paper: Online photo editors...for scrapbookers | pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

As much as I make an effort to improve my photography the more I scrapbook, I have very little shame in admitting I can be a bit of a photoshopographer, because I love the flexibility of editing a photo to do all sorts of things, from little edits to big artsy changes. But a giant program like Photoshop isn’t useful for everyone all of the time. Sometimes you just want to improve a picture on the quick, without all the hassle, confusion or cost of software. Oh magical internet, bring on the online photo editing websites!

There are dozens and dozens out there, but I’ve gathered a few that I think are worth noting for scrapbookers. May they be useful to you in your adventures of photo improvement!

(Plus, scroll to the end of this post for a little something about Journal your Christmas.)

Picnik

Picnik is probably the most widely recognised of the online photo editors and for good reason: the interface is easy to use and the results are excellent. You can use the service for free and without registering, and if you really love the service you can register or purchase a premium account for extra features.

When you upload a photo to Picnik, your editing choices are divided into a sensible workflow, allowing you to correct imperfections like exposure, colour casts and sharpening as well as rotating, resizing and cropping (handy if you need to resize your images for an online gallery or message board). Once your basics are covered, you may opt for the ‘create’ tab where you’ll find plenty of options for jazzing up your photo with preset looks, text, frames and other goodies if you’re so inclined.

Scrapbookers may like ‘focal soften’, which allows you to pick a spot to remain in focus and soften the rest of the picture, so you could zoom in on one person in a crowd or soften out a distracting background.

In the stickers section, you can add symbols for various types of copyright and creative commons licensing – handy if you want to post pictures of your scrapbook pages on your blog and want them tagged as your own work.

You can add text in a wide variety of fonts rather than just a few standard choices, and you can place the text anywhere on the photo by dragging and dropping.

Or for fun, convert your photo to a 1960s style with one click—instant muted colours and rounded corners.

Final verdict: Super easy, super useful, lots of freedom. Handles large print-size images without any trouble, so extra useful for scrapbookers.

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Pixenate

Pixenate says it is ‘photos made easy’ so I had expectations of great stuff. There are editing controls but not much in the way of presets that let you do a whole look in one click. So you can warm up or cool down an image, lighten up the shadows, correct red eye or tilt…but you’ll need to do each thing individually. The controls are all in one place along the left, and you’ll have to hover over the icon to find out what each one does—some of the icons are self-explanatory but not others.

Here is the lomo effect at Pixenate, one of the few presets available. Probably more useful for lomo-styled shots that don’t include skin tones, as it tends to blow these colours out to a red that isn’t necessarily right for even a lomo look. (See actual lomo shots “here” to compare.)

You can add text, but in a limited range of quite basic fonts and you’re limited to certain positions on the photo.

There are a few fun things (like the ability to add a cartoon mustache or leprechaun hat to someone in the photo!) but the most useful is probably the black/white/sepia converter.

Final verdict: A bit clunky and limited. I couldn’t get a full sized image to upload, although I could upload something of a printable size. Probably not the scrapbooker’s best friend.

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FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer say it is the world’s most advanced online photo editor, and the controls it offers are indeed very advanced if you know what you’re looking for. The good thing is you can use all that extra power if you want to or you can ignore it by using the dozens of simple options that are presented—and handy mix of tools then.

You can use the service without registering or logging in (although you can register for some added functionality) and you can upload your photos from your computer or from any number of websites where you may have an account, like Flickr or Facebook.

Many of the options are quite similar to Picnik, though here all the editing controls run along the top of the screen rather than some options down the left.

FotoFlexer has quite a few presets and options, many that are similar to what’s offered in Photoshop. It does have an easy-to-use blur edges feature much like Picnik, or several less photo-like options, like turning your photo into a cartoon, in your choice of colour or greyscale.

There are plenty of text options on this editor, including a choice of colours and placement as well as a varied selection of fonts. And although not useful for printing, you can be crazy and make things glittery for online viewing.

The old photo preset includes this entire look at one click—very pretty and something different!

Final verdict: Very useful, with lots of options for one-click editing or more in-depth choices similar to Photoshop. Print size photos take a bit of time to upload, but they can be edited without trouble. A super-giant image gave me an upload error. Sometime I’ll be using again.

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Puricute

And then for something completely different, there’s Puricute. You probably won’t use it on your scrapbook pages…but you might. Or your daughter might. It’s very cartoony and cute and produces the type of images you get in Purikura photo booths.

You can use the editor without registering, or you can register and be able to save your images to a profile. But these images are small in size, as they are designed to look like those tiny photo stickers rather than a full-sized image.

Totally kitschy-cute frames and stamps to add on top of your photo, and it’s a matter of just click and it’s there.

Final verdict: Probably not so useful but exceedingly cute, if that makes you happy. No matter what size image you upload, you’ll end up with a small finished image, so not for you if you want to print 4×6 photos.

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A few other things you might find interesting:
Poladroid isn’t online photo-editing, but rather a free program you download and use on your own computer. It turns your digital images into a Polaroid look with a shake interface and a few other giggles along the way.
Picasa is a free photo-editing program from Google. Download it for PC or Mac and edit your photos in a similar way to Photoshop or iPhoto but without the cost. Can also be a way to organise your photos.
Photo Editing with Photoshop Elements is an online class with video tutorials by Sande Krieger, who demonstrates Photoshop Elements so very well.

Happy photo editing!

xlovesx

PS: We’re getting closer to Christmas! Journal your Christmas is going to go up in price just slightly as of the 1st of October—so if you would like to sign up at the original price, you need to do so today or tomorrow. You can sign up here or email me with any questions!

Read more about: photography

29 September 2009

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