How often do you find yourself waiting… to vote, for the doctor, in the carpool lane at school? How many books do you carry with you, just in case you find yourself waiting?

I was waiting for my doctor the other day, and I couldn’t believe I’d left my book in the car. I was too fidgety to just sit there, so I researched, downloaded, and tested apps instead.

I looked for apps that would allow me to superimpose words on images to use as content for social media. For this app test, I looked at Over, PicLab, and Wordswag.

The first one I tested is Over.

I pulled in an image from a free Stockphoto site by searching the site and doing a screen capture with my phone. (I could have downloaded the image for free, but the screen capture was easier.) I thought this image of the Hollywood sign would be good for Stewart O’Nan’s West of Sunset. Then I added a line from the book. Over has about 20 free fonts to choose from, and I chose something simple to go with the image. Although this wasn’t the most intuitive app I’ve used, Over does allow you to save an image in the 4:3 ratio, instead of only square for Instagram. The Over app is $1.99 from the iTunes app store.

Then I tested PicLab.

PicLab is fairly easy to use. It, too, had about 25 free fonts from which to choose. You can drag the words anywhere and use traditional left, center, right alignment. The only downside is the little watermark which appears in the corner of the image. You can 99 cents to have it removed, or you can just crop it out. The app is free in the iTunes store, but there are many little add-ons available for a nominal fee–like the watermark removal. To be fair, I downloaded the free app. PicLab has other professional apps available with more bells and whistles. But I wanted to try the free one.

Finally, I tested Wordswag.

This app allowed me to choose from my own photos, or I could choose from provided backgrounds, like the one I used for this Thoreau quote. Wordswag also handled the word placement for me. I only had to type in my words and choose the style. The most expensive at $2.99, it was the easiest to use and I provided the fastest route to fancy finished product. It allowed me to choose font opacity, which I did on the KSU Family Day pic.

Although I now have all three on my phone, I have a feeling I’ll be opening Wordswag more than the others because of the ease of use and fun output potential.