Do you ever look at your pictures and think – it’s a good picture, but it just NEEDS something…

Yeah, me too..ALL the time. Unfortunately not all of us can afford photoshop, but there IS an affordable , fun alternative – Picnik! I heard about picnik right after they launched and it has been a lot of fun to see all the goodies they have added since the beginning. The best part is it’s FREE. There is a premuim membership that is $25 a year, and allows you to do some pretty fun stuff, but all the edits I will do today are available on the free version…

Last week we had a HUGE snowstorm (hey, it’s California – any snowstorm is huge to us!). This was one of my favorite images from the day and my wordless Wednesday picture:

Not a bad picture, decent composition, captures the scene…but it could be better.

I opened up the photo in picnik, and chose the exposure tab. I slid the top slider (exposure) to the right to about 25. Then I boosted the contrast a bit – about 10.

After that, I went to create, then effects, and chose “vignetting” (vin-yetting) – which is really just a schmancy word for “framing”. I didn’t edit it much beyond what the standard setting is, and here is the after:

Much better, don’t you think? It just LOOKS colder in the after picture!

Now it’s YOUR turn!! I have installed this nifty plug in on my blog that lets you upload your own pictures to the comments! Show me your favorite photos and tell us how you edited them…I will post a couple next week and who knows – maybe we’ll have a special drawing!

PS – me and a few of my fellow picture-loving friends will be doing a fabulous one on one wisdom workshop at this years Blissdom in Nashville – You are signed up for it, right?