How to make stickers from photos on iPhone
Your camera roll is full of sticker material: the dog mid-sneeze, your friend's face when the bill arrived, the cat that refuses to get off the keyboard. Turning those photos into stickers used to mean fiddly cutting with your finger. Now your iPhone can find the subject for you.
This guide shows the quickest way to make a whole pack of stickers from your photos with holos, and how to polish them so they look like real die-cut stickers.
Step by step
Get holos
Download holos from the App Store on your iPhone.
Tap the + button
On the My Stickers tab, tap the big + button. Choose Photo Library to use photos you already have, or Camera to take new ones.
Pick your photos
Select up to 20 photos at a time. People, pets and objects all work. Photos where the subject stands out clearly from the background give the cleanest cutouts. Tap Make stickers.
Let holos cut them out
holos finds the subject in each photo and removes the background right on your phone, so your photos are never uploaded. It adds a white outline and saves everything as a new pack.
Make them amazing
Tap Make them amazing to open the editor. Swipe between stickers and use the tools at the bottom: Outline, Text, Stickers, Effects, Animate and more.
Send your pack
Close the editor, open the pack in My Stickers and tap Export. Under Send to, pick Messages, WhatsApp or Telegram, or save to Photos as a Transparent PNG.
Which photos make the best stickers
Almost any photo with a clear subject works, but some turn out better than others. Faces with strong expressions are gold: surprise, disgust and pure joy all read well at sticker size. Pets work brilliantly, especially mid-action. Objects are fun too, like a sad sandwich or a shoe your friend should never have bought.
Try to avoid photos where the subject is tiny, cut off at the edge or blending into a busy background. You can always fix small mistakes later, but a good starting photo saves time.
Clean up the edges
Automatic cutouts are good, but not perfect. If a bit of background survived, open the Eraser tool. Draw with one finger to erase, and use two fingers to zoom, rotate and move the photo so you can reach tight spots. Switch to Restore to paint back anything you removed by mistake, and use Undo if a stroke goes wrong.
If a cutout went wrong, open Remove BG to switch between the Cutout and the Original photo.
Make it look like a real sticker
The white border is what makes a cutout feel like a sticker. In Outline you can change the width and color, or switch to Glow or Shadow. Effects has finishes like Holographic, Glitter and Chrome, plus silly ones like Big Head, Laser Eyes and Deep Fried. Text adds a caption with your choice of font, color and outline.
Tips
Good light and a plain background make cutouts sharper, especially around hair and fur.
Pick a Live Photo to make a moving sticker: holos lets you choose the best 3 seconds.
Long-press a pack in My Stickers to rename, duplicate or export it.
To add more photos to an existing pack, open it and tap Add stickers.
Questions
Can I make stickers on iPhone without an app?
Yes. In the Photos app, touch and hold the subject of a photo, then tap Add Sticker. That makes one sticker at a time for iMessage. holos makes a whole pack at once, adds outlines, text and effects, and sends it to WhatsApp and Telegram too.
Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
No. holos removes the background on your iPhone with Apple's on-device Vision framework, and your packs are stored on your device.
How many photos can I turn into stickers at once?
Up to 20 photos at a time. You can keep adding more to the same pack later.
