I love this site Fotor for quick and fun editing effects for my images.
You guys know that I know nothing about focus or lighting when it comes to photos. Most photos I take for my site are retouched in some form or the other.
I first tried a free download of the good ole Photoshop, but layers and me don’t get along so well.
And then a blogger buddy enlightened me about all the free! tools available on the web for image editing. And one of them that I totally love is Fotor. It’s awesome for retouching newbies.
They have some wonderful templates and collage options that are great to collate multiple photos together in a number of creative ways. I used some pics taken during our housewarming ceremony as an example here.
I used the photo collage. How long do you think it took? I spent all of 5 minutes creating this collage :).
All right, there are many sites and apps that offer these features. But what about creating an online card? Within minutes?
There are so many card options. I used a basic birthday card with just two photos. The template was all ready, all I needed to do was drag and drop the photos from my desktop. I know I am definitely going to use these card options a lot for all sorts of greetings.
And last but not the least, there is the basic photo effects feature that I use for retouching my photos. Here’s a before and after example…
Of course, Piglet looks perfect in the Before picture too, but I appreciate the opportunity to correct the light a bit. He looks pale and the light was not good enough.
Here’s the retouched photo. I also added in a picture frame to prettify the photo further. What do you think?
I only used the basic photo retouching (or photo effects as they call it). They have some really cool effects like Tilt shift, Blur, and Mosaic as well if you want to get really creative. And all these effects are free! When compared to another similar tool which offers only basic retouching for free and the good stuff comes at a cost, Fotor offers real bang for no buck. How much better does it get?
Another reason I love Fotor? They have a free app for iPhone meaning that I can edit photos on the go. I love this!!!
Do you retouch images you post on your blog? Which tools do you use?
I use picmonkey for any editing – usually lighting and adding overlays to my blog pictures – I spent ages creating all my buttons for my review page but this site looks like checking out too.
@cleopatralovesbooks: I used to love picmonkey too, and then they went and made some features to be paid for 🙁
Whoa, I just went to your review page, and those buttons look great 🙂
Thank you – I have to admit it took me an age to set up but I’m pleased with the result – now they’ve finally lined up properly!
Oh I love the idea of creating my own e-postcard! I shall have to keep this site in mind. When it comes to retouching photos for the blog I never really seem to need to do this – I guess my photo’s aren’t that inventive. (I tend to use Goodreads for book covers and that’s about it.) When I have to tangle with a photo for Twitter I just use whatever free app is on my computer already (Paint etc), lame I know. I will have to do better in future – Fotor’s the word! Love the before and after pic you included, I shall have to play with the different editing options on the site and see what it can do. 🙂
@Annie: Oh, yes, my book related posts don’t need any creatives at all…though I do see a lot of bloggers prettifying their posts a bit with pretty footers, fancy fonts etc.
I use it mostly for fun photo effects when I take shots of the littles. And I love the idea of making photo e-cards to send. I know my parents would love them 🙂
Photo footers? Ooh… *scribbles notes* Half the time when I see something like that I assume it’s fancy website code that’s responsible, it never occurred to me I could do it myself! Lol. 🙂
@Annie: Sometimes, it’s fancy website code. But I see in some blogs that it’s an image. Quite easy to create actually. Just use some fancy fonts, and maybe a symbol or two and you’re done :).
🙂
I suggest adding a home page link on your top bar…that is something that i have been searching in your blog for some time 🙂
@Elizabeth: Yeah, I should do that, I guess. Clicking on the blog title takes you back to the home page also though.
Oh I have used a couple of online sites as well. Fotor sounds good 🙂 will try 🙂
@Ava: which ones do you use?
I suggest Pixlr too.
Although I personally don’t retouch the pics I put up on my site, the truth remains that none of the pics used on my site are my own, all of them are Google Image Search pictures.
That being said, Fotor seems like a good, easy to use, free tool for people who would want to beautify their pics a little bit before they use it in posts…TFS
@mahabore: Yes, ideally I would like to take good pictures that don’t need retouching, but unfortunately, I don’t. With kids, it’s hard enough to capture the moment forget about light and focus. Plus, I don’t have the bucks to buy a really nice camera…so for now photo retouching it is 🙂