Snapchat makes it easier to design geofilters with customizable templates

Snapchat is making it easier for anyone to create on-demand geofilters through the launch of templates you can customize right through the company’s website. For those that just want something quick and more “do-it-yourself,” this eliminates the need to use image editing software such as Photoshop to create a geofilter around events.

No matter whether it’s a birthday, wedding, festival, party, graduation, or any other cause for celebration, Snapchat wants users to be expressive in their stories, something filters play a part in. But not everyone wants to spend time working on the right design for their event — they just want to have something to make it special. With Snapchat’s filter templates, users simply choose their theme, select the design, customize the text and colors, and that’s it.

Launched in February, on-demand geofilters emerged as a way for users to tweak their stories to make them a bit personal. To date, Snapchatters have viewed snaps with geofilters more than 1 billion times a day. Typically, users designed geofilters to meet the size and guidelines on its website, mapped the area to specify where the filter would be applied, and set its duration. Geofilters start at $5, with the price depending on size and time period.

Oh, and there are updates being made to the Snapchat app rolling out today. Users can now stylize their captions to include italics, bolding, and underlining while animating big captions on top of the snaps — just press and hold to pin a big caption to a video snap. You’ll also be able to apply lenses faster by just tapping on your face once. Lastly, public stories can be previewed on the stories page before adding someone as a friend.