Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Editing Your Blog Photos-A Quick Tutorial

I think we all want to take a good photograph.
We want to capture the moment so that we can later go back to it and oooh and aahhh at it.
Whether it's our baby's first step, our son's graduation or our first born's wedding (yikes)
we all want that memory to be perfect.
And what's a better way to preserve it than in a Blog! I've been taking pictures for a long time.
Now, I'm no pro, but I like taking pictures.
I don't have a fancy camera, but recently I did upgrade a little to a Fuji camera and I've been saving up to get a DSLR.
I've been getting tips from an online community of professional photogs and I've learned quite a bit.
The rest has just been trial and error and my own experience.
I've mentioned before how much I love
Picasa.com
It's free and so easy to use.
You don't have to download anything as it's all done on the web.
You can even pay for the premium service (which I do) and get more bang for your pics (it's called piknic). There you can remove blemishes, wrinkles, do "airbrush", and other cool effects.
But lately I've been using something I've just discovered.
Pixlr.com
I HEART this.
I love it because it's a lot like photoshop.
Except it's EZ.
And free.
You see with photoshop you can do these complicated maneuvers called "actions", where these uber talented people do a set of tweaks, save them and then later on just press "actions" and ta-da the photgraph is changed, just like that!
Gorgeousness in an instant!
Some photogs share them for free, some charge a fee.
I got a free 30 day photoshop trial just to play around with it.
It's complicated but I'm getting the hang of it.
And I love the "actions" that I got for free.
My daughter gets a substantial discount since she's a college student so we're saving up for a copy.
But I digress.
Pixlr.com is almost like photoshop.
But like I said, EZ.
Here's a few shots I took on a recent jaunt around the country. I'll show the before and after using their retro vintage effects:
{Tractor Shot}
Original Shot
{by the way the blurry effect in the back is called bokeh and I just learned I knew how to do it all along! FAN-CY}

"Hagrid" Retro Effect

Now I added the "subtle" effect.
See the differences?
You can take a simple photo such as this one of a piece of a tractor and make it interesting.
Here's another one:

Original




Here I applied the "Tom" effect then the "Vignette" technique. You can then add some cool frames if you like.
The possibilities are endless.
Combine these cool photo techniques with a neat photo scrapbooking software and you will be making some sweet Christmas gifts for the fam!
Don't forget to enter  My Memories Suite
software giveway.
It ends Sunday nite!
Enter HERE!

I'll be back tomorrow with some more photos of the cool rusty tractor :)
And some more photo tips for you :)
In the mean time feel free to comment below with any questions or tips for me :)

Would you like to comment?

  1. Thanks Kristy! Isn't it something that we can do so much editing for free when in the old days we had to get a "darkroom" and stinky chemicals? I love the digital age.

    ReplyDelete

I love your comments and read all of them! I respond to each one of them too!

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails