Blogworthy

The other day I decided to get on the Instagram boat.  I'd long been admiring friend's photos with vintage finishes and polished looking borders.  I had a number of photos in mind that I thought would benefit from some tweaking and I was hoping that I could use a version of the app on my PC.  I soon realized however, that even though there is an Instagram desktop app, photos can only be uploaded and edited from a mobile device. Since I take almost all of my photos on a camera and edit them on a laptop, it became clear that this program wasn't going to be of much use to me. 

Undaunted, I started poking around to find a program that would allow me to create similar effects on a PC and I came across Pixlr.  I've been using the efficient version which has hundreds of effects, borders and overlays along with all the usual editing tools for cropping, rotating, blurring, fixing red eyes, etc. By far the best feature of using the filters and effects is that I'm able to salvage photos that were otherwise too blurry, grainy, dark or overexposed. Add a vintage effect and a nifty border and voila!

Here are some of the best examples of edited photos that otherwise would not have been blogworthy.  (I can't imagine why spellchecker doesn't like the word blogworthy - it's a regular part of my vocabulary!)

Riker at the The George Harcourt Inn and Pub after a visit to the Dinosaur Museum in Gold Creek. This is my favorite example of a photo transformed from something pretty ordinary into something really striking.

At Rodney's Nursery and Cafe in Piallago

For some reason, the kids have a thing about sitting in this toy box, usually on top of whatever happens to be in it.

Chess at The Pancake Parlor

Spaghetti face

I've been having great fun experimenting with different combinations of effects.  The only downside is that I can now spend even more time than usual editing and trying to find the perfect finish for a particular photo!