2016 PicMonkey Year in Review

Whether you loved it or hated it, no one can deny that 2016 was a big year. Pokemon roamed the streets, Leo finally won his Oscar, we met Ken Bone, and the Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. While our year at PicMonkey maybe wasn’t Hodor-name-reveal-level momentous, we did have our share of big moments. Let’s take a look back at everything 2016 added to our sweet suite of products:

Hub storage

Remember when you would be in the middle of editing a photo and then you would have to go stop to do something else and just pray to the Internet gods that all your work wouldn’t be lost? When we launched Hub, PicMonkey users kissed those days goodbye for good.

Hub lets PicMonkey users keep all their creations in one spot. Plus when you add to Hub, you can continue to edit text and graphics, so an editing project can be broken up into several sessions. Hub also helped paved the way for…

The PicMonkey Mobile App

You asked (and begged and pleaded) and we answered! Shortly after releasing Hub, we proudly presented to you the PicMonkey app! With features like Draw, Stickers, Text, layerable effects, we packed all the fun of PicMonkey into the palm of your hand. Plus, the app connects to Hub so you could easily send your pics from the mobile app to the desktop app and vice versa for a more specialized editing experience.

Templates

In early fall we released design templates to help you more easily create invitations, social posts, announcements, and business cards (just to name a few things). These templates were specially made by designers, and are fully editable so they’re easy shmeezy to customize.

We also released a whole hoard of holiday templates to make your card making that much easier. We’ve got stuff for Christmas, New Year’s, Hannukah, Kwanza, and Festivus. (Yes, for the rest of us.)

Effects

In addition to flashy new product releases, we also had some flashy new effects to dole out including:

You can find these slick effects (and more!) under the Effects tab in the PicMonkey Editor.

Graphics

2016 also saw the release of several new Graphic sets. We’ve got:

Use these in your original designs or plug them into a template. To find these graphics and more, click the Graphics tab in the PicMonkey Editor.

Desktop tools

We released a bunch of features, including a button in the Crop tool that lets you flip your crop between a portrait and landscape orientation.

We also added a Fit to window button in the zoom control that allows you to zoom in and out and then return to your image’s original size with one click.

When we released Templates in October, we also added a Layers palette to the bottom toolbar to make flipping through text boxes and graphics super simple. Use the Layers palette to see all the items in your design, reorder them, delete some, and select others.

Mobile updates

In October we added Clarity and Levels to PicMonkey mobile in order to give your the ability to sharpen your image and change the way its lighting looks.

We also added new Halloween stickers, fonts, and colors to make your pictures delightfully devilish.

For the holidays, we added new stickers, fonts, and colors to get your pics into the season. We also added several new fonts to the app, gave you the ability to see your original, unedited image by pressing on it, and gave you the ability to flip and duplicate stickers.

International

Last but not least, we expanded our quest for world domination by releasing a Spanish language version of PicMonkey! Keep your eye out in 2017 for even more PicMonkey language options.

What was your favorite PicMonkey feature from this year? Let us know in the comments!

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Tanya Friedland

Tanya is a copywriter at PicMonkey, a company that has greatly improved her life by allowing her to Zombify her friends and Santa-ify her enemies. A native Seattleite, she dreams of one day being a contestant on The Price Is Right.