Correcting A Bad Photographer

Don't tell me I can learn to take a better pictures...ain't gonna happen!

What a bad photographer can do to get a better picture is learn to correct the picture. 

Now if you're in the 99% of people who already know this, my post is not for you. 

I'm writing this for the 1% of people, like me, who never really spent much time with photography or photo-enhancing sites. 

Here's a photo I took recently. I forgot I hadn't finished clearing all the Fall decorations off the top of the fireplace mantle and the TV hanging on the wall is turned on...oops!

By using a free program like PicMonkey, you can crop the offending area above the mantle out of the photo.

If only housekeeping were as easy! Imagine having a real life "crop" button for your clutter.

Here's a few more before and afters. The line of the door on the right side is distracting...

 Not any more...

 In this photo the top of the fence, the top of the lamp, and the light switch on the wall all add up to a cluttered look...

Cropping them out is easy to do and removes some of the cluttered feel so that the focus is on the Fall colors. Lightening and brightening the photo helps too.

We're all too busy to devote a lot of time to perfecting our camera skills these days. I'm hoping to get better over time, but meanwhile photo-editing...which is easy to learn by just trial and error...takes away some of the shame of my pictures. 

PicMonkey has been my go-to since I read about it on another blog a few years ago. Last year I paid for an upgrade for 6 months. I think this was the only picture I made using the special effects of the upgrade...

I probably could have gotten the blood on the teeth better with some effort. But I found I really didn't use much more than the free basic stuff so when it came time to renew the upgrade after the 6 months ended, I let it expire. 

Let me know if you use a free editing program that you find easy to use. I'm always in the market for free.

Thanks for dropping by!

Fall, Halloween And PicMonkey

I've been playing with PicMonkey, and I 'll warn you now it's addictive. 

I found some pictures of my old scarecrow and used PicMonkey to make the pictures look aged.

 I added just some slight color to the pictures to make them look old and faded.

After playing around with coloring and aging, I pulled up a picture of myself and used some of the tools in the Halloween effects section to make myself a vampire. I couldn't get it to fade as much as I would've liked, but it was fun just fooling around.

Here's a few of the original pictures so you can see what I started with. I purchased this fabric scarecrow about 7 years ago at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in their "country store" section.

The lighted pumpkin was $1.99 at a Walmart in 2004 or so. It still works well after 10 years, and I think it's just as cute as it can be. 
Since the smiles on the pumpkin and scarecrow are such happy ones, I like to put them by the front door to put the little Trick or Treaters at ease. 

If you haven't tried PicMonkey just click on the link below. It's free to use for their basic features. I did join for a small yearly fee recently but, to tell the truth, the features I use the most are all available for free anyway. 

If you have some time (make that lots of time) on your hands, try it. Here's the link, but remember I warned you it is addictive.

PicMonkey

Thanks for dropping by!

Note: Just sharing my opinion. No one at PicMonkey knows I exist and they sure didn't pay me for my opinion.


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