14 Free Photo Editing Sites, Picnik Alternatives

Recently, after learning Picnik was going away or moving to Google+ in mid-April, I went in search of some alternative photo editing sites.

I posted the results of my search  in a previous post, and as I have continued to find additional programs, I've been adding them to that original list.

The list has grown now from 8 to 14 photo editing sites, so today I'm posting the original 8 with my most recent finds added to the end of the list.  If you read that original post and would like to check out a few more alternatives, just skip on down to numbers 9-14 for the latest additions.  (In the comments on this post, Laurie says #13 (iPiccy) is just like Picnik.  I haven't tried it yet, but that sounds promising!)  Update:  PicMonkey is up and running and someone emailed me to tell me it's great...much like Picnik.

I've used Picnik occasionally over the years and had just started playing around with it more recently for the purpose of watermarking photos.  Fortunately, I found another program I like better for watermarking a few weeks ago.  You can read all about the two programs I use for watermarking in THIS post.

Pssst:  The 3 winners of the recent giveaway from Fish Foam have been announced on the Giveaway post.

1. Fotoflexer:

You can do some fun, crazy things with Fotoflexer including retouching photos, adding special effects, fun fonts, layers, etc...  One neat thing...it will link to your photos wherever you have them stored.  You can edit photos from Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket or upload them from your website or computer.


2. Picasa:

Picasa lets you share your pics directly with the folks in your circles in Google +.  There are also a lot of "effects" you can apply to photos. This is the program I currently use to create collages.


3. Pixlr:

I dove right into Pixlr and started playing around with their effects.  I found it easy to use.  Of course, you can do the usual stuff...sharpen, crop, adjust contrast and color.  There's even a "teeth white" feature. lol  Don't we wish life was that way. ;)


4. Phixr:

I've found Phixr also very easy to use.  You can adjust the usual things that photo editing software allows.  Some fun things: you can add speech bubbles to your pics of your pets, decorate with objects, like hearts...that could come in handy for Valentine's Day.
Click HERE to continue reading...

Photography Tips for Better Blog Photos

One of these days I'm going to write a post and title it: The 10 Things I Wish I Had Known When I First Began Blogging."  If I ever write that post, "master the manual setting on your camera" will be at the very top of the list.   In fact, it will probably be #1 on that list.  As proof, let me give you exhibit A, this picture of my guest room below.

Not only did I share this photo of my guest room, along with other dark photos of this room, they are THE pictures you'll find if you tour this room under the category Home Tours/My Nest/Guest Room.  Sad.  I'll try to be kind to the Susan of three years ago, but {palm slapped to forehead} what was she thinking?!

When I took that photo above, I actually thought that was a good photo.   Hard to believe, isn't it?

I now know the reason the photo came out this way in the auto setting was:  1. The camera saw all that light pouring in through the windows and created a greatly underexposed picture. 2. Light bulbs give off yellow light and the lack of cyan/blue makes a lot of indoor shots appear yellowish.

Here's how this room REALLY looks in real life.  It's not the dark dungeon previously portrayed, but you would never know that from that first pic.  I can't go back and redo three years worth of photos but I can promise you from here forward, things will look much more realistic and less "dungeony."

How can you improve your blog photos?

In addition to not settling for sub-par photos like I did for so many years, there are some other things you can do to improve your photos.
Click HERE to continue reading...

Eye Candy for Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!  Did you get a chance to visit the wonderful Before and Afters posted for yesterday's Met Monday?  I was once again blown away by all the wonderful talent and creativity in Blogland!

I started to name today's post, "Hijacked" because this post started out with one topic and it kind of morphed into something else.  You'll see what I mean in a sec.

If you've been reading BNOTP for a while, you probably remember this little feather tree.  I found it one Christmas for 50% off at Michael's and placed it here in the guest room.

This past Christmas I decided to use it in the upstairs family room, instead.  I know you can't tell, but it's decorated with clear, etched glass orbs, crystal-like garland and a crystal/beaded snowflake on top.   Well, the squeaky wheels started turning and I thought, hey, wouldn't a feather tree be cute decorated for Valentine's Day?  Hold that thought.
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Watermark Photos the Fast & Easy Way: Welcome to the 158th Metamorphosis Monday!

