An easy way to fix or enhance your photos: Picnik

by Nathalie

Are you PSE or Photoshop illiterate, like I pretty much am? Well, there's an easy way to edit, fix and just have fun with your photos online: the answer is Picnik! I used this great online photo editor for the first time today and it is super easy! I love the fact that you do not have to register (that's amazing nowadays!) and you do not even have to upload your photos if you already have them in photobucket, flickr or even facebook. Best of all it is FREE.
I will explain how I did it from Flickr:
Once you have chosen a photo to edit from your photostream, go to the "Action" tab on the top left corner of your photo and chose "edit photo in Picnik", your photo will automatically open into the Picnik photo editing mode. There you can do a ton of editing: crop, resize, work on the exposure, colors, sharpening...

Here's my not so great photo before:

and after simple editing:

Mmmh, it's okay but we can do better. On to the "Create" mode! When you have your photo open in Picnik, go to the "Create" tab which is on top of the frame. There you will find tons of different options: look on top under "Featured", "Effects", "Text", "Stickers", "Frames", and more... under each of those tabs you have different things to try. It is very easy to undo/redo with the buttons on the upper right corner and when you like what you see, simply click "Save" and it will automatically save your photo into your Flickr photostream!
I found this to be very user friendly and with limitless possibilities!!! Here are a few of my favorite effects:

"Cross Process" effect

"Holga-ish" effect

"Boost" effect

It is so much fun! And you don't even have to know anything about actions!!! LOL!

To do the same thing from a photobucket or facebook account (or your computer), go to www.picnik.com and click on the bottom according to where the photos you want to edit are... follow the prompts and you can do the same things as above.
All the effects I used above are free but there are a lot more if you are willing to pay $24.95/year (I say you don't need it, look at what you get for free!)

I hope to have given you a new option to enhance your photos and therefore your pages :) Now I am off to print, once I can figure out which one I like better...