Thrifty Decorating: photos

December 9, 2011

Taking Creative Christmas Pictures. . . .

It was last year at this time that we bought our Nikon D3100 camera....I only shot on automatic....for everything!

Slowly, I began how to learn to shoot in Manual mode....I read a lot of blogs and books and I still have SOOOO much to learn!

At the most recent Thrifty Thursday, Mindy from a {day with} lil mama stuart linked this idea.....custom shaped bokeh....I almost missed this fun post.....I wasn't quite sure what "bokeh" was....

According to Wikipedia, bokeh is: /ˈboʊkə/ boh-kə,^[2] Japanese: [boke]) is the blur,^[3]^[4] or the aesthetic quality of the blur,^[5]^[6]^[7] in out-of-focus areas of an image

If you look carefully at Mindy's photo.....bokeh is the heart-shaped light in the background...

Photo Editing with Picassa and Piknic

Well, I am really adjusting to the learning curve of our new camera. At Christmas we purchased the D3100 from Nikon. I LOVE it, but am really working hard to shoot on Manual and not automatic settings.

One thing that I am finding is that many "beautiful" pictures are produced in post-production editing. Unfortunately, my brain just does not have the capacity right now to learn Photoshop or the other more complicated programs....one that involves "layers".....

I'd love to try and learn them, but time and life (and expense!) are not going to allow that venture right now! Instead I use a simple and FREE program called Picassa from Google.

If you look back through my old blog posts, you can see when I changed cameras and when I started learning new techniques with photo editing.

So here's my Photoediting 101 advice from a beginner who knows next-to-nothing.....

First....download the FREE program!!

Here's my out-of-camera shot...

It's just way too dark, so the first thing I do is lighten it up....

I lightened it by changing the settings here....

Then I went under the Basic Fixes and straightened it and looked at the cropping suggestions....for some reason, my pictures are always crooked and need to be straightened.....hmm????

Here's my shot after those edits....and I just used the program's crop suggestions.

I next click on the "Edit in Picnik" button and here's where it starts to get fun!!

The first thing I do is go under "Effects" and boost the color....

I would love someone to explain how to use the brush option here....I just have not figured out how to use it....I only move the strength slider...

Here's how it looks after boosting the color:

After the color boost, I add a frame...

At this point, there are just so many options! I think that I'll just round the edges for this one....a simple, quick change.

You are able to add text in Picnik, but the font that I have been consistently using on my photos to "watermark" them is found back in the Picassa program. I go back under the Basic Fixes and click on Text.