How to Post a Picture on the Forum1. Sign up for a free
Photobucket account.
2. Upload a photo.
3. Click on the photo you just uploaded. This should take you to a separate page where there are links displayed on the righthand side.
4. Copy the code that is listed next to "IMG code" on the the bottom of the list of links.
5. Paste the code into a post on the forum. Tada! You have successfully posted a picture on the forum.
(If you are having trouble with this, please let me know. Also, if you prefer
not to sign up for a free account, please message me. We can make an arrangement where you email me the photo, and I can host it on my personal Photobucket account. Then, I will send you the IMG code for you to use.)
How to Easily Make Awesome Photo Edits1. Save some pictures that you want to edit to your desktop (so that you can easily find it later).
2. Upload
one photo at a time to
Picnik for editing. (You
do not need to sign up. You only need to sign up if you think you want to use this often. If you want to do fancier things and think you will be using this in the future, the Premium account is pretty cheap.)
3. You should immediately be taken to the "Basic Edit" subcategory under the "Edit" tab where you can do the first series of adjustments to the photo. I personally fix things in this order: Exposure (make the image brighter, if necessary), Color (add saturation, slide the Temperature bar left or right depending on whether or not you want a cooler [negative] or warmer [positive] tone to your photo), then Sharpen (to bring out the detail in the photo -- works best if your have a very high-quality [HQ] photo to begin with). You can also simply use the "Auto-Fix" feature if you like, but I don't recommend it -- other than as a starting point for you to adjust further on.
4. Now, go to the "Effects" subcategory that is to the right of "Basic Edit" and "Feature." Here, you can mess with different effects, adjusting the strength of the effect by sliding the bar left or right. Here are some pretty cool effects you can try out:
- Sepia (move the dot around on the color palette to get different shades)
- Orton-ish (I like to lower the Bloom, increase Brightness, and increase the Fade)
- Soften (to give it a romantic glow)
- 1960's (to give it a brownish hue -- the rounded corners is optional)
*Note: You can do several effects or just stick with one. Experiment to figure out your favorite!
5. As it is the holidays, you can make your photo holiday themed by going to the "Seasonal" subcategory (on the far right) and try out some of the Holiday stuff. You can add snowflakes or holiday frames to your photos. (However, a lot of the cooler effects are for Premium members only.)
6. You can also add "Text," "Stickers" (for example, speech bubbles or shapes), or other "Frames" to your photo by exploring those 3 subcategories.
7. If you want to do some minor touch-ups, go to the "Touch-Up" subcategory to fix things like random splotches with Blemish Fix.
8. When you're done, go to "Save and Share" on top and save your photo as a JPG file. I usually have to type in .jpg at the end of my file name or else the photo doesn't show up properly in my computer.
How to Make a Collage1. Follow the steps above for how to edit a photo for every photo you want to use in your collage.
2. Go to the "Home" tab on the top left of the
Picnik webpage and select the "Collage" option (second option next to "Upload").
3. If you want, you can make a "Fancy Collage," but I'm going to teach you how to make a general collage, so select "Collage"
not "Fancy Collage."
4. On the bottom, there is a section called "Photo Basket" where you need to upload all the photos that you want to have in your collage by clicking "Upload Photos."
5. Once they're all uploaded, select the collage shape that you want. For some of the collage options, you can change the numbers of rows and columns by sliding the bars. (There are better options for Premium members, but it's not necessary to make a good looking collage.)
6. Drag photos from your "Photo Basket" on the bottom to the empty slots (outlined in dashed lines) and fill up the slots. You can leave some blank if you'd like. (Later, you can add stickers or text there.) You can move the photos around in the slots by dragging the photos left/right/up/down within the slot.
7. Mess around with the Spacing, Proportions, Kookiness, and Roundness adjustments of your collage. You can also change the background color of your collage by click on the colored square next to "Spacing" and selecting a color from the drop down color palette that shows up.
- Spacing: I personally like to have very little to no space between my photos.
- Proportions: I personally like to have my photos either be squares (50:50), regular sized rectangles (around 60:40) or really thin rectangles (80:20). If you choose the 80:20, I recommend making more rows. It can create quite a cool effect.
8. When you're done organizing the photos of your collage, click "Done!" on the top right. This will now take you to the "Edit" tab.
9. Make whatever adjustments you want to the entire collage. As you've already edited your photos, the main subcategories you probably want to check out are:
- Frames
- Stickers
- Text
10. When you're done, go to "Save and Share" to save your photo as a JPG.
11. Voila! You have yourself a collage.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me. I'll be out of town from December 16th to 25th with possibly no Internet connection, so if I don't respond to you around that time, I'm not ignoring you!