Many who use the popular image software Midjourney have had problems with Midjourney distortion. Human hands, arms, feet, and other body parts are often totally unrealistic. Extra fingers, matchstick arms, and feet disappearing into a blur are common.
Yes, there are explanations for why this happens. Regardless, this flaw makes folks waste significant time getting Midjourney to generate images of people that don’t include these artifacts.
After spending many frustrating hours, either trying to dream up prompts that avoid these problems or cropping out distorted portions of images, I’ve finally developed an approach that minimizes Midjourney distortion of body parts.
For the last 16 years I’ve posted one or more blog posts each week. Every post includes at least one image — over 1,400 blog post illustrations to date. Some of them are my own photographs, screenshots, or public-domain images. But the majority I create myself. I’ll never be a great graphic artist, but I enjoy visualizing and creating these visual reinforcements to my posts and am always looking for new tools that a novice like me can use successfully.
In 2019, I wrote about two free and easy ways to create graphics: Canva and Keynote. Well, I’ve added three more tools to my artist’s palette. They’re not free, but they’re inexpensive and I think they’re well worth the cost. You can, of course, use them for presentation illustrations too. So without further ado, here are three great tools for blog post illustrations.
I mentioned this $39.99/year tool at the end of the above 2019 post, but I’ve used it so much since then that I’m promoting it to “get-it” status. Noun Project describes itself as “Icons for Everything: Over 2 million curated icons, created by a global community”. You get unlimited royalty-free large SVG & PNG icons arranged in a searchable catalog. You can set the color of any downloaded icon. Noun Project is especially useful when trying to convey abstract concepts.
Here are a few of the ways I’ve used it:
Four Noun Project icons are resized to form a composite image for a post about an online workshop.Three icons make up an illustration comparing the power of a consultant versus that of a janitor.Combined with historic photographs in a post about learning and education.An animated gif combining two Noun Project icons to dramatize a group working to change members’ lives.
A Noun Project subscription also includes a small library of “stock” photos that I’ve occasionally used.
Here’s a mind-blowing tool. Midjourney is an AI image creator that I am increasingly using for illustrations for my blog posts.
For example, for last week’s post on my top 10 digital tools for learning in 2022, Midjourney created this image as one of four generated with the simple prompt “top 2022 tools photorealistic”.
Composite of two images of Supreme Court Justices generated by Midjourney.
And here’s an image generated from the prompt “50 people meeting” with a few copies of the CDC’s digital representation of SARS-CoV-2 added at various sizes:
I should emphasize that I spent very little time creating these images. Others, with some work, have produced beautiful Midjourney images like these:
Midjourney prompt: “character: an eccentric beautiful elegant pale-skinned short-haired blonde androgynous thief-treasure-hunter, wearing a striped-bandana, black pants, a striped-shirt, a short-sleeved-black-jacket, an elaborate-belt, sapphire jewelry, ruby trinkets, white boots. In the style of Alan Lee.”
Midjourney is still in beta. (And may be for some time.) You need a (free) Discord account to use it.
Currently, you can sign up for a free trial of Midjourney at discord.gg/midjourney. Free users are restricted to a limited number of image generations. I subscribed to the Basic plan for $10/month which allows me to generate about 200 images per month, far more than I need.
I’ve only scratched the surface here. AI image generators like Midjourney are game-changers for the world of illustration. (Yes, there are others, like the free, ad-supported, Craiyon, but Midjourney is my favorite to date.) I strongly recommend you check out Midjourney.
SketchWow
Finally, there’s SketchWow. This is a great tool, available on Mac or PC, for adding a cartoon-casual, hand-drawn look to your blog post and presentation illustrations. Think of it as a drawing program for amateur cartoonists.
A glance at some of the SketchWow starter templates will give you a sense of this tool…
In the past, I’ve used OmniGraffle to create diagram-style illustrations. SketchWow has the same capabilities but produces more attractive results. You can include animated connectors and icons. SketchWow’s onboarding is straightforward, the user interface is intuitive, and the online help is clear. The core menu elements are easily accessible and what you’d expect.
Here’s an example of how I used SketchWow for a blog post illustration. I combined a photo image from Noun Project with speech bubbles from Sketchwow. This was all done inside SketchWow. The sizing and positioning of the speech bubbles were quick and intuitive.
Pricing for SketchWow is a little, well, sketchy. If you go to Sketchwow’s website and click on Pricing, it looks as though it’s a subscription product, with the basic plan costing $19/month. It’s not worth quite that much money to me. However, SketchWow is currently also being sold as a one-time purchase, lifetime-updates product for $49. At that price, I recommend it!
Do you have other tools you like for blog post illustrations?
