I spent part of the weekend taking photos for my shop. The photos look good when I'm taking them, but sometimes when I get back to my computer, they're not. They're dark, rotated sideways, or have an excess of white space.
Even in those instances when the photo is fine, they're still too large to post directly online. Plus, I like to add my name to nearly every photo that gets posted in my shop or my blog.
I use a photo editing program almost every day to:
- add simple text (like a watermark or copyright symbol)
- create decorative frames around the edges of a photo - great for blogs!
- make basic adjustments: crop, resize, brighten, rotate, sharpen
- play with fun effects such as adding sepia tone to make a new picture look old-fashioned
- make collages of photos
While I do use Photoshop for some of my work, it's expensive and probably has more features than you need, unless you're a professional web or graphic designer. My current favorite free program is PicMonkey. I used it to create a collage of some flowers in my yard so you could see some of the possibilities:
Photo effects from top to bottom: photo corners, Polaroid, focal soften, comic bubble, and brighten.
PicMonkey is easy to use, free, and online. I've been cruising the Etsy forums for advice on photo editing programs and it's the clear winner in terms of number of people recommending it. PicMonkey even has a setting specifically for that large banner at the top of Facebook timeline pages. (You'll find it under the Collage options.)
More Photo Editing Programs
Here are the other popular ones (besides PicMonkey) that have been recommended or discussed:
- Be Funky - a few thought this was easier to use than PicMonkey
- FotoFuze - used mainly to remove the gray/dark backgrounds on photos
- FotoFlexer
- GIMP - difficult for beginners; program must be downloaded
- iPiccy
- iPhoto - in the Mac App Store
- Photoshop Express - free, limited version of Photoshop
- Picasa - works with Google+
- Pixlr Express
- Pixlr-O-Matic
What's your favorite photo editing program? Why do you like it?