot of options to design text tastefully. A nice find, for example, is the option Magic align which converts the text to capital letters which is then neatly horizontally and vertically square justified. Or you can let the text appear animated. There is even a beta function to remove the background from the photo so you can add a new background. Moreover, you can combine several photos as a kind of collage.
