How to Make a Colour Splash Photo

I have always admired other people's photos. How do they manage to compose the photo so perfectly? How do they get the lighting just right? And how on earth do they manage to edit those pictures so spectacularly, like that great effect where just one thing in a black and white photo is coloured? Obviously they must use some extra special editing programs that are incredibly difficult to use. Normal people couldn't do it. Or could they?

The other day my clever mother found out how to make these colour splash photos, and she taught me how to do it too. You only need a photo and some simple, free, online photo editing software. It's so easy that even I can do it! I'm going to show you how you can make these fantastic your photos, even if you know nothing about photo editing.

Step one is to find a photo to use. You can use one of your own, or, if you're like me and aren't any good at actually taking photos, you can use a free one. Most of my photos come from Morguefile, a creative commons photo resource website. I find that using a photo with a strong subject in a strong colour makes the photo more striking. This is the photo I've chosen.

Now go to Picmonkey. It's a free online photo editing program, and it has all the tools that you're going to need for this. If you need to play with the colours and brightness in your photo, now's the time to do it. Make sure that the part of the picture that's going to be coloured is just how you want it to look. Once you've started the next step it's difficult to go back and fix colouring. My picture already looks ok, so I'm ready to move on to the next step.

This next step is where the magic happens. Go to the 'Effects'. It's in the left sidebar, and looks like a bubbling flask. Scroll down and click on the black and white effect. Now your whole picture should be black and white. Do not click on apply. You should see a floating window with slider bars sitting near your picture. This is the paintbox, and it's going to help you make your amazing photo.

Make sure that the 'original' button is clicked on the paintbox. Hover your mouse over the picture. It should be a little round circle. Click and drag across the part of the picture that you want to colour. The black and white effect will disappear. Use your paintbrush to colour the subject of your picture. This might take a while, and can be a little fiddly. If you make a mistake, just click 'Effect' on the paintbox and rub over the mistake and it'll go away.

Once you're sure that you've got the picture right, click on 'apply'. And there you have it, your black and white picture with a splash of colour. Isn't it awesome looking? And you didn't need anything special to make this effect.

If you're feeling like the black and white is too harsh, you can use the slider bar in the left sidebar, where you clicked on the black and white effect, to fade the black and white, like I've done in this picture. This lets a little colour into the picture, but keeps everything except the painted area very muted.

Isn't my mum clever to know how to do this? And now you can do it too. Why not give it a try? Then leave me a link in the comments so I can go and see your masterpiece. I'd love to see what you come up with.

Photos On The Go

One of the things I like about having my tablet is the camera function. It wasn't one of those things that I thought I'd use often, if at all. After all, I already have a fully functioning camera to take photos with, and a laptop to edit them on.

But I have found since then that having a camera on my tablet, and some photo editing programs downloaded for free, means that I can always have good looking photos, no matter where I am, without having to download the photos from my camera first.

Today I went down to the lake with my family and, not having my camera with me, I took some photos with my tablet before having the greatest of fun editing them. That's one function you don't have with a normal camera at least, the ability to edit your photos instantly.

And then there's the fact that it's easy to take self portraits with a tablet camera too. Whether or not they are good photos is an entirely different affair... Maybe there's a trick to this?

Do you take photos with a tablet or phone camera? What do you think of mine?

PicMonkey: Replacing Picnik

Picnik used to be my favourite online photo editing site. Even without a premium account, it had some great features, and with a premium account, it was fantastic. It had features for collages, adding text, touching up your photos, adding frames and special effects. And I loved it.

But then Picnik was bought out by Google and because part of Google+. On investigation, it wasn't even worth joining Google+ for use the program, because the collage feature, the most important in my eyes, wasn't there.

My beautiful blog header

Which left me with a dilemma. What was I to use for making collages now? How was I supposed to make beautiful collections of photos without Picnik? Searching for another site didn't bring up anything useful. There were plenty of free sites which allow you to edit your photos, but none gave you to option of making a collage.

Then, Mum introduced me to a new site, called PicMonkey. It's got virtually all the features of Picnik, plus a few more, and, most importantly, it's got the collage maker I wanted. Obviously, this was a site to explore.

On checking it out, I found so many options it was hard to decide what to use on my photos. PicMonkey has so many ways of making your photos beautiful. My Camp NaNoWriMo novel's cover was made on PicMonkey. My collage blog header was made on PicMonkey. And my Facebook cover photo was also a product of this site.

My Facebook cover photo.

I'm not sad that Picnik's gone any more. With PicMonkey around, I have all the photo editing options I could possibly want. I am perfectly content.

Have you used PicMonkey before? What do you use to edit your photos with?

Photogenic Sisters

There are hundreds of photos on our computers. Some photos are beautiful, almost professional looking. Others...not so much. But there is one thing I have noticed about all the photos. In every photo, my two youngest sisters look perfect. Me? Not so much.

