How to Make Your Own Custom Overlay Profile Picture

Lately there have been various flag overlays being thrown here and there and everywhere on Facebook, with rainbows and Vatican flags and Get-Yours-Here posts galore.

The politics or morality of those posts isn't what this post is about (so everyone relax... these weeks have been way too stressful keeping my little eloper from getting into trouble here and there and everywhere and so that is where all of my energy is going at the moment).

This is a post born from one of the "how to's" that someone posted that told whoever was using this particular method to try this and maybe it would work or maybe they would have to do it several times to get there own little flag icon.

After reading the steps I wanted to tell everyone that it's way, way easier to do overlays on your own.
If I can figure it out, anyone can do it.

Here's how I do mine in over in PicMonkey.  

Start by bringing up the photo you want to edit.  Get the picture you want to overlay saved onto your computer too.

Next go down and click on the textures button on the left hand side of the screen (the cross hatched diamond, just above the apple):

Now go up and click on the button that says "Your Own."

Now you can open up whatever photo you want to overlay over your photo.

I already knew that I wanted to use my profile picture that I snapped during Lent as the example because it's a clear head shot that I don't hate (and those can be hard to come by):

However I was having a hard time picking out an overlay that I liked.  I knew a super busy photo with other people in it probably wouldn't turn out all that well with this picture, but most of the photos I take have people in them.  Finally I saw this picture and I thought that I'd give it a try:

With the original blend that came up automatically when I uploaded the photo, it was a little too Darth Maul...

So I went down and clicked on the bar that says "Blend Mode" and moved it from Multiply to Screen (you can experiment with this and see which mode best fits your picture.  Screen tends to be my favorite):

And after clicking on the Screen Button the same picture looks like this:

You can play with the fade and saturation bars to make the image more to your liking too.

Then all you have to do is save your photo and you have your own custom overlay of any two pictures that you'd like to combine.

Happy Photo Editing!