This can be a very useful thing to do for many reasons. For me as a blogger, it’s important just to be able to add arrows to screenshots and images to show where people need to click or options that need to be selected to make things clearer. Other people just want to add arrows to images for humor and meme effects.
Whatever the reason, in this article I’ll show you a quick, easy and totally free way to add an arrow to any image you’ve got, like a photo or screenshot. You need to use the LunaPic resource; here are the steps:
- Go to LunaPic
- Go to Upload to find and upload your image.
- Select Draw on the top menu bar
- Select Clipart
- Select or search for Arrows
- Select the arrow you want and resize and position.
- Select Apply when finished
- Click Save on the left hand menu to download.
This is a great way to add a simple arrow to an image you’ve already got and download it as a new image to use as you want, with no cost or registration required.
Let’s go through more detailed illustrated steps on how to do this, using some arrows from LunaPic along the way to demonstrate the point!
More Detailed Steps on How To Add Arrows to Images Using LunaPic
Step 1 – Upload Image – Go to LunaPic’s homepage and click on Upload in the top left:
Find the image/photo/screenshot you want to add the arrow to on your device and upload it.
Step 2 – Edit Image – A copy of your image should display on the screen once it uploads. Click on Draw in the top menu bar, and then select Clipart from the drop-down menu that appears.
Step 3 – Find and Add Arrows – A menu of all Clipart options comes up, and there is a pre-set option for Arrows you can click on to display all arrow design templates you can add to the image:
You can then browse through the many pages of arrow designs to find one you like.
Alternatively, you can search for arrows with certain features you want; here are some good terms you can put into the search box to find what you want:
- “arrow red/blue” or whatever other color you want
- “arrow left/right/up/down” to get the arrow pointing in whatever direction you want.
Step 4 – Resize Arrow – Once you find an arrow sign you like, click on it and it will add it to the picture you’ve uploaded, but usually in a size much too big. Use the yellow buttons (left click and hold) around the arrow in the corners to resize it horizontally and vertically to exactly the size you want. Then click, hold and drag the arrow itself to position it exactly where you want it in the original image.
Once you’ve got the arrow sized and positioned exactly where you want it in the original image, click Apply just above the image to actually create the new image with the arrow embedded.
Step 5 – Save – If you’re happy with the final product, click Save in the left hand side menu bar to finally save the edited image with the arrow on it to your device. It gives you the option to save the new image in loads of different formats, including the popular ones like PNG, JPG, GIF, etc.
Option 6 (Optional) – Resize – The final image created may still not be exactly in the dimensions you want, so you might want to go to resizeimage.net and upload the new image, from where you can then resize the width/height, crop, and compress the image (along with other options) to get it exactly the size you want. If you need to compress larger images, also check out the Website Planet Image Compressor. resizeimage.net is another fantastic free image editing tool to complement the Lunapic tool; we suggest adding both of them to your favorites bar if you plan to edit or resize images often.
Other Free Online Image Editing Tools
Lunapic has covered me for this function almost all of the time; however their Clipart library has been known to go down from time to time. So let’s cover some other free online tools where you can add arrows or otherwise edit an image if Lunapic isn’t working for whatever reason, or doesn’t have the exact arrow style you want.
For simplicity, we’re only listing free online tools that you can straightaway just upload an image and add an arrow or do some other editing – no login, no signup or premium membership required.
I’ll add more as I find them.
