I only started working with Picnik a couple of weeks ago, so I have the enthusiasm of a new convert. I hope you will find a few of these tricks new and helpful.
The first point I want to make is that it's easier to morph one photo than to take a dozen. So I love it when I can use a picture I've taken and make it feel rehabbed or "like new". Let's use a pumpkin photo for example.
Last year I took a shot of a pile of pumpkins. Here's a cropped version of it (to left).
It's just a simple bunch of pumpkins.
But take that same photo to a photo editing site like Picnik, and all of a sudden, you can do some nifty things with that same picture.
One thing is to make it appear to be in a polaroid photo and write a greeting on the bottom, as I did in the version to the left. This is nice if you want to take a holiday photo and wish someone Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Birthday, or anything else.
But wait, there's more!
There are also a zillion ways to tinker with the image in terms of brightness, saturation, contrast, highlights, and shadows.
This kind of thing can suddenly take the same image and make it look sophisticated and formal or surreal and dream-like.
Or frame it and make it look like it should be hung on a wall!
Have a look at the same photo again, but with a few more effects:
Here's the same photo but zoomed in a little (vignette effect) and then faded on the outskirts - the matte effect. It takes on a surreal feeling due to the whitish edges and faded effect.
And finally, here's the same cropped image after applying the vignette effect and then had the saturation level turned up, and then, finally, framing added. Again, it's a very different look due to the editing and tweaking! It's actually pretty amazing what can be done with a plain photo if a little effort and creativity is applied.
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