Photo Editing...

As you may already know, photography is a favorite hobby of mine, and since moving to Michigan, I've been enjoying taking photographs of all the beautiful scenery here.  I've also been playing around with some of my photographs using the fun options in PicMonkey (a free photo editing site that my Mom told me about) and Picasa 3...  

If you haven't tried either of these, you can click on PicMonkey and Picasa 3, above, to check out the sites... And have fun editing and organizing some of your photos.  It's very easy to navigate around within PicMonkey, I love user friendly sites! Once in PicMonkey, click on "Edit a Photo" and download the picture you would like to edit.  There are all kinds of things you can do... Crop it, re-size it, touch it up, and there are a lot of cool 'Effects' and 'Overlays' ~ There are fun fonts too, so you can add wording...  Once you have your picture the way you like it, just SAVE it and you're set to go.  

To learn my way around in PicMonkey, I downloaded a picture and tried all of the options on the photograph, just to get familiar with the site.  Below I have shared some of the photographs that I have edited.  The first picture is of a log and flowers that I took in our yard and then edited in PicMonkey... I darkened the edges, saturated the colors a bit, and added a frame around it.  Next is a photograph that I took of a butterfly and below it are two copies using different effects.  The first effect is called "Daguerreotype" ~ I like the look of it.  For the next one I used "Holga" effect, then I added frost edges, darkened the edges and added a frame.  Scroll down, below the log and butterfly photographs and there is a picture of Emmi, along with the same picture after using "Pencil Sketch" in Picasa 3... I thought it turned out kind of cool.  :)   Which ones do you like?

 My Original Log and Flower Photograph

After adding some effects... made for a more dramatic look.

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My Original Butterfly Photograph

Daguerreotype Effect... Cool look!

Holga Effect with frosted and darkened edges...

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Click on the 'Pencil Sketch' of Emmi, below, to enlarge the image... 

It really does look like a drawing.

 Emmi

 Pencil Sketch Effect

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(¸.•´ (¸.•` ♥ I have Picasa 3 downloaded and use it to organize my photographs.  There are some options for cropping and touching up photographs, and I used PicNic (within Picasa) when it was there as an option.  I searched for other photo editing sites when I learned that PicNic was closing down.  I found a couple that were okay, but I was so glad when my mom told me about PicMonkey.  Have fun!  ~Trina