One of the great things about PicMonkey is that you can turn your photos into your own piece of art. You can edit them and spruce them up as much as you want.
I took this picture of my Little Miss when she was about nine months old. Here it is straight out of the camera.
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The first two things I have to fix right off the bat are the coloring and the exposure. It's too shadowy and you can't see the color of her pretty pretty eyes.
So to fix the color, I click on the colors tab, click neutral picker, and then click on the area of the picture that is supposed to be white. Which in this case is the white sheet I have behind her.
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It adjusted the temperature of the picture to 9, and I left it at that.
Then I fixed the exposure. Click on the exposure tab and adjust either the brightness, highlight, or shadow. I usually always adjust the brightness just a bit instead of the highlight and shadow when I'm first starting out. If you make the brightness too high, the picture loses some of its sharpness, so just adjust according to what you think looks good.
I adjusted the brightness to 14.
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This looks okay, and much better than it did before, but there are still a few things I want to do with it.
Like brighten the eyes a bit. PicMonkey has an eye brighten feature which works wonderfully. It's located in the touch up tab, where you will also find wonderful stuff like wrinkle remover, airbrush, lip color, and lots of other things to make some ooh-la-la changes to your pictures.
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I click on the touch up tab, which looks like the little pen thing. Then click on the eye brighten. You will brush the eye brighten over the whole eye, including the white area. Then you'll see that you can adjust the fade of the effect and the lightness of the effect. You can make them really bright, or a more natural looking bright. I tend to stick to more natural so the eyes don't look too fake in the final picture.
After I brightened the eyes I still wasn't happy with the gray looking background. Also I wanted her outfit to look a little more green. I feel like when I lightened the exposure it lost some of its color.
So I chose to go to the Burst effect in the effects tab.
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The burst effect brings out the color in the picture and just like all the features, you can adjust how much. I left the vibrance at 50%, but I felt like I didn't like the way it made the skin look. I liked the color of the outfit, but not the face. So just like I explained in this black and white tutorial, I painted over the face with the original coloring. It took away the burst effect for just the face, but left the rest of the picture with the effect. I love that you can do that.
Then I still felt like I needed to fix the background. I love the Tranquil effect and use that one a lot. It softens things a bit and adds a nice soft color.
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You can see that when I used the effect, I fade it out ALOT. I like to add just a touch of the effect so the picture doesn't look sooooo edited. See how I faded it to 63%? But the great thing is, it's YOUR picture. You can make it look however you like.
And then another thing I didn't like when I chose this effect was that it made the eyes look too edited to me. So to fix that I painted over just the eyes with the previous coloring, just like I did with the face when I used the Burst effect.
So the final picture I was satisfied with is this:
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Compared to the original, I like it so much more.
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So there you go! I used the color, exposure, eye brighten, burst, and tranquil effects to add some jazz to this picture. Hopefully these little tips will help you when you're creating your own masterpieces withPicMonkey!
Some of the features I used are free, while others are available only through the Royale membership. Also, Just a Touch of Crazy is affiliated with PicMonkey. If you sign up for Royale through these links, that would be pretty awesome! Have a great day!
![]()
The first two things I have to fix right off the bat are the coloring and the exposure. It's too shadowy and you can't see the color of her pretty pretty eyes.
So to fix the color, I click on the colors tab, click neutral picker, and then click on the area of the picture that is supposed to be white. Which in this case is the white sheet I have behind her.
It adjusted the temperature of the picture to 9, and I left it at that.
Then I fixed the exposure. Click on the exposure tab and adjust either the brightness, highlight, or shadow. I usually always adjust the brightness just a bit instead of the highlight and shadow when I'm first starting out. If you make the brightness too high, the picture loses some of its sharpness, so just adjust according to what you think looks good.
I adjusted the brightness to 14.
This looks okay, and much better than it did before, but there are still a few things I want to do with it.
Like brighten the eyes a bit. PicMonkey has an eye brighten feature which works wonderfully. It's located in the touch up tab, where you will also find wonderful stuff like wrinkle remover, airbrush, lip color, and lots of other things to make some ooh-la-la changes to your pictures.
I click on the touch up tab, which looks like the little pen thing. Then click on the eye brighten. You will brush the eye brighten over the whole eye, including the white area. Then you'll see that you can adjust the fade of the effect and the lightness of the effect. You can make them really bright, or a more natural looking bright. I tend to stick to more natural so the eyes don't look too fake in the final picture.
After I brightened the eyes I still wasn't happy with the gray looking background. Also I wanted her outfit to look a little more green. I feel like when I lightened the exposure it lost some of its color.
So I chose to go to the Burst effect in the effects tab.
The burst effect brings out the color in the picture and just like all the features, you can adjust how much. I left the vibrance at 50%, but I felt like I didn't like the way it made the skin look. I liked the color of the outfit, but not the face. So just like I explained in this black and white tutorial, I painted over the face with the original coloring. It took away the burst effect for just the face, but left the rest of the picture with the effect. I love that you can do that.
Then I still felt like I needed to fix the background. I love the Tranquil effect and use that one a lot. It softens things a bit and adds a nice soft color.
You can see that when I used the effect, I fade it out ALOT. I like to add just a touch of the effect so the picture doesn't look sooooo edited. See how I faded it to 63%? But the great thing is, it's YOUR picture. You can make it look however you like.
And then another thing I didn't like when I chose this effect was that it made the eyes look too edited to me. So to fix that I painted over just the eyes with the previous coloring, just like I did with the face when I used the Burst effect.
So the final picture I was satisfied with is this:
Compared to the original, I like it so much more.
So there you go! I used the color, exposure, eye brighten, burst, and tranquil effects to add some jazz to this picture. Hopefully these little tips will help you when you're creating your own masterpieces withPicMonkey!
Some of the features I used are free, while others are available only through the Royale membership. Also, Just a Touch of Crazy is affiliated with PicMonkey. If you sign up for Royale through these links, that would be pretty awesome! Have a great day!
