Our ‘Teaming Up With’ posts are going to take a new direction these next 3 months.

We thought that it would be a good idea to discuss a few of the more technical sides to this hobby of ours. We often get asked the question as a DT ”How do you edit your photos?” So that’s what I’m here to chat with you about today. Photo editing.

I will hold my hands up and admit, I am so not technically minded at all. I openly confess that I just love playing with pretty things. So if I can do something slightly technical and I use that word very lossely where I’m concerned, then I know anyone can do it : ) I do however enjoy playing with my photos and trying to improve their quality.

I use ‘Paintshop Pro’ as my editing software. My husband did buy Photoshop for me a few years ago and I’ve never even installed it *hangs head in shame*. I told you that I don’t like the technical stuff! Paintshop Pro is basic, easy and it does what I need it to. That’s good enough for me. I use it to edit my gallery photos each month and any other photos of my layouts that I take. Here is an example of a before and after.

There was also alot of white space around the first LO that I cropped away. I always sharpen, brighted, add colour and also resize so that the files aren’t so large. This is how I upload then to the Cocoa Daisy gallery.

Another favourite way  that I like to edit my photos is using this ite here. http://www.picmonkey.com/ and it’s free!! You can crop and enhance your photos. You can touch them up, add frames, change colours, change to black & white or sepia, fade out certain parts and other fun bits and pieces. You can have so much fun with your photos. I edited this photo here taken at Christmas to send to our friends and family.

From this:

To this. (you can’t see here, but I had added a white frame to it too)

Then there are fun apps that you can use on your cell phones. Instagram is a favourite of mine. I download my photos to save them to my pc so that I can print them after. Another way you can do this is to add them to facebook. Then left click on the photo, click on the ‘save image as’ and save it to your files. You can then print it off. I then delete the photo on facebook if I don’t want it left on there.

I asked some of the girls on the DT here how they edit their photos. Suz said:

”Regarding iPhone photos-I often crop the photo first and then add filters with the PicTapGo app. For my big camera photos, I use Photoshop Elements and Rad Lab actions(the computer version of PicTapGo app). I print exclusively at home on my larger printer and my Selphy if I want to print 2-up (3×4) prints for Project Life pages. ”

Anna is another Photoshop user.

”I use Photoshop to edit my photos and what I use all the time is “levels” and also “curves”. I sometimes also need to adjust the “colour balance”.

Ashley has a whole ‘I Phone’ photo edit tutorial on her blog today that you might like to check out here.

I hope this has been able to answer some of your questions and help you out a little.  I have started a discussion on the MB here today if you want to join in with your own tips or if you have any questions that you would like answered.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.

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Lisa Saunders