August 6, 2013

Less-Wordy Wednesday: Oh PicMonkey, You Marvelous Time-Suck, You!

Today we have an ode to PicMonkey, inspired by Taryn and her recent post on Tail of Two Cardis. I have to start out by saying a lot of the things I've done below can be done using the free version of PicMonkey, but I subscribed (because it's pretty cheap - I paid for 1 year so it works out to like $2.75/month - and because I love it so).

There are some fun things you can do with PicMonkey, like add captions, thought bubbles and/or frames to pics:

You can make a recent pic look all ol'-timey:


You can turn yourself and your hubs into the witch and zombie that you go through most days as: (my poor little zombie - he's a chronic insomniac! My excuse is low blood sugar. Sometimes I just really need a slice of cheese or a cookie.)

 You can turn a pic into B&W and then color one part:

You can take a perfectly nice photo of yourself, and Day-of-the-Dead-ify it! How fun is that?? (I can't wait for Halloween now!) [Parts of this are freely available, parts are subscription only - same with the witch/zombie stuff above.]

Or you can take a bad pic of yourself (but a cute one of the dog) and fade your face out so the focus is on the cute dog:

You can take a pic of your dog at the beach and turn it into Frosty the Dog: (I wish those little stick arms showed up better...)
 
Thanks to Sugar the Golden Retriever and this helpful post, you can easily add a watermark to your photos (as you can see, I'm too lazy to add it to all of them):


And you can make all manner of fun collages:
Rita & her friends!
There are a few things I wish were better. Like... The color I like to use for frames (that hot magenta similar to my blog theme) is easy to select from a grid, but if you want the text in the same color, it's guess-work. You have to use your mouse on a sort of "sliding scale" to find the closest thing. There are a few other minor things, but mostly it's a lot of fun. And I also enjoy that when you save your photos, it gives you a choice of saving them in various "good," "better" and "best" sizes - only they call them "Roger," "Pierce," and "Sean." I enjoy a company with a sense of humor. 

Have you played with PicMonkey? Or do you have another photo site/program you like to mess with?

In Other Wee News...
I updated my web site. All by my little self. I even managed to add a "subscribe via email" link for folks who want to know about new releases, sales, and that sort of thing. If you sign up, I promise I won't spam you.

Sorry I was a little wordy again. But not too bad, right??

26 comments:

  1. I don't use Pic Monkey, but I use whatever apps I have on my phone. A beautiful mess is good and it's only $1 for the iPhone.

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  2. We LOVE picmonkey. We did several tutorials on it. It is worth to purchase a year of subscription. For easy editing it is easier to use than Photoshop. Happy WW. Lots of Golden Woofs, Sugar

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  3. We too had a little play with it but we haven't had much time to give it a real go. We must make time. Such fun. Have a wonderful Wednesday.
    Best wishes Molly

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  4. Love Pic Monkey. I used it to make my blog header. You made some fun pics!

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  5. You definitely went into the time-suck hole for this post! What fun photos you made. I haven't experimented quite that far yet.

    Happy WW!

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  6. Looks like fun! We have not tried Pic Monkey but we have played a little with the free version of PicSay.
    hugs
    Bailey, Hazel & Greta

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  7. I love the creativity you've shown with Pic Monkey. I am tempted to try it, but do I really need another time-suck right now?

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  8. Uh-oh. I see a new time-sink in my future. Can you use it for just regular photo editing (cropping, sharpening, etc.)? That would be great since I hate the program I use now. I like the collage.

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    1. Yeah, you can do all the basics too - for free. I think it does a really good job with the sharpening.

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  9. LUV PicMonkey - it's been a life saver for a rookie like me. Great shots all - given me some things to work on!

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  10. we have never heard of it but we sure are gonna check it out!
    stella rose

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  11. Great info about PicMonkey. I've never used it - use Photoshop and just wish I understood how to actually do all the things it can do :-0

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  12. I'm going to have to get this. I finally dug out my Photoshop CDs and it's not compatible with my new machine. It's well over ten years old, so I kind of expected that. :( Currently I use Instagram and Aviary and do all my editing on the phone.

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  13. That's a lot of cool stuff, I've used it a little bit, but hadn't found all those goodies!!

    Have fun,

    Your pal Snoopy :)

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  14. I have not used pic monkey, but if you have to have an internet time-suck, it sure is more creative than facebook or twitter! :-)

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  15. Thanks for sharing all the PicMonkey-business fun! My human mommy loves PicMonkey. The only problem is that sometimes she starts playing around and then she's late with my dinner!

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  16. I have been using PicMonkey for quite some time, but I will tell you there is another that I prefer even more, www.ribbet.com, go and try it! (there are others too but these will keep you busy for a while)

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  17. We use photoshop and pic monkey but we are still using the free version of pic monkey...not sure if we want to pay for it or not. It is all time sucking, that is for sure!

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  18. Awesome post. i need to check pic monkey out. i use corel paint shop

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  19. I'm going to have to try that. I really like the fact that you can fade your face out!!!! I'm liking that part of it especially!

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  20. I have used Picmonkey a little bit. I edit and watermark everything with Lightroom, but I can't do fun thought bubble and stuff.

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  21. Just what I need, another time suck! LOL Seriously, I've been wanting to buy new photo software,the old stuff I have isn't working for me. But I've been thinking I should look at Pic Monkey too, since so many other blogs seem to be using it; and it does sound like it will do everything photo software does? You can save the things you make to your computer, right? I see Sugar says it's easier than Photoshop, and easier is definitely right up my alley.

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  22. I absolutely LOVE picmonkey and am glad I'm not the only one who decided to go premium with it. I think it's the only thing I pay for online, besides blog hosting.

    I've got a great tip for you regarding getting the same color of your banner with pic monkey. It had been bothering me too, so I figured something out.

    Use the "snipping tool" to cut out and save a piece of your banner color. Or just take a screenshot of it, I think it's the same thing. Then, when you're editing your picture add "Your Own" overlay with the snippet of your blog header. Then you can click on the text or whatever else you want to be the same color as your blog header. In the little color box, click in that gray box that's to the very right (it's gray colored). It will show up a tool that looks like a dropper. Click on the piece of blog header color you added and voila! Perfectly matching colors! Then you can just delete the blog header overlay.

    It sounds kinda complicated when I try to type it out but it's not really. If that seems confusing or anything I'm happy to try and explain it better.

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    1. That does sound complicated, but I'll try to figure it out! I used the same color on my Jackie Bouchard web site, so it would be good if I could get them all matched up!

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  23. I haven't looked at PicMonkey. It looks interesting, I need to take a look.

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  24. Thanks for this. At some point I will get Pinterest and then add this. First I have to catch up with all my other big ideas!

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