Tutorial ~ Basic Photo Editing With Picnik

Just about every photo you see here on TMH has been edited in Picnik, right down to the sewing tutorial photos.  You can take just about any photo from drab to fab, fix white balance, take out objects, add “actions”, make printables, blog banners and buttons…oh all sorts of stuff.  I thought it would be fun to show you all that Picnik had to offer with a series of tutorials.  Today we will start with just the basic photo editing, so you can take those family photos and make them great.  Your scrapbook will never look the same!

We’ll cover how to take a SOOC (straight out of the camera) shot, fix the white balance, exposure, sharpness,  brighten the eyes, use dodging and burning and a few more tidbits.  Taking your picture from okay to hang on Grandma’s wall worthy .

Shall we get started? Catch me after the jump for the step by step how-to with screen shots, little arrows, and even some action fun…

How To Use Picnik For Basic Photo Editing

A lot of the features I will be using today are available with the free version of Picnik, but there are a few fun ones that you can only get access to with the premium version.  It’s worth the $25.00 dollars for a year, trust me!

There are a lot of steps in this tutorial, but each only take a few seconds once you get the hang of it. This is just my workflow, and you might find a way that works better for you.

 

Start by going to the home page of Picnik and setting up an account if you don’t have one all ready.  Next click on the Library Tab in the top tabs and pick where to upload your images from.  You can retrieve them from your computer, picasa, flickr, and even from a url.  Once you have uploaded the picture, click on the Edit Tab from the top tabs, and then click on basic edits from the options below the top tabs.

I like to resize the photo first which is the option at the very bottom of the basic edits.  I didn’t include a screen shot of that because I wanted to leave this picture the size it was for best printing.  If I am editing a photo for TMH I resize it to fit our content area.

Once I have the photo the size I want it I click on Exposure, and then I usually just click on auto exposure and it gives me quick and easy results.  However sometimes the lighting is such that I need to play around with the Exposure Bar.  The Highlight and Shadow bars are new and fun to play around with.  Then I usually bump up the contrast a few numbers.  Now click apply.

**At any point if you would like to compare the effect you applied, just click on “Undo” and “Redo” tabs that are in the top right hand corner of the editing screen.

Next I like to sharpen the photo a bit.  Click on the Sharpen option and just slide the bar.  Play around with the Clarity bar too, it gives you a different element of sharpening.

I don’t always have to use this feature, but in this photo the white balance was way off, way too much blue.  Click on the Colors option and click on Neutral Picker,

Now there are few different ways to go about this.  I just click on something white. In this case, I chose her teeth, see how the picture is warmer?  You can click on multiple places just to see how it works. Alternatively, you can just adjust the Saturation or Temperature manually. A lot of times after I use the Neutral Picker I have to bring the Temperature down a tad.  Just play around with it until it looks good.  Then click Apply.

Now we will play around in the Touch-Up Tab shown with red arrow.  To soften certain areas, click on the Airbrush Tool (shown with black arrow), Adjust the size of the brush to what you need and then adjust the intensity with the fade bar (shown with the yellow arrow) , to make it look natural.  I just softened around the cheeks, nose, chin and hairline for this picture.

Next click on Eye Bright.  Adjust the brush size to be slightly smaller than the eye in the picture. Then click on the eye.  You can click on multiple areas of the eye, like the whites, to cover the entire eye. Then adjust the intensity if needed using the fade bar.  Click Apply.

Next we will lighten the dark shadows around the eyes using the Dodging Option. Click on Dodging…

Adjust the brush size to your needs, and then click on the areas you need lightened.  You can click and drag too. I just need to cover the eye area.  Then click Apply.

**This is a very subtle enhancement, but to see the difference it make after you click apply, click on the Undo tab (shown with red arrow) and you can see the before.  Then just click redo.

Now I like to darken the corners a bit with the Burning option to put focus on the subject.  Again a very subtle detail, but really makes a difference. Click on Burning, adjust the brush size and roll the circle over each corner. Click apply.

Now if your finished click on Save and Share shown with yellow arrow and save to where you want by choosing from the options.

After you save, you have the option to continue editing, which I like to use to make different versions of a photo without starting over. Just click continue editing.

If you go to the Advanced option under the Edit Tab (you need to have the premium version of Picnik) there is the curves option.  I have a lot of fun playing around with these.  One of my favorite effects is Cross Process.  Click on Curves, then on the drop down menu and it will show you a bunch of different actions. For this photo I clicked on Cross Process.

Then you can adjust the intensity of the action by playing with the color override and fade bars. The yellow was too much, so I brought that down to 35%, and then I brought the fade to 34%.  That looked just right for me.

And here is the after for Cross Process.  When I upload it here to the site, it adds a bit more warmth, but the image is a little cooler like the picture above in the editing screen.  When you save to a disk or computer for printing you won’t have to worry about that.

Here is the image straight out of the camera…

And here is the final, again the crunching for adding to this site has added warmth (drives me bonkers!).

Here are a few things to keep in mind when using Picnik:

• Picnik uses a lot of RAM, so make sure that you are not running any other applications at the same time.
• Sometimes Picnik will freeze up on me, I just refresh the page and it fixes itself
• Play around with it! That’s the best way to learn all the fun features.
• They have a great forum, and you can find a lot of your questions in previous threads

 

I have a bunch more on this coming up, like how to take unwanted things out of a picture, how to isolate one image on white, and more in depth on white balance.  If there is anything specific you would like to learn, let me know!

Tagged as: picnik