PicMonkey: Image Editing Made Easy

This post is sponsored by PicMonkey.

I am often asked if I can suggest an easier alternative to Photoshop for the average person, because Photoshop is expensive, and it involves a steep learning curve for people who might just want to do a simple doctoring up of their photos rather than commit precise surgical maneuvers. If you're one of these people, PicMonkey will be your tool of choice. It's free, and you can make thousands of changes to your photos by picking through their simple drop-down menus.

I'm going to walk you through a New Year's invitation tutorial to show you how easy PicMonkey is to master, because PicMonkey does far more than just make your photos look pretty. I'm not actually having a New Year's party, though, so these invites are a total lie, but fun! Please don't come over.

Step 1:

Choose an image you would like to edit.

I chose one of the Palinode, because he's so darn handsome in his red sweater.

Step 2:

Go to PicMonkey, and click on "Edit a Photo". You will be prompted to upload a photo saved on your computer.

Step 3:

You are now in PicMonkey's Editor. If you would like to choose a different photo to edit, click on "Open" at the top of the screen.

Step 4:

I clicked on "Effects", that little bubbling science beaker in the left sidebar menu, and chose "Orton" with 0% Bloom, 50% Brightness, and 0% Fade.

Step 5:

I clicked on "Touch Up", that little lipstick tube in the left sidebar menu, and chose "Airbrush" with a Brush Size of 40 and 0% Fade. I brushed over the area on the Palinode's cheek where the Orton effect had overemphasized some texture in his skin.

Step 6:

I clicked on "Text", that little P in the left sidebar menu. I clicked "Add Text" to start a text box on the image, and I also clicked on the font I wanted. This opened up a pop-up where I could choose the font color, bold, italics, alignment, size, and blend mode, and I could move the text box up and down or side to side.

Step 7:

I double-clicked on the text box to enter new text.

Handy things to know about manipulating the text box:

• Double-clicking and dragging the sides increases or decreases the available space inside the box without changing the size of the text.
• Double-clicking and dragging the corners increases or decreases the size of the text.
• Double-clicking and dragging on the spot above the box allows you to rotate the text.

Step 8:

I clicked on "Add Text" again to add another text box. If you want to duplicate a text box so you can use the same colour and font, right-click on the text box and choose "Duplicate text" from the pop-up menu.

Step 9:

After I was done adding all the text I wanted, I clicked on "Overlays", that little smattering of heart/text bubbles in the left sidebar menu, and chose the "Critters Buggin'" set to add a quirky little creature to my invitation.

Step 10:

Still in "Overlays", I chose the "Geometric" set to add a shape to colour in my little creature's background so he wouldn't be see-through.

You can switch layers to be to the front or back of each other by right-clicking on a layer and choosing the action from the pop-up menu, so I sent the orange oval back so that it was behind the little creature for colour rather than in front hiding his face.

Step 11:

I wanted the little creature to look like he was coming out of the mug, so I clicked on "Touch Up" again, that little lipstick tube in the left sidebar menu, clicked on the little creature's layer, clicked on "Eraser" in the pop-up menu, and then used the eraser tool to erase the bottom bits of the little creature.

Step 12:

I clicked on "Frames", that little outlined square in the left sidebar menu, and chose "Craft Scissors" with a white frame and transparent background.

You will notice that all of my previous layers are now out of alignment with the main photo. Grrr! If you want to avoid having to realign all your separate elements, I suggest choosing a frame at the beginning of this process.

Step 13:

And, last but not least, I clicked on "Themes", that little snowflake in the left sidebar menu, and chose "Flakery" in the "Winterland" theme set. I added and sized several snowflakes to fill out the image.

Since I was done creating my image at this point, I clicked "Save" at the top of the screen.

Step 14:

I saved the image with its own name as a .png file.

You can save your images as either .png or .jpg files. If you have chosen to have any transparent elements as I did with the frame, choose .png, because .jpg does not support transparency and will render your background white.



And, voilà! Here is the finished image, ready to be used to invite all my imaginary guests to my totally never-happening New Year's party!