After years of trying many tools, here are my two favorite free easy ways to create graphics for blog posts and presentations if you’re not a graphics wonk. (Note: I am not a graphics wonk.)
I’ve written over eight hundred posts on this blog over the last fourteen years. As they tell you in SEO School, every post has at least one image. I often find an appropriate image on the web, but sometimes I feel inspired to create a graphic that fits better.
In addition, I frequently present at meeting industry events and to clients. Good presentation graphics can help communicate what I’m trying to say and strengthen my message.
Are you also “not a graphics wonk”?
I think there are a lot of people like me who have difficulty easily creating even simple graphics. My problem is that I simply don’t use “professional” graphics creation tools enough to be able to reliably memorize the variety of techniques, tools, and processes needed to speedily turn what I visualize into reality.
My graphic designer, whom I happily hire for complicated stuff, can quickly create perspective drawings, remove unwanted photo elements, and tone down someone’s bright clothing. For me, attempting any of these things takes a few hours on the web figuring out how, and making lots of mistakes along the way. The next time (if ever) I want to repeat the process I’ll have likely forgotten how to do it.
The graphics creation software I use most frequently comes free with Apple devices: Keynote.
Apple pitches Keynote as presentation software, and it’s an excellent tool for that. But it also has all the desirable features I listed above, so it’s perfect for quickly putting together a blog post graphic from a few external images plus some internally generated vector graphics and text. The alignment capabilities are especially nice: Keynote often seems to read my mind and pop up just the alignment guide(s) I might need.
I store a library of all my graphics in a single Keynote document, one slide per graphic. It’s easy to scroll through the slides and find an old graphic that can quickly be copied onto a new slide and modified as needed. Exporting a slide to a high-resolution jpeg (well, high enough for web or presentation purposes) is straightforward.
One feature it doesn’t have is rotating objects a precise amount (flipping horizontally or vertically is included). I occasionally need rotation capabilities for creating more complex (for me) graphics like a circle of chairs. If you need this capability, check out my bonus suggestion below.
For creating the kinds of graphics I’ve described, this software just works. The user interface is intuitive; I’ve never needed to research how to do anything I wanted to do. For the rare occasions I’ve attempted something (by my standards) really complicated and been stymied, I use the suggestion below.
Anyone with a web browser can use the best tool I’ve found for quickly creating simple graphics online: Canva. The software has a free plan that has been perfectly adequate for my modest needs. The trick to using it is to ignore the features that you don’t need — the free and paid templates and the galleries of free and paid images. Instead, start with a blank custom-size graphic workspace and use the drag-and-drop editor with your own graphic elements and perhaps a few basic objects.
Here’s an example of a graphic I made with Canva:
A couple of logos and some lines, and bingo! another graphic for another blog post.
Canva is especially helpful for creating a custom-sized graphic that’s filled perfectly with your desired content. You can do this in Keynote, but it’s a bit more fiddly.
So there you have it. Two free easy ways to create graphics for blog posts and presentations. But wait, there’s more!
Bonus resources
To reward you for reading this far I want to mention two other invaluable graphics resources. They both cost money, but not very much.
For more complicated graphics I use OmniGraffle. Here’s an example of the kind of graphic that is easy to create in this program:
OmniGraffle shines working with vector graphics. Diagrams like the above are easy to create because the program supports “connected objects”. I also find the program useful for drawing event room sets when you have to start from a venue’s floor plans downloaded as graphics.
OmniGraffle Standard (the version I use) costs $149.99, though education and volume discounts are available. Pricey but when you need it it’s worth it!
Finally, there’s Noun Project. This gem describes itself as “Icons for Everything: Over 2 million curated icons, created by a global community”. For $39.99/year you get unlimited royalty-free large SVG & PNG icons arranged in a searchable catalog. Noun Project is perfect for icons that represent abstract concepts, like communication [3,029 icons]:
or passion [1,567 icons]:
If you read my posts regularly, you’re likely to recognize some of the graphics I’ve made using icons from this extensive and ever-growing collection. You’re likely to find what you need here. Recommended!
Got recommendations that make creating graphics a snap for the graphically challenged? Share them in the comments below!
For the last 16 years I’ve posted one or more blog posts each week. Every post includes at least one image — over 1,400 blog post illustrations to date. Some of them are my own photographs, screenshots, or public-domain images. But the majority I create myself. I’ll never be a great graphic artist, but I enjoy visualizing and creating these visual reinforcements to my posts and am always looking for new tools that a novice like me can use successfully.
After years of trying many tools, here are my two favorite free easy ways to create graphics for blog posts and presentations if you’re not a graphics wonk. (Note: I am not a graphics wonk.)