Watermarking photos...that's a big metamorphosis I've just recently started making to photos you see here on BNOTP.  In the past I never worried too much about placing a watermark on the photos I post.  I loved it when folks used a photo and linked back to BNOTP.

But recently readers of BNOTP have e-mailed me with links to  tablescapes and other photos showing up on professional websites as their own.  My pics have even turned up in eBay ads.  I think often it's done in error, or at least I'd like to think so, but either way I knew it was time to get busy watermarking the photos I take and post.

There are lots of tools available for watermarking pictures, but today I'm going to share the two I like using.  If you have a system you love, please share it in a comment.  It's so wonderful when we can share and help each other.

Watermark Option #1:  Watermark in Live Writer, Cost: Free
Do you create your posts in Live Writer?  If not, you may want to download Live Writer (LW) and give it a whirl.    LW is a very popular program for creating blog posts and once it's created, you can send the draft to Blogger or publish it to your blog.  LW was really popular before Blogger updated their posting process.  Now that creating a post in Blogger is a lot like creating one in LW, I'm not sure if  LW is still that popular with those who post on the Blogger platform.  A lot of folks who have Word Press blogs do still use LW.

If you use Live Writer for creating your blog posts, you may already know you can watermark your photos in this program.  I knew you could watermark your photos in LW, but I didn't know there was an "automatic" preset option for that.  I had been doing it one photo at the time which took forever.  Ugh.  That's how I came to find my other favorite way to watermark pics...but more on that in a sec.

Thanks to Kristi who blogs at Addicted 2 Decorating, I recently found out it's possible to set LW where it automatically watermarks every photo you upload to a post.  Yay!  Did you know you could do that?  I had no idea.  I was thrilled to discover this and may go back to creating my posts in LW to take advantage of this feature.

Here's how watermarking in Live Writer works:
To watermark photos in Live Writer, you upload a photo to the post you're creating in LW.  Once the pic is loaded to the post, click on the photo and a "format" menu appears where you'll see the "watermark" option. (Note the yellow arrow below pointing up at the word, "watermark."

Click on the watermark option and a screen will open up where you'll type your "text" watermark, pick a font style and the size you want your watermark to be.  That's it.

Note:  Live Writer will not allow you to upload and save a "custom" watermark that you or a graphic designer has created.  It just lets you add "text" watermarks to your photos.

Now, here's the awesome part...the part I just found out you can do when using Live Writer to watermark photos.
Click HERE to continue reading...

9 Tips for Better Blog Photos

Over the past year I've gotten a lot of emails/comments asking if I would share some information about taking photographs for blogs.  I've been a bit reluctant to write this post because I'm totally an amateur in every sense of the word when it comes to the subject of photography.  But I'm happy to share what I have learned.  Just please keep in mind, I'm still learning, too.

I'm writing this post as if I'm talking to a person who has just started blogging and has never really taken many pictures before, because that's where I was three years ago when I began blogging.  My husband had always been the picture-taker in the family so I was pretty lost when it came to photography.  I still am for the most part, but I am trying to learn more with each passing day.

I hope these basic tips will inspire you and you'll find them helpful as you take pictures for your blog.

1. Photography = Lighting.
If you only learn one thing about photography ever, just remember it's all about the light. Photography begins and ends with lighting.  Lighting will make or break your photographs.  I didn't know this when I first began taking pics to share on the site, Rate My Space, which was several months before I got brave enough to start blogging.

You know when it hit me...when I had my ah-Ha moment about the importance of lighting?  I was taking pictures of this beach themed tablescape with an early digital Olympus camera that had "live view."  I took a photo and the photo looked okay.  Then I tilted the camera the teeniest, tiniest bit, took another photo and the picture was brighter.