We went from this to this with no need of design school:



I know I did about a hundred things to this photo, but mostly I was just screwing around, which PicMonkey makes easy to do. For instance, there's this:



And this:



And this:



PicMonkey's free, it's fun, and it'll make adding images to emails, blog posts, invitations, and the like way easier if you're not a Photoshop expert. If you need some inspiration to get your design going, check out the PicMonkey blog and PicMonkey on Pinterest.

PicMonkey!

You Should Probably Enter To Win A Free Photo Book From Shutterfly and I, Because They're Darn Spanky

Despite the fact that spring is coming on with all the verve of a snail on quaaludes — I live in Saskatchewan, and WE HAD MORE SNOW LAST NIGHT — I'm starting to feel that energetic thrum moving through me. It happens every spring. I am filled with a near-anxious excitement over new things, whether there are new things happening or not. Of course, I'm lucky this year, because there are actually new things to celebrate. This will save me from manically searching for meaning while I clean out the backs of our closets.

Oh, who am I kidding? I don't clean out the backs of our closets, except for when we move. When we moved last fall, I discovered all the musical instruments from my elementary school music classes and am still fairly certain that I need to learn how to play the recorder, ukulele, and kazoo to some level of proficiency.

Aaaaanyway, on to celebrations, because it's Spring!

My friend Mrs. Wilson just had huge chunk of a boy very recently, and this seems to be the time of year when everyone is having smaller and larger chunks of their own, and so it just seems fitting that there should some spanky birth announcements or photo books to crow about them, which is why — jeebus, my sentences are long today — I am giving away a Shutterfly 8"x8" photo book.

If you would like ONE chance to get your hands on a Shutterfly 8"x8" photo book, do one of the following. If you would like TWO chances to win, do both of the following:

1. Leave a comment on this post. You can tell me how you're going to use the photo book or just say hello if you want to.


2. Post the following tweet on Twitter, complete with hashtag:
   I want to win a Shutterfly photo book - http://tinyurl.com/shutterflyFTW  #shutterflyFTW

I will pick one lucky person at random on April 22nd at midnight using random.org, and then I will announce the winner both here and on Twitter.

So, go forth! Comment and tweet! Your beautiful photobook awaits you.

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Are you a blogger, too? Click here to register for a chance at 50 free announcements!

This post is part of a series sponsored by Shutterfly. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

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UPDATE: And the giveaway winner has been chosen. It is Brahm (alfred lives here)!

Let Your Thoughts Run Free, With A Side Of Bacon

Thanks to Crystal Light for sponsoring this post. To learn more about how Crystal Light can flavor your day with 30 refreshing flavors, visit http://www.facebook.com/crystallight.

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I'm no mad brilliant neurobioligist like Jill Bolte Taylor, but I do know that the end of winter drags me through some physically harsh territory, which leads to some fairly psychologically harsh territory, which leads to me to having very little to no fun. This is no fun, so this winter I've taken an active stance against allowing this to happen.

<aside> Okay, I'm going to throw an aside in here that probably has very little to do with everything else I'm writing about, but Jill Bolte Taylor gave a TED Talk in February 2008 that I revisit again and again, because what she talks about restores my faith in possibility and the universe in a magical yet rational way that almost nothing else can.

If you watch it before reading the rest of this, the rest might have a fighting chance of making more sense. If you don't, you'll miss out on some fine, fine Jill Bolte Taylor.



That was brilliant, right? Don't you just feel better about a whole metric tonne of stuff now? </aside>

Back to me taking an active stance not to allow winter to harsh my joy. Winter is a harsh mistress in Saskatchewan. There are stretches of days that dip well below -40°F. The angle of the sun drops, turning the daylight into golden summer's pekid and weak-willed cousin. And while I pretty much just want to crawl back into bed and wait for spring, life doesn't slow down. I still have elevently-billion deadlines to meet, work to go to, a house to clean, friends to meet, and that episode of Community is not going to watch itself. It's easy to leave no time for myself in there, no time for me to just breathe and actually enjoy whatever moment I am in.

