The magic of photo editing......

NO, I'm not a professional photographer.....NO, I don't have a fancy camera....and NO, I do not own Photoshop!!  However, that doesn't mean that I don't pretend that I'm a pro.... or constantly remind Daddy K that I want a Nikon D90 with a 50mm 1.4 lens for C'mas.....or that I won't one day break down and buy really nice photo editing software!  But for now I'm content.  I'm happy with my Panasonic point and shoot, and I'm even happier that I recently discovered Picnik!!  Ever heard of it??  It's a free, yes FREE photo editing site!!  This tool can help turn a blah, so-so picture into an amazing one!!


I am constantly having people comment on my blog header and how blue Julia's eyes are.  So I thought this would be a great start to showing you a little of what Picnik can do!.......

This is the original picture...SOOC....straight out of the camera.  It's slightly overexposed, a little washed out, and honestly just blah!  Looking past the flaws, I immediately feel in love with this shot!  I love how she is not centered, not looking at the camera and how natural her pose is. I also love how blue her eyes appear in the picture!  With all that said, I was determined to make this "so-so" picture a great one!

After tinkering with a few tools on Picnik, this is how my photo transformed!!  Crazy right!!  By cropping the picture, darkening the exposure, playing with color saturation, adding a smudgy border and blurring out the edges this is what i was left with!!  Pretty impressive huh??

Here is another example! Great shot, however I'm not digging how the red bench and the pink outfit work together.....

Easy fix!! I took all the emphasis away from the bench!  I made the entire background black and white, while leaving her pink outfit in full color!   One simple tool (Focal B&W) created this super cool look....

Again, nice shot, however the background is a little too busy for your eyes to focus right on Julia's and Daddy K's hands holding the basket......

Sooo.....I used the same technique as the above picture where I only left one small area in color.  But I also gave the photo more of a blurred out look.... The tool for that is called "Focal Zoom".  Now, at first glance, your eyes go exactly where I want them too!!

I actually like this photo as is, however I wanted to get more of a vintage look to it.

After playing with the "sepia" tool and the "1960's" tool, this is what I was left with!  Only a slight difference, but the photo now has more character to it!

In this picture I wanted to test out a soft blurred out background while keeping Julia still in focus......

By using "focal soften" this is the look you get!  At first glace, I feel that you can focus directly on Julia, where before my eye kept going towards the bench in the background!

Great picture, but I do not want all the focus to be on other kids in the water.....

Easy fix....use the "focal zoom" tool and play with how sharp your blurring gets!  I thought that tool gave this picture a really fun look!

This is Julia's friend, Harper, and her Dad!  I actually love this shot 100%, however I wanted to experiment with the coloring......

I darkened the exposure, just a bit, so I could get more of a true silhouette, then I played with the color saturation to bring out the sunset.  Again, it is only a slight change, but it makes such a difference!!

So what have we learned today??  That's right!!!  A little photo editing can go a LOONGGG way!!  Now go pull out all of the photos you take on a daily basis and transform them into a masterpiece!!! 

To see the parties I'm linking to go HERE!!!