Editing pictures in Picnik

If you have not discovered Picasa, the free photo editing software by Google, go discover it now. Go google it and download it for free. I'll wait.

This free editing software is the best thing since bras started coming with underwires. Seriously, it's awesome. Just in the very basic application, you can fix exposure problems, crop, straighten, get rid of red-eye, do some cool color changes. But I just upgraded my version of Picasa (for free!) and there's this new option called "Picnik" on the editing menu. Picnik allows you to do oh-so-many more edits. There are fun edits like this:

Or, you can do more normal edits like the ones I'm about to show you. I'll show you the original first, then the edited version. I snapped all of these pictures over the summer when Mark and I stopped by his grandad's garden one afternoon. I've got some favorite edits that I used on just about all of these pictures: Boost, 1960's, and Vignette.

Here we go!

Original:

Edited. I love the vintage-y look of this. It seems to make the fruit and leaves pop more. And I like the rounded corners, too.

Original:

Edited:

Original:

Edited:

Original:

Edited. This is by far my favorite one:

This one is kind of eerie to me. A late afternoon storm was rolling in and the clouds started getting pretty dark. Here's the original:

I did something kind of funky with the edited copies. This TOTALLY transformed the entire picture. There is seriously so much you can do in this program FOR FREE!

Another version. Kind of dusty. I acheived this by only filtering in one certain color:

These next few were so pretty on there own, they didn't need much. Here's the original:

And here, I 'boosted' it, and added the 'vignette' feature to shade the corners.

I love the angle of this picture. Original:

Here, I just clicked the "Auto Fix" button. This is a nice option for those of you who don't have time (to waste) to jazz up your pictures and want to get it all done in one click. I bet you're the type who likes shopping at Wal-Mart, too, aren't you? One stop shop kind of person? Now if only our lives came with "Auto Fix" options, huh? Auto Fix (subtle differences):

Boosted and vignetted:

What do ya'll think? Think you'll try it out? Should I start charging for photo shoots now??