Of course, I expected as much, but what I didn't expect was my sisters to look perfect when I was playing with the photos.

A few days ago I discovered a new online photo editing program called BeFunky. It has all kinds of effects for photos, including effects that make the photo look like it's been painted. Of course not every effect looks good on every photo.

Taking a photo of my sister Sophie, I tried a few of the effects on her picture. Much to my puzzlement, every thing I tried looked pretty much great. For fun I decided to see if I could possibly make her look less than perfect. But it was so hard!

By contrast, I don't dare take a photo of myself there. I've tried a couple of BeFunky effects on myself, but I never look as good as Sophie. I guess she just got all my photogenic genes!

My Artistic Notebook

Recently Mum started a new blog. It was to be a blog for pictures, not words. And on it, she posted photos of whatever was going on in our lives.

I loved the idea, and lived in jealousy of her wonderful blog and blog idea. Until a couple of days ago, when I decided to make my own pictures blog. A blog without words, a blog where the pictures are the most important thing in the post. In fact, the fewer words the better.

I like writing blog posts for this blog. But sometimes I want to do something with pictures, something that wouldn't fit with the rest of this blog. My new blog will do this for me. Already, in the couple of posts I have up, I've really started enjoying playing with the pictures, trying out new, free photo editing programs, thinking of new ways to spice up a picture.

My new blog Imogen's Notebook, is my online diary, a place where I can be artistic, without using my limited art abilities. I'm looking forwards to many posts of awesome pictures, and much fun with editing.

For those who'd like to see my new blog, here is the link: Imogen's Notebook

Fear of Photos

I was looking through the photos on my computer other other day, trying to find one of me. Then I checked through the photos on Sophie's camera. Nowhere could I find a recent photo of me. I know the reason, I won't let people take pictures of me. I'd much rather be the person taking the photos. But why?

Gemma-Rose has no problem with be photographed. She worms her way into most photos, this little blond head popping up in the most unexpected spots. She loves to have her photo taken, and I have to admit, she looks really good in them too.

On the other hand, I know a girl who refuses to have any photos taken of her at all. Point a camera in her direction, and her hands fly up to cover her face. The only way to get a picture of her is to take her by surprise.

I'm not quite as extreme as that. I just don't particularly like having pictures taken of me. I dislike looking at myself. Somehow, even in the good pictures I find myself thinking "Oh, I look so bad. I really need to get that deleted. No one should see me looking like that."

However, photos are a record. Nowhere in my photos is there a record that Imogen Elvis existed in this period of time. Did Imogen go to the park with her sisters? Was she present at Duncan's birthday? Going by my photos, no.

If I wait to have a good photo taken, I'll never have a photo taken. I'll never have a record that I was in this place, that I did these things. And after all, I don't even have to look at the photos if I don't want to get embarrassed.

So, I am resolved to be less of the strange photo shy girl, and a little more like the photogenic, camera loving Gemma-Rose. Because one day I might like to have photos of me at sixteen to show to people later on.

Do you like having your photo taken? Or are you camera shy? Somewhere in the middle? Do you prefer to be behind the camera? I'd love to hear from you!

Playing On Picnik

Mum came hurrying out of her room. "Come and see what I've done!"

We followed her back into her room, where she proudly pointed to the computer screen. We looked and saw an amazing blog header made up of photos of us. "What do you think?" she asked us.

"Wow. That's so good. How did you do it?"

"I used Picnik." Mum clicked the mouse and opened the program. "I made a collage. See?"

I was amazed, and at once resolved to try making some collages myself. So, as soon as I left Mum's room, I grabbed my netbook and sat down to work it all out.

Half an hour later, after much downloading of photos, working out how to use things, and general dithering, I had the most amazing collage. It was specially for Charlotte and the theme was pink, of course.

I was hooked, and soon another picture, fully edited and played with, joined the collage in the 'saved' folder. Again it was of Charlotte, and I'd made full use of the softening feature and frames.

I just had time to play with one more collage before it was time to stop. By this time my three sisters were all leaning over my shoulders watching me put it together. A grid, four photos, a frame and several stickers later, and it was finished. A lovely collage of us four girls together.

Now that I've discovered the wonders of Picnik, I'm hooked. Ideas for new collages are buzzing in my head. I want to play more, try out more of the many, varied features. Of course, some of the features on Picnik are only available if you upgrade, but even at the basic level there are enough to make your photos fantastic.

Have you ever used Picnik to jazz up your photos? What do you think of my photos?

A Bouquet of Flowers

Flowers in our garden are rare. It's probably got something to do with our rocky soil but few flowering plants seem to grow well. However, one plant did manage to survive and today I discovered it's wonderful flowers. I took some photos of it at once to celebrate the momentous occasion and thought I'd share the best ones with you.

This is the whole plant. Isn't it gorgeous?

The blossom was so beautiful I had to take a close-up of it. I just love the colour.

This photo shows the buds that give the promise of more flowers to come.