If truth be told, it's often easier to avoid taking time for myself than to confront the demon that is Late Winter Schmutzie, but by making a concerted effort to take time for myself over the entire course of this winter in particular, I have learned that Late Winter Schmutzie is a little less hulkified with the extra attention. I might even hazzard to say that she is occasionally given to purr a little.



How did I do it? I wasn't even really aware that I was doing what I was doing at first. I quit drinking in August, and that knocked a whole bunch of my weekly schedule free to spend time thinking rather than wading through the morass of the side effects of alcohol for hours on end most nights. With all of those extra hours of relative clear-headedness to fill, I started spending a lot of time just sitting and thinking.

This sitting and thinking I was doing a lot of was definitely not all happy fun times. I had just quit drinking. I spent a lot of that thinking time mulling over how bad I felt and how much of my life felt wasted and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do next and since when did evening cable television start to suck much. Looking back, though, that was my brain just mucking its way out of a bad situation, which it had to do to work its way into a better one.

As time goes on, it has become more and more of a habit to spend time thinking, even if I find that time while I am cleaning out the bathtub or scooping the cat litter. It's a rhythm that my brain can now fall into easily, allowing me to spend time with myself, watching my thoughts flow in and out. And an amazing thing has happened since late August: as the art of spending time with my thoughts has grown easier with practice, more and more of those thoughts are positive and active rather than negative and passive. They are about things I would like to do and how I might do them more often now than they are about how I am a sad little troll with no future in the bank.

My thoughts aren't always positive and forward moving, of course, because I have this winter muffin top to obsess over and winter is hard no matter what way I look at it and I am not suffering a wealth of financial riches, but as I've allowed myself to spend time just thinking thoughts, whatever they may be, they have naturally moved and evolved and grown in complexity just as any human being does as they change from childhood to maturity.

My thoughts have become greater and more complex and interesting since they have been given the space to flow.

What I do is not quite meditation, and sometimes it looks more like me hovering over the bacon completely unaware that I'm burning it into fragile crisps, but it's definitely space and time for thinking, and every other aspect of my life has improved because of it. I am more thoughtful. I am more gentle. I like other human beings more. I am happier.



So often we cut our thoughts off at the pass. We start watching scenes from our childhood or thinking about how we've always wanted to take a balloon ride, but we pull back into worrying about being on time for work or meeting that deadline. Let yourself loosen those reigns a little. If you don't know how, don't worry about it. Just reading this plants that seed for you. You can loosen the reigns a little up there in that brain of yours. It's something your brain wants to do, and it likes doing it, even when there's hard stuff to wade through. Let it play. Your bacon might end up on the blackish side of crispy, but let it play.

I run into scary stuff up there all the time, but if I let the scary stuff run its drills enough times, some other pretty fantastic stuff starts to come up in between, and just like that, the fantastic stuff will start popping up in what I do and how I do it outside my brain, too.

Like right now? I need to make me some more of that bacon. See? That's me taking time to think good thoughts, and now I'm happier. Just like that. Sort of.

(Which is easy to say now after all that hard work I did freaking out throughout the fall and having scary thoughts and hating stuff and subsisting on chocolate ice cream and coffee for a while, but after some of the hard thinking that your brain might have to do while it exercises itself in the beginning, which may include exorcising its demons, you will really start to like it more. You'll be able to take your brain back, and not only watch your thoughts happen but guide them, too, and then you'll be able to take joy in bacon. Or something like that. I've lost my focus with thoughts of breakfast).

Damn that complexity.

Life might be busy, and winter may be long, but there is time for yourself to be had if you do the work to find it, and, as hudu-guru-schmaltzy-self-helpy as it may sound, it's always within you. It really is. It might be under layers of panic and worry and a heavy, years-long practice of not letting your thoughts run free, but your moments of freedom are up there, and you can learn to dig them out whenever you've got a moment, even if that moment is parsed up into 30-second stops at red lights on the way to work.

Now that that seed's been planted, here's to bacon! I have some more of that delicious stuff that is just begging to be fried up with a side of toast.

Good morning!

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Remember, visit http://www.facebook.com/crystallight to learn more about how Crystal Light can flavor your day with 30 refreshing flavors. I was selected and paid for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.