If you are a Blogger, you use photos...A LOT of photos.
Camera phones don’t quite ‘cut it’ for the kind of picture quality you want on your blog, so you
probably use a digital camera. That means you also need to do a little photo editing before you upload those great photos to your blog.
Why?
- digital photos are huge and take up A LOT of memory on your blog server
- uncropped photos are ‘busy’ and not as visually appealing
- a lot of lighting mistakes can be fixed with editing
Plus, with a little creativity and a good photo editor, you can..
- make blog buttons, follow buttons, sidebar buttons/boxes
- create logos and headers
- add watermarks of your copyright directly to onto photos
- add text directly onto your photos..maybe your blog address or event / project name
- add arrows onto your to point out specific areas of the photo/project
… I can hear you all from my house …
”my photo editor doesn’t do that!”.. “photo editors are too complicated”.. “what’s a photo editor?”
Let me introduce you to my best bloggy friend…
PicMonkey makes photo editing FUN and EASY!
I’m going to show you how to Resize and Crop your digital photos. If you are wanting to add copyright to your photos or make logos, look to the bottom of this post. Quite honestly, it’s just too much to cover in one post, so I have included links to some great tutorials for doing those things.
The first thing you should know is that PicMonkey is FREE to use.
You can register and you have the option to purchase Royal membership to receive exclusive content..but it is not required. This powerhouse is totally FREE for all of us.
Ok, so first of all you are going to travel to http://www.picmonkey.com/
At the top of the page, you have 4 options..Edit, Touch Up, Design or Collage.
“Hover over the “Edit” button at the top of the home page, and photo storage places appear beneath it
(your computer’s hard drive or a Dropbox, Facebook, or Flickr account). Click one to select your photo.”
PicMonkey uploads your photo and launches the Editor with the Basic Edits tab open.
It’s going to look like this with your photo on the screen just to the right of it.
Click Resize. It is the last option in the list, if you do not see it right away, scroll down till it appears.
Change the size to...I use 600 or 900 as my first number and PicMonkey will change the 2nd number for you. CLICK APPLY.
*Your picture won’t look any different yet.
A note about sizing...
That large number is what makes your internet slow down when uploading pictures. My email software won’t even send a picture of this size. If you are paying for your space on a server to host your blog..a great deal of that space is going to be taken up by these large images. So you need to "Resize" them.
How do you know what size to make your pictures?
Always use this rule..”you can make a large picture smaller and not lose quality of the image but you cannot make a small picture larger without it looking wonky”.
Start out with the max size you might need.
Blog pages are 600-900 across.
Headers/Banners are 900-1200
Average Sidebar Button width is 200
Small Sidebar Button is 125x125
Action Buttons are 100
If you absolutely know that you are making a wide banner, start with 1200.
I use 600 for most of my pictures because they are destined for use inside blog posts or as Sidebar Buttons.
Next scroll to the top and select Crop.
A movable Grid will appear over your picture like this:
Click and drag the corner circles to enlarge the grid..everything inside the grid is what you are keeping. Click APPLY.
This is what my picture looks like after I finished Cropping it. See how much nicer it looks already?
Guess what..we are almost done!
See the large box at the very top of the Editing Tab that says “Auto Adjust” (just above Crop)? CLICK IT.
WOW..PicMonkey does all the hard stuff for you!
No decisions to make..just CLICK Auto Adjust.
See the difference in the picture now? Much better!
PicMonkey is fool proof too.
See the arrows above your picture..you can UNDO anything you did that you wish you hadn’t with the click of an arrow.
Finally, let’s save this fabulous picture to your computer.
Just click SAVE located directly above your picture and follow the prompts to same or download to your computer.
THAT’S IT!
Your picture is now ready. You can now use PicMonkey to make it whatever size you want. Do you remember how?
Now, I believe I promised you some Links to other PicMonkey Tutorials!
Create a blog button, link up button or a button to promote something you have going on, using PicMonkey. http://www.thesitsgirls.com/blogging/blog-button-picmonkey/
