With digital cameras becoming available on so many electronic devices, we thought that it would be a great time to learn about how to dress up those photos. If you don’t have Photoshop or at least Picasa, what can you do? Last semester we played with Flickr and it's a great online photo album and even has some toys to play around with the photos.But, what if you want to fix red eye or crop the photos before you post? After this exercise you can fix them online with just a computer and an internet connection.
There are lots of choices, but let's start with Picnik. You do not need to register and you can use your photos from Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook, etc. or you can upload from your computer or flash drive. You can fix the most common issues of photos such as: cropping, image size, exposure, red eye, and many more. You can also apply a few creative filters using the Create tab. When you are done, you can save it to your computer or flash drive. If you want to save it to your Flickr, Facebook, or Picasa account, you will need to be logged in to that account to open from and/or save to that location. The interface is fairly clean and they add a few cute bits to entertain you if a process is a bit slow to load.
Many people like to use Picnik because of its flexibility and that fact that it’s free and there is no registration required. You can just jump right in and start editing.
Picnik allows you to:
· Fix your photos in just one click
· Use advanced controls to fine-tune your results
· Crop, resize, and rotate in real-time
· Tons of special effects, from artsy to fun
· Astoundingly fast, right in your browser
· Awesome fonts and top-quality type tool
· Basketfuls of shapes from hand-picked designers
· Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux
· No download required, nothing to install
Want to try some others?
Splashup - No registration required. Upload, edit, and save. I found Splashup Light to be easier, the websites says it’s a more fun and casual image editing experience, but you do have to register and download it to your computer. In regular SplashUp, the Layers, Filters, even looks like a software window on the screen. Some effects are a bit slow to happen but they do eventually.
Pixenate - reads from and to Flickr or disk. No registration. Simple tools, can't handle high resolutions but if you don't have a high resolution camera this is fine. I found this one pretty easy and fun to use.
Snapfish - product of HP and there are strings attached. You do have to register and editing is limited. Free unlimited online storage! Well, not so free if you want to download or print your images. I only mention it as someone may ask you about it.
Pixer.us - cute name, but not very impressive.
ImageEditor - Associated with Google Photo Organizer, which is confusing since they also own Picasa another online photo storage and organizer site.
Discovery Exercise:
Pick one of the above mentioned Photo editors, or locate one of your own.
Use various tools to edit one or more pictures and save them to your computer, flash drive or online photo album.
Activity I
Comment on your experience in this blog post and include either a link to or embed one of the pictures you edited. You can post a before and after of your picture like the ones I posted at the top of this post from my visit to the St. Louis Zoo.
I used the photo editing tools in Picnik to crop, add a vignette, and add text to my image.
In your comments answer the following questions:
How could photo editing benefit you at home or work? How could the library use this type of tool?
With Smilebox, you can create animated scrapbooks, photobooks, slideshows, postcards, and ecards for any occasion, and email them to anyone.
1. Check out smilebox.com
2. Need ideas? Read one or more of Smilebox's newsletters or the Smilebox blog for a better idea of what's possible.
Here is a Smilebox screenshot:
Click on the link to view the entire Smilebox photobook I created.
Optional Discovery Activity
1. Download and install the Smilebox application.
2. Create a Smilebox project and email it to yourself using the program.
3. Comment on this post and share the URL of your project. (You'll find it at the bottom of the email you receive.) In your comments answer the following questions: How could photo editing benefit you at home or work? How could the library use this type of tool?
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