Add Text to Image – Put Words on Any Photo Online, Free

A caption turns a photo into a message: a title on a thumbnail, a name on a team picture, a joke on a meme. This free tool adds text to any image with real control — multiple text layers, eight fonts, size, colour, opacity, bold and italic, and a dark outline that keeps words readable on busy photos. Drag text with your finger or mouse, or snap it to any of nine anchor positions.

Everything renders at full resolution in your browser, and downloads as a PNG with your text baked in.

How to add text to an image

Click the file box and choose an image.
Type in the text box. The default layer starts at the top-left; drag it anywhere, or use the nine position buttons.
Style it: font, size, colour, opacity, bold/italic, and the outline toggle.
Need a title and a caption? Click Add another text, click a layer on the photo to select it, and style each one separately.
Click Download PNG.

A worked example, with the numbers

A 2400 × 1350 video thumbnail. The starter layer is sized at a fourteenth of the width — about 171 px — which is the proportion thumbnail designers aim for: readable on a phone. With the outline on, the stroke is drawn at size ÷ 14 ≈ 12 px in near-black behind the fill, so white text survives a bright sky and yellow text survives a dark forest. Snap it to bottom-centre and the tool centres it exactly: for a 900 px-wide text on a 2400 px photo, x = (2400 − 900) ÷ 2 = 750.

Making text readable on photos

Outline is your friend. Photos change brightness behind every letter; a dark outline separates text from any background.
Contrast first, colour second. White or yellow on dark areas, near-black on bright areas. Pure red text vibrates — avoid it.
Size for the smallest screen. If it is not readable as a thumbnail, it is not readable.
Two layers beat one long line. A big title plus a smaller subtitle reads faster than a paragraph.

When people use this

YouTube and social thumbnails with punchy titles.
Memes — Impact font, white fill, outline on: the classic recipe is built in.
Before-and-after photos, labelled prints, real-estate and marketplace listings with a price or address.
Watermarking-ish labels — for a repeating protective mark, our watermark tool is the better fit.

Honest limitations

Fonts are the ones installed on your device — the eight listed are near-universal, but an exotic font on your machine will not travel with the PNG (the text is baked in as pixels, which is also why it always looks the same everywhere). There is no curved or per-letter text. And the download flattens everything: keep your original photo if you may want different words later.

Positioning like a designer

Two habits separate tidy text from clutter. First, margins: the position buttons already inset text by 4% of the photo’s width — never let letters touch the edge of the frame. Second, the rule of thirds: text reads best in the top or bottom third, over the calmest part of the picture. Drag the title there, then check the opposite corner for the smaller second line; diagonal balance looks deliberate even when it took five seconds.

Frequently asked questions

Can I add text to a photo on my phone?

Yes. The canvas supports touch dragging, and the position buttons exist precisely because pixel-perfect dragging on a small screen is fiddly.

Why does my text look different after download?

It should not: the download is rendered by the same code as the preview, minus the orange selection outline. If a font fell back, it means that font is not installed on the device doing the rendering.

Is the image quality reduced?

No. The PNG keeps the photo’s original pixel dimensions; text is drawn at that full resolution.

Embed this tool on your website — free

Copy the code below to add this working tool to your own page. A small credit link stays with it — that’s all we ask.