photo editing is a girl's best friend

We have a good camera, thanks to one of my birthday presents in years gone by from  my hubby.  We have a Nikon D40x and I have given that thing a beating over the year.  But it withstands all of my abuse and produces beautiful pictures.  Definitely worth the money if you're looking for a better camera that can withstand the test of time. 

I am no photographer, although I aspire to be - however with my great camera my pictures usually come out pretty nice.  But I didn't know how nice I could make my pictures until I was introduced to Picasa. 

First of all, I love google and any products that were produced from the womb of google are automatically in my good graces.  A few blogs in the past, I mentioned that I use google to create my header collages (love) and I've been using it ever since to create collages, as if you haven't noticed.  But I've recently discovered the amazing feats that Picasa can do to my pictures to make them even more memorable and adorable.

The thing with me is that between the job, baby, dog, husband, blogging, house work, and normal hygiene - I do not have time to go through every picture and edit it.  I'm sorry I can't be bothered with photoshop or picnik.  Photoshop has waaay too many options for me and it takes too long for my pics to upload to picnik.  I have found that Picasa is the quickest, idiot-friendliness, laziest, and easiest ways to get my pictures looking gorgeous with just a few clicks!

So here's the original taken with our awesome camera.  Pretty freaking cute pic of my son in the bathtub making a goofy face.  I could have just left it be, right?

Once I upload my pics to my computer, they go straight into Picasa.  So it's easy for me to edit them right there.  This picture stood out to me as one of my favorites, so I took a few minutes to edit it before it made it to facebook.  hah.   Following are a variety of edits I made to the original to give its cuteness some different flavahs.

Title:  My little blue eyed booboo bear.

The Picasa edits for this one included: croping, film grain, and color temperature decrease.

Title:  Retro booboo

Picasa edits include:  cropping, highlighting, shadow increase, fill light, and warmify

Title:  perfect babydoll booboo

Picasa edits include:  cropping, fill light, shadow, highlights, filtered black&white

Title:  Mumma's baby
(this one's my favorite both visually and ease in editing)

Picasa edits:  cropping, "I'm feeling lucky" button

Lesson for the holiday:  Snap away!  You can edit until the pictures look professional in your FREE download of Picasa.  seriously, