My 3 Favorite Free Editing Sites

The two photos that I'm using today (the tea set and the cactus plant), I took at Angala's restaurant. I just finished a visual 9-part series on Angala titled Boutique Hotel (Part 1 - 9). You can find the links to that series at the bottom of my post.

Original

HDR

Invert Colors

As a blogger and avid photographer, I spend a lot of time selecting and editing photos before uploading them to my blogs. Here are my THREE favorite FREE resources that I use:

• Picasa 3

• PicMonkey

• Canva

I used PicMonkey to create the collage above and I used Picasa 3 for the text and photo edits.

Above is my cactus plant photo before uploading it to Canva. Below is how I used it in Canva's Blog Graphic. The text I added in Picasa 3. My favorite fonts with lots of options is in Picasa 3. But I have to convert my png image from Canva into jpg for Picasa. I do that with PicMonkey. I upload my png image to PicMonkey and save it in jpg format.

Personalized Designs to Order

Personalized Designs to Order

Related Posts:

The Story of How it All Began

Boutique Hotel - Part 1

The Gorgeous Gardens

Boutique Hotel - Part 2

My 3 Girls

Boutique Hotel - Part 3

The Luxury Suites

Boutique Hotel - Part 4

Flowers at Angala

Boutique Hotel - Part 5

Horses at the Fence

Boutique Hotel - Part 6

The Eco Pool

Boutique Hotel - Part 7

Pets at Angala

Boutique Hotel - Part 8

The Lily Cottage's Garden

Boutique Hotel - Part 9

Walking in Our Neighborhood - Part 2

These photos were taken while walking in our neighborhood. It was recently summertime, and the flowers in people's gardens were blooming. If you like flowers and lots of bright colors, then you'll enjoy today's pictures. You can click on the images to make them bigger.

Amanda Sitting Next to Our Bougainvillea

Walking the Dog

Frangipani Trees
and Yellow Roses

Agapanthus

White and Blue Agapanthus

White Agapanthus

Purple Daisy

Purple Flowers on a Jacaranda Tree

Jacaranda Tree in Pencil Sketch
(Picasa 3 photo editing tool) 

In case you missed it, here's Part 1!

Favorite Farm Stall, Hex River Valley - 7

With Christmas and New Years now behind me, I can begin to focus once again on my blogs. Today I'm ending off this fun series of photos on our favorite farm stall here in South Africa. When you see today's pictures, you'll know why we enjoy visiting so much. I'll also share an easy photo editing tip toward the end of this post for pictures taken in low lighting without using a flash.

In the photo above, Amanda is sitting on an old fashioned barber's chair. Below I have a Before and After image for you. The picture on the left was taken in low lighting without a flash. I used Picasa 3, which is a free program to edit it. All I did was click on the green sky with the black paintbrush and then I chose the Infrared Film photo editing tool. This tool has a slide bar to allow you to add or subtract as much color as you need. Once I felt that I had eliminated enough yellow without completely losing all the color, I clicked Apply and saved it. This works well if you want your picture to have an antique look. I used this same method for several of the photos on this post.

Linking with:

Wild Flower Time in South Africa - 8

I think that the wildflowers in today's set of photos are particularly beautiful. Two of these pictures were taken by my husband with his mobile phone, the one with Amanda on Jessica's shoulders and the other one of me with my little camera. Are you surprised that the camera in 1camera1mom is that simplistic? It does the job and Picasa and PicMonkey do the rest.

Linking with: Me as a Mother and like Christmas every day

Country Drive – 1

Thank you to everyone who enjoyed my last series of the Hex River Valley, a valley that is very close to our town. The series ended so quickly that I decided my next one would also include photos of this beautiful region where we live. In January, my hubby and I took an afternoon drive in the country. These pictures were taken with Hubby’s mobile phone. I used Picasa 3 to edit them a bit. The flowers along the roadside are mostly Agapanthus and Bougainvilleas.

To find out more about different editing techniques in Picasa 3, check out my post Simplicity – 3.

To see a really adorable photo of my little girl, Amanda, which was edited in Picasa 3, and to learn more about this program with a link to download it for free onto your computer and another link to a review about it, then check out this post at Being Herself – 3.

3 Sisters – 5

This photo of my 3 girls has been edited.

There’s really no reason why you have to put up with an over-exposed image, red-eye or whatever else. The photo editing tools that I’ve been mentioning, Picasa 3 and PicMonkey, are for free and easy to use. Some things just take time to get the hang of them. The best way to learn is by playing, so play with a copy of your photo (not the original) and see what you discover. I may have over-colored this photo, but I have a weakness for color. I love all colors, maybe that’s one reason why I like diversity in ethnicity, because the more colors the better! I live in the Rainbow Nation of South Africa and my family does not stick to one culture or ethnicity. My husband and I are a mix of cultures, even though we are both white, and we have had to learn to get along.

I went all out with this image. One editing tool that I used was Clone in PicMonkey. That is how I got all the grass to be green. Once I had what I wanted in PicMonkey, I went to Picasa 3 to add my text (I like to keep the font the same and the one I’m using is in Picasa, plus I like its text features). Seeing the photo in Picasa, I began to play some more with the editing tools. When you apply different techniques, it’s called layering. You can add any number of layers to your image. Learn while playing. That’s my motto for today!

This photo of my 3 girls has not been edited.
You can see the difference for yourself.

3 Sisters - 3

I liked both of these photos of my 3 girls and so I decided to share both of them with you! I edited these pictures by adding more color (you can use Saturation and/or Boost in Picasa 3). As you can see, I added more to the photo above. I think the one below looks more natural. Which one do you prefer?

Check out my post titled “Simplicity – 14” for more on Picasa 3 and photo editing.

3 Sisters – 2

I love it when everyone is smiling from the heart. Here, the 3 sisters are sharing a happy moment together. I used Picasa 3 to edit this photo. I first added a little bit of Saturation, not too much because I wanted the colors to seem natural. I then added Glow for atmosphere. Lastly, I applied Vignette with an off-white border. I found the standard black border didn’t create the right effect for this image. It’s really easy editing a picture, just a few clicks and I was done!

Amanda Sleeping – 2

I used to get upset when my roll of film was developed and the colors came out wrong. Some shops developed your film using the right “mix” for the type of film it was. For example, Kodak film got a different treatment to Fuji film. I was otherwise at the mercy of whoever developed my film. All of that has changed now with the digital world we live in. I don’t have to get upset, because I can use either Picasa or PicMonkey for free and change my colors all I want. Today I’m posting an unedited image and an edited image and you can see for yourself the difference between the two.

This picture of Amanda sleeping was taken in 2011. She arranged her dolls like that with her favorite broken Baby Born swaddled up and Piglet. To me it looks as if she was one of the dolls, she’s so cute.

Related stories:

• My First Cameras
• Broken but Precious