Beauty Divine

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A few nights ago Stephen and I crashed a girls bible study so that we could get to know some of the high schoolers here. I have never talked about so many random topics in the same two hours:) One of those random topics was a website called Picnik. They all thought it was crazy that I'm a graphic designer and had never heard of it before.

So what is it? Picnik is photo editing awesomeness, online, in your browser. It's a really easy way to fix underexposed photos, whiten teeth, or apply effects to your photos. You can also make collages, slideshows, and cards out of your fancy photos. All without being a master at Photoshop. It's free unless you want to upgrade and get some of the premium effects which are better. I threw together a few random examples just to show you a little of what it can do.
Have fun!

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Ever wonder how photos in magazines always look sharp with amazingly bright colors? I recently learned a few simple tricks in Photoshop to get photos looking vivid and bright. Here's what to do...

1. Open your photo of choice in Photoshop. I chose this photo of Britt Nicole which I did not take myself, obviously but had fun editing. Go ahead and copy the layer so that you can see the difference in your photo you go. I did this by going to Layer>Duplicate layer.

2. First tip: Brighten the image with exposure. Image>Adjustments>Exposure… When the box pops up, very little goes a long way. Slide the top exposure bar to +.10. Click OK.

3. Second tip: Bring out the colors in your image. I did this by going to Image>Adjustments>Vibrance… When the box pops up, slide your vibrance up until your colors pop, but don’t look harsh or fake. I went up to about +55. Click OK.


4. Third tip: Bring out the contrast in the image. I did this by going to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Take the radius all the way up to 250pixels. I usually adjust the amount anywhere from 7-15. For this image I set the amount at 10. Click OK.

5. Check your Layers palette to see how much better your image looks! You can do this by going to Window>Layers and making sure there is a checkmark by it. Once the palette is opened, click the eyeball next to the top layer. This will hide your changes. Click it again to show the changes. Then save it!

Here is my finished product with some text and a lens flare added. Hope you like it!