If you've followed this blog for some time, you know I like to play around with my photos and images in general. I don't show that many altered images, but if nothing else there was the BSBP preview where I had some fun with the pirate textures on Picnik. And perhaps you've seen in my blog roll that I enjoy reading Kim Klassen's blog (love textures).
One of the things I'd love to learn more about is digital art, creating images on the computer using my photos. When I began studying magazines on digital photography, in preparation for choosing and buying my first digital camera, I came to learn many things about using photo editing software. And I like playing around with my good old version (v. 2) of Photoshop Elements that I got when I bought my laptop. But these last years I've not had the opportunity to spend time doing that. For one reason, my laptop died so I've been without a computer of my own since then.
My favourite photo editing software is still PSE. I really liked using it to make digital collages, artistic editing of photos (read: e.g. using clone tool to remove whole portions of a pic), adding textures and layering images. Now I don't have access to PSE so I have to make due with other software for the time being. Lately I've mostly been using the free version of Picnik after a reading about it on Heather Powers' (Humblebeads) blog. But recently, I read about another fun little free software for adding textures and frames: Pixlr-o-matic. Don't remember who it was that blogged about it, I'm afraid. Anyway, I love all sorts of software for playing around with my photos so I had to give it a try. And this time I actually saved one of the results.
Above is the altered image, below the "original" (but cropped and adjusted) photo. Not a great photo. Tried in vain to capture the colours as they appeared in real life, but that door looks just ugly in the photo (that's why I wish the clone tool was free on Picnik)...
By the way, this is not exactly a complete list of all the photo editing software I have or use. If you're interested I can list them, mentioning such useful stuff like Neat Image (noise reducer) and IrfanView (resizing, cropping, batch conversions, light adjustments etc), but this post was more about Pixlr-o-matic than about photo editing in general. I probably have mentioned it all in an earlier post. Or was in a comment on someone else's blog? Anyway, if you want to have fun with your photos: why not give Pixlr-o-matic a try? It's nothing like creating with, say, PSE, but it's fun and very easy. There's even a frame with a skull you can use (I'm talking to you, sis!).
hey gorgeous....I found Pixlr-o-matic a while ago but hadn't really given it a go....messed about in a small way but no real interest...until a few months ago. Have been photo editing lots and just today have made a new blog banner! REALLY huffed with myself! ha!
ReplyDeletehugs
hello gorgeous xxx
meant to say *chuffed with myself! xxx
ReplyDeleteI don't use photo editing software for a lot of the "fun" stuff, but this is a good reminder that I should upon occasion!
ReplyDeletePhoto editing and digital art can be so fun once you realise how much you can do. And it's pretty thankful too, seeing how you can used premade textures and effects so you don't have to be a pro to get fun results. Nor do you have to be rich as you can do rather a lot with free software.
ReplyDeletePlus there's the undo button, which you don't always have in other types of art and craft IRL. ;) Very useful; I use that one a lot. Undoing and redoing.