Beach table setting: View HERE

The only thing I had done differently was to just ever so slightly shift the angle of the camera.  Why did that matter?  Why did it make the second photo brighter?   That's when it hit me...it was all about the way the light had entered the camera...the way the camera had perceived the lighting on the porch.
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Edit Photos with Creative Kit at Google+, Picnik Alternative

I was just reading my Facebook page and found some information you may find helpful if you are looking for an alternative to Picnik now that it's closing. Laurie with Tip Junkie shared that lots of the of the photo-editing features in Picnik can now be used in Google+ through its "Creative Kit." 

Here are the directions for finding the Creative Kit on Google+:

Click HERE to continue reading...

12 Free Photo Editing Sites, Picnik Alternatives

Update:  This list has been expanded and updated.  You'll find the latest list of 14 Free Photo Editing Sites that are great alternatives to Picnik HERE.   I'm hearing good things about iPiccy and PicMonkey.


Are you a long time user and fan of Picnik?  If so, I'm sure you've heard the news that it's going away.  Actually, the Picnik site says it's moving after April 19th to Google +.

I have used Picnik occasionally over the years and had just started playing around with it more recently for the purpose of watermarking photos.  I found another program I like better for watermarking a few weeks ago, though.  I'll explain more about that in an upcoming post I'm working on about how I edit photos before posting them here on BNOTP.

In the meantime, I took a look at some of the free programs available for editing photos and I found 12 free photo editing sites that appear to be pretty popular.  Here they are in no particular order:

Psst: Skip down to #10 and try Be Funky first.  I've heard it's similar to Picnik.

1. Fotoflexer:

You can do some fun, crazy things with Fotoflexer including retouching photos, adding special effects, fun fonts, layers, etc...  One neat thing...it will link to your photos wherever you have them stored.  You can edit photos from Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket or upload them from your website or computer.


2. Picasa:

Picasa lets you share your pics directly with the folks in your circles in Google +.  There are also a lot of "effects" you can apply to photos. This is the program I currently use to create collages.


3. Pixlr:

I dove right into Pixlr and started playing around with their effects.  I found it easy to use.  Of course, you can do the usual stuff...sharpen, crop, adjust contrast and color.  There's even a "teeth white" feature. lol  Don't we wish life was that way. ;)


4. Phixr:

I've found Phixr also very easy to use.  You can adjust the usual things that photo editing software allows.  Some fun things: you can add speech bubbles to your pics of your pets, decorate with objects, like hearts...that could come in handy for Valentine's Day.
Click HERE to continue reading...

Photography Equipment: What I Use and Love

Photography:  That's a subject I never had much interest in until I began blogging.  I think there are a lot of bloggers out there who could say that.   Once you begin blogging and/or reading blogs, you become acutely aware of just how important the pictures you post really are, especially if your blog is about design, decorating or any topic where photographs are critical in conveying the topic and meaning of the post.

Tablescape can be viewed HERE.

I cringe at the idea of writing a post about photography...I am so totally an amateur.  But since I've received quite a few e-mails and comments with questions asking how I've taken the pics posted here on BNOTP, I'm happy to share what has worked for me.  As I learn more, this process is bound to change.

Tablescape can be viewed HERE.

Today, I'm sharing the "equipment" I use to take my pics.  I think you're going to be surprised (hopefully not disappointed) to find out just how little "equipment" there is.

Click HERE to continue reading...

Photography That Will Make You Hungry...

Take a look at these amazing pics! Nice, huh? Well here's the shocker...all the items shown in these pics are actually FOOD! These scenes are the work of Carl Warner and they are all created using only food! If you look closely you can identify the food used to create them.




Is the river (or ocean) chocolate milk?




Can you imagine the time it took to do all these?! I read at the artist's website (link at the end of this post) that different sections of the scenes are arranged and photographed. Then Mr. Warner puts all the photographs of the different sections together for the final picture. Otherwise, the food would all wilt before the whole thing could be fully assembled and photographed.




Aren't these all so clever! Is that a pasta tablecloth above? I think the mountains below are bread...what do you think?




Don't you love the broccoli trees? I think I see a radish and lime hot air balloon!




What is the truck made from? Do you think the trees are parsley or celery leaves?




Visit Carl Warner's website for more amazing photographs.