Jul 25, 2014 - 10 Ads and Magazine Covers That Are Photoshop-Free and Still #Flawless Jihan Forbes July 25th, 2014. The Economist's culture magazine, Intelligent Life, released this very refreshing cover of an un-Photoshopped Cate.

I’m a personal branding pioneer, motivational speaker, founder of Reach Personal Branding and cofounder of CareerBlast.TV. I'm also the bestselling author of the definitive books on executive branding: Ditch.Dare. And Career Distinction. I'm passionate about how personal branding can inspire career-minded professionals to become indispensable, influential and incredibly happy at work—and I teach my clients (major global brands and 20% of the Fortune 100) to increase their success by infusing personal branding into their cultures. Here's a fun fact: I have the distinct privilege of having delivered more personal branding keynotes to more people, in more countries, than anyone on earth.

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. The transformation has started. LinkedIn has begun rolling out a feature that allows you to upload a customized background for your profile. A few months ago, LinkedIn provided this functionality to Premium members, and it’s now being made available to freebie members. It will roll out over time, so if you haven’t been notified, be patient; you will.

This is the single biggest opportunity to make your profile stand out visually. Combined with the feature that lets you integrate multi-media into your LinkedIn Summary and Experience sections, plus the ability to convert your profile into your personal blogging platform, you have everything you need to make LinkedIn your personal website and media arm. Over the past few years, LinkedIn has been working hard to make your profile your digital personal branding platform. The new background technique is an important milestone in a customization strategy that makes you shine in a community of over 300 million users.

Once you have access to this feature, you’ll be able to create a design that will bolster your brand and differentiate your profile. The high-end approach is to work with a graphic designer to create a custom 1400×425 pixel image that reflects your brand. But you can avoid this expense, thanks to great new Internet tools and offerings. Here are five of my favorites (including one that I created): 1. PicMonkey provides easy-to-use, creative tools for photo editing and graphic design. The allows you to upload and organize several images to create an eye-catching design for your background. Choose the option called Biggie Smalls, which helps you make a big impact with a small assortment of images.

Set the dimensions to 1400×425 pixels. Then choose the images that will best represent your brand.

To capture my role as a presenter and coach, I of me speaking at events. Photofunia helps you make a mark with your photos by incorporating your photos into mock-ups of spectacular background images including billboards, magazine covers, and movie posters. Photofunia has a large variety of special effects that will attract attention.