Do You Picnik?

I am all about short-cuts and simple tools for real people. And with all of the options out there, you can find some really easy products that don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. I have used Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, AutoCAD, etc. but as a small business owner living in a small town, buying the expensive professional version for my own use isn’t always an option. Plus I have to stick with my 3 year old MacBook for now so even if I did buy a big, fancy software program, my poor little computer probably just couldn’t handle it anyway!!

I get asked a lot about what programs and software I use, so I thought that I’d run through a few that I like, and share some tips and tricks that have helped my work look like I own a bunch of fancy programs! If you’re curious, I use a Kodak EasyShare Z1012 IS. It’s not a point-and-shoot, but it’s not an SLR, either. It’s in between (I think it’s called an advanced point-and-shoot). It takes high resolution photos and HD video, and it has some manual features for advanced picture taking (that I haven’t really figured out yet), and you can take panoramic photos by stitching photos together, so it works great for what I need it for.  Plus my photo editing programs that I use help me out as well.

First up is Flickr. This isn’t technically software, it’s a photo storage and sharing site through Yahoo, but I host a lot of my photos and images here so that I can free up space on my hard drive and on my blog. Plus it makes it easy to organize them and retrieve them, no matter what computer I’m on. I purchased a ‘pro’ account for $24.95/year, and it gives you unlimited storage, account stats, and HD video storage.  Flickr rocks!  You can find some really great eye candy on there as well!

I use a variety of different photo editing programs, depending on what I need them for.  I download them from my camera into iPhoto. From there I can easily organize them, uploading them to Flickr, or wherever I need them to go. If I need to make a collage, like the one below, I like to use Picasa. Picasa automatically imports my pictures from iPhoto, so it makes it very simple to gather them for a pretty collage.

I do most of my photo editing in Picnik. This is an online application that you can easily add some cool effects to, and it allows you to link to you Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, or you can even grab a photo from a website. If you have a Flickr account, just hit “edit” on the photo that you want to edit and it will take you to ‘Picnik Mode.’ From here you can crop, resize, add effects, text, frames, etc. They actually have some pretty fun Halloween features, so I’m excited to see what they come up with for the holidays. You are limited with what you can do using their free version, and this is another account that I splurged a little on because I like what you can do with it. Not really a splurge at $24.95 a year, though. Check it out.

This is a photo that I took when we went to Costa Rica this past April. I’ve edited it a few times using Picnik features, and they’re all pretty darn fun! You’ll see what I mean.  Here is the original photo:

This effect is called “Fancy Focus.” See how I chose the central flower to be in focus, and it made the rest blurry? That’s my favorite effect that you usually need a fancy lens for. Now you can DIY!  It looks great with photos of faces.

I like this one, too…I don’t know why I’d use it, but I like it.

This one is called 1960′s. It even rounds the corners for you.

This effect is called Holga-ish. Again, I’m not really sure why it’s named what it’s named, but I like how it makes the photo look dark and moody.

I know I could easily google these names (this effect is called Lomo-ish), but I’m really more interested in how they look than how they’re named. I like how it saturates the colors and plays with the contrast.  Let me know if you know who Lomo and Holga are.

Here is a cool one – Focal Black and White. You choose where you want the color to stay, and the rest is converted into black and white.

Finally! A name that matches the effect. This one is ‘Gritty.’ Isn’t it cool?

And here we have ‘Orton-ish.’ Very nice.

I really like all of the effects that are available by the click of a button in your web browser.  Picnik is what I used to edit my cupcake topper photos for my Etsy shop.

This is just a small sample of what you can do with Picnik.  I’m sure you diehard Photoshoppers out there know of many more cool effects to use, and know of the advantages of Photoshop over simpler software, but I think that programs like this can help us Etsy shop owners make our listings look a little prettier!

Tomorrow I want to talk about how I use iPhoto along with other iWork tools (Pages and Numbers) to create graphic projects.  Instead of purchasing Illustrator and InDesign, which was recommended in my Portfolio class in design school, I created the entire thing in Numbers.    Stay tuned for that, plus I’ll post my actual portfolio from school – yikes!!

xo, L.