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Oh, Ribbet, you’re my new best friend because PicMonkey sucks now. They’ve decided to make their site a membership only site. They’ve listed their cutesy excuses for doing it but in the end, PicMonkey isn’t an option for me anymore. Oh, they’ll let you play with their fancy tools but if you actually want to export anything you’ve created, you have to pony up a membership fee. They have 2 tiers of pricing, well, 3, if you count their “monthly” option. It’s $47.88/yr for their lowest tier if you pay at once or $7.99/mo, which is $95.88/yr. Ouch. Or you can pay $8.33/mo for their highest tier which I guess offers the most options. That one rings in at $99.96/yr. Again, ouch.
That’s OK. There’s another sheriff in town called Ribbet. Ribbet is what PicMonkey used to be with plenty of options available with a free membership. Like PicMonkey of old, they also offer various membership options. It’s $4.95 if you pay monthly, or $59.40/yr. They also offer a 6-month option for $19.95 or a yearly option for $29.95 if you pay at once. If you try the free version and like it, consider choosing one of the membership options and supporting the developers because it will help keep the free version free. The more paid memberships, the less likely it will end up like PicMonkey.
I used PicMonkey a lot for printables for our Etsy shop so I needed to find another alternative. GIMP can sometimes get a bit involved and overly complex for what I need to do. The primary reason I liked PicMonkey was that it was easy to create something and export it. I found Ribbet by doing a Google search for programs similar to PicMonkey. It seemed promising so I decided to give it a shot. At first glance, the interface isn’t as slick as PicMonkey but all the essentials are there. Although the cool overlays and other items PicMonkey offered are absent here I’m hoping they will continue to develop and introduce new offerings. If you’re familiar with Picnik (I wasn’t) you’ll have no problems because Ribbet is from the same platform.
On the main page of Ribbet, there are several different choices. We can get into the rest of them later but for right now I want to focus on Editor since I’m making a printable. The upper left menu is where the editor button is.
Once you click the Editor, you’ll be taken to another page where you can make some more choices. I’m going to choose “Blank Canvas” to make my printable. I guess I could have made the arrow a little bigger in this screenshot, huh?
Next, you’ll be asked to enter a size for your canvas. If you know the pixel count you can enter it here. If not, click custom and you’ll get a drop-down of pre-configured sizes from which to choose.
I chose 11 x 8.5 but that’s subject to change depending on the effects I chose. I also chose Transparent for the background. Unless there’s a specific color background I’ll be using, that’s what I typically go with. Once you’ve entered the size, the main workspace window will open with your blank canvas in the middle. Your options are in a menu across the top. You can choose from staff picks, effects, text, stickers, touch-up, frames, pro (requires membership), seasonal and anything you’ve marked as a favorite. Some of these are only for photos but there are plenty we can use. After clicking on one of these, your options will be listed down the left side of the workspace.
Similar to PicMonkey, certain options are only available with a paid membership. Any item that’s considered premium is marked along the side.
The first thing I want to do is choose an effect that will be applied to the entire canvas. I’m going with the Morocco filter because it sort of makes the canvas look like a page out of an old book. There’s no premium tag on this one so I’m good to go.
Cool. Now I need something on my canvas! One of the cool features of Ribbet that’s like PicMonkey are the holiday groupings. Clicking on one will expand it so you can see all the options.
We’re all about Halloween for this printable so that’s where I’m headed. There are a lot of options available. I was disappointed that textures were a premium feature but I’m still happy with the filter I chose. Now I’m going to grab one of the graves and put it on my canvas.
Technically, it’s considered a sticker. There’s a dialogue box you can use to set different properties but I just want to resize it and make it bigger.
Now I want to put some text on it because what good is a blank tombstone? The text feature is accessible through the menu at the top. The font list shows you all the available fonts and the premium ones are marked. Choose your font and then type your text in the box at the top of the fonts list. When you hit the Add button you’ll see it on your canvas. I’m using the Sue Ellen Francis font because it seems suitably creepy for a Halloween printable. Booooooo. You can either type all your text into one box or do separate text boxes for each line. You have to click completely off the canvas before you enter more text or else it will overwrite what you have.
It’s nice but…it could use a little something, don’t you think? How about this Crystal Ball effect? YES!
Now let’s save it! There are only two formats available for saving – .jpg or .png. If you need it in a PDF format, you can always import it into something like GIMP or Photoshop and export as PDF with the crop marks and bleed on it. Heck, you can even use Canva for that! One thing to note, after I applied the crystal ball effect, my canvas resized to a square 2552 pixels by 2552 pixels. It doesn’t matter if you originally chose a black background, this particular effect needs to be square. I’m planning on bringing it into GIMP and pasting into a black background that is sized to my original dimensions so I’m going to leave it as is.
And that’s it! Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Here’s our completed printable:
Very cool. I’m so glad I found an alternative to PicMonkey and I’m going to spring for the annual membership for Ribbet now that I’ve seen how easy it is to use. If you’d like to download and print this, here’s a Ribbet Halloween Printable for you in PDF format.
Happy Halloween! Yes, I know it’s only October 3 but we’re already in the spirit over here. All of my Amazon purchases for decorations are being delivered this week and we’re planning on decorating this weekend. Follow us on Instagram for sneak peeks and behind the scenes shenanigans. 🙂
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