How to Build a Branded Marketing Image with Compositing and Knockout Text

Most marketing images aren't a single photograph. A hero banner often needs two or three product shots arranged together. A campaign visual wants your logo or headline treated over a scene. A team page needs headshots that were taken in different rooms to somehow look like one set. These are jobs that traditionally meant opening Photoshop — or filing a ticket with whoever owns the Photoshop license.

This walkthrough builds one finished, branded marketing image in the browser using two picmagIQ features together: compositing to assemble the scene, and knockout text to punch a headline through it. No Photoshop, no designer, exported as a CMS-ready WebP.

Step 1 — Gather your subjects

Decide what belongs in the image before you open the workspace. For a product hero that might be a background photo and two or three product shots. For a campaign banner it could be a single subject and an overlay texture. You can bring in up to five subjects, each from its own source photo — they don't need to share a background, a resolution, or a color treatment, because you'll fix all of that inside picmagIQ.

Step 2 — Let background removal do the cutting

Add each subject to the composite and picmagIQ removes its background automatically, in the browser — no manual selection or clipping paths. If an automatic cutout leaves a stray edge or trims something it shouldn't have, switch to the brush mask editor and refine it by hand: erase and restore brushes, adjustable brush size and hardness, and full undo/redo. This is the step that used to eat the most time in a traditional editor, and here it's mostly automatic.

Step 3 — Arrange the composition

With your subjects isolated, drag each one into place on the canvas, scaling and positioning by eye until the layout reads the way you want. Place the background first, then arrange the subjects on top of it. Add a global overlay layer if you want a texture or branded frame sitting across the whole scene.

Step 4 — Grade everything to match

This is what makes a composite look intentional instead of pasted together. Each subject carries its own filter stack, so you can apply the same cinematic color grade to every element — warming the shadows, matching the contrast, unifying the palette — so three photos shot under three different lighting conditions finally read as one image. Grade the overlay too if you're using one.

Step 5 — Punch the headline through with knockout text

Now add the typographic treatment. Knockout text cuts your headline out of the overlay image, so the composite shows through the letterforms. Type your word or phrase, then tune the font size, weight, letter spacing, and horizontal and vertical position until the type lines up with the part of the image you want revealed. Heavier weights and larger sizes open up wider letterforms, which show more of the picture beneath — this is the bold hero treatment you see on campaign banners and landing pages.

Step 6 — Export as WebP

Export and picmagIQ renders the whole thing server-side into a single finished WebP — the cutouts, the layout, the per-subject grading, and the knockout text all baked into the pixels. There's no CSS blend mode to break across browsers and no font that needs to load. Drop the file into WordPress, Webflow, Shopify, or any other CMS exactly as you would any other image.

The result

One branded marketing image — multiple subjects, consistent grading, a typographic hero treatment — built start to finish in the browser, by a content manager, without a designer or a Photoshop license. That is the workflow picmagIQ is built for.