Add stickers to photos so they look placed on purpose, not pasted on top
A sticker on a photo is a compositional decision wearing a cute costume. It covers something, it points somewhere, it fills a corner that was empty, or it tells you when and where the photo happened. The posts where stickers look wrong are the ones where they do none of those jobs and just sit on the face because the face was there.
This guide is about placing stickers so they earn their spot, in dump, in the browser. It covers the four jobs a sticker can do, the two or three rule, how to make a sticker read as a real die-cut sticker instead of a flat cutout, and the part that is genuinely different in dump: every cutout you make from your own photos becomes a sticker of yours, so a friend's face, a coffee cup or your logo can go on every dump after this one.
Stickers: free with an account. Exports are never watermarked.
The four jobs a sticker can do
- Fill: the photo has a dead corner, an empty sky, a blank wall. A sticker gives the eye something there, and the composition stops leaning.
- Point: an arrow, a circle, a hand. The sticker tells the viewer what to look at in a photo that has too much in it.
- Cover: the licence plate, the stranger, the mess on the table. Covering is the one job where the sticker should look casual, because a careful sticker over a spot says there was a spot.
- Date and place: a location pill, a date stamp, a ticket frame. These are the stickers that turn a photo into a memory, and they are the ones people copy from a dump they liked.
Before dragging anything, decide which job the photo needs. If it needs none, it needs no sticker, and the post is better for the restraint.
How many: two, sometimes three
One sticker reads as a caption. Two read as a decision. Four read as a page in a notebook, which is a legitimate look, but it is a look, and it should be the whole post's idea, not an accident. As a working rule use two per photo in a dump, three if one of them is tiny, and let the same sticker recur across slides so the carousel reads as one hand placing them.
Scale matters more than count. A sticker the size of the subject's head competes with the subject. A sticker a third of that size decorates it. When in doubt, shrink it, then move it slightly off the thing it relates to instead of on top of it.
Make it look like a sticker, not a cutout
A cutout dropped on a photo looks like a cutout: hard edge, no thickness, floating. What makes a sticker read as a sticker is the white border and the tiny shadow. In dump that is the Sticker preset on any image: it draws a white die-cut outline that follows the actual shape of the pixels, not the rectangle around them, and adds a soft shadow so it sits on the surface. Borders on images work the same way, hugging the silhouette. Rotate it a few degrees, never straight, and it stops floating.
Your own stickers, from your own photos
This is the part worth the guide. Select any photo on the canvas and use Cut out: the subject is lifted off its background, in your browser on a desktop, and the result is saved into your Stickers panel automatically. A pet, a friend mid-laugh, the coffee cup from every trip, a product, a signature. Next dump, it is one search away, with the die-cut outline already an option. Background removal is 15 a week on the free plan, 50 on Creator and unlimited on Studio, and a flat-backdrop mode handles logos and objects photographed on white.
The library also has sticker packs you browse by chip and a search box. Search shows the first nine results on the free plan and the full set on Creator and Studio. If you keep a brand kit in Style, its logo appears as a Your logo tile at the top, which is the fastest way to sign a post.
Stickers that are not stickers: mockup elements
Some of the best stickers on a photo are things you can type into. dump's Tools panel holds editable mockup elements: a chat bubble that says what you want, an Instagram mention tag, a story location pill, a review card with real stars, a follow popup, a chart. They are placed like stickers and edited like text, so the date, the place and the joke are yours rather than a preset. Handwriting is the other one: the draw layer's marker and highlighter over a photo do the notebook-page job better than any sticker of a scribble.
- 1Pick the job
Fill, point, cover, or date. Say it out loud if it helps. No job, no sticker.
- 2Drag it from the Stickers panel, or cut one out
Open Stickers, search or pick a pack, drag onto the photo. Or select a photo, Cut out, and use the result.
- 3Shrink it and tilt it
Smaller than feels right, rotated a few degrees, slightly off the thing it relates to.
- 4Give it an edge
Apply the Sticker preset for the white die-cut border and the soft shadow. Skip it for flat graphic stickers that are meant to look printed on.
- 5Repeat the same sticker across the dump
One recurring sticker across five slides is a signature. Five different ones is a stationery shop.
Die-cut sticker look: free with an account. Exports are never watermarked.
Frequently asked questions
Open dump in the browser, put your photo on the canvas, open the Stickers panel and drag a sticker onto the photo. You can also select the photo, cut the subject out and use that as a sticker. The library, the die-cut Sticker preset and the export are free; the full sticker search and the larger cutout allowance are on the paid plans.
Two per photo is a safe rule, three if one is very small. One sticker reads as a caption, four or more reads as a scrapbook page, which only works if that is the whole post's idea. Keep the same sticker recurring across a carousel rather than a different one on each slide.
Give it a white border that follows its shape and a small shadow, then rotate it a few degrees. In dump the Sticker preset does exactly that: the outline traces the actual silhouette of the pixels rather than the rectangle around them, and the shadow sits it on the surface.
Yes. In dump any photo you cut out is saved into your Stickers panel automatically and can be reused in every future document. The standard cutout runs in your browser on a desktop; the free plan includes 15 cutouts a week, Creator 50 and Studio unlimited.