Freebie Friday: Making Your Photos Pretty

Alright.  I admit that this has nothing to do with my costume or upcoming projects.  I just couldn't think of free things I've used so far except for the dough recipe, which I shared last week.  But still, I thought it was great once I sat down and played with it for a while.  What am I talking about?

You know it, you love it... PicMonkey.

I was hesitant because I liked those swanky programs that were totally not user friendly and I ended up never using because of such.  Yeah.  PicMonkey is nothing like that.  Here are some tutorials that I found useful for PicMonkey.

This was what I used when I first started getting into PicMonkey.  As you can see, Katrina's Kitchen did a 4 part series on different aspects of PicMonkey.  They're all super easy to read and follow.  If you take a close look around the site and the Facebook page, you may be able to see where I learned a few things. :)

"But PicMonkey is a dinky little free program and I can't do much with it without paying money and blah blah."  You know, I thought that, too.  Until I started playing around with it, that is.  Let Leigh Valley Momma give you a few pointers on how to take advantage of the features.  It really has more features than it seems, but it's still simple to use.

Posting your photos online?  A watermark is always a great idea.  I haven't quite started working with watermarks yet -- mostly because I keep thinking I'll make a brush for it that I can simple click and place -- but it's coming!  Rags to Stitches has a great tutorial on making watermarks in PicMonkey.

Of course, a quick search will get you tons more results.  I just wanted to share a few of them.

Now, as a free user, it's relatively limited, which is why I like to supplement my photos with a few other programs.  I don't have Photoshop (yet), so I make do with what I can.

For example, my uncle who works with programming suggested Gimp, which is my default program for artsy stuff now.  I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet, but I'm working on it!  My favorite part about it is that it is free.  

Then a friend turned me on to a more advanced photo editor called simply Online Image Editor, which is more like a user-friendly version of Gimp that is browser-based.  I also thought it was pretty neat that you can make gif files with it also.

The photos that I post on my blog are usually used in a combination of ways.  I like the fonts on my computer, so I do my fonts through Gimp.  I edit the coloration through Online Image Editor.  If I want to make a collage or something cute, I use PicMonkey in conjunction.

What do you use for image editing?  If you don't have one you love, give these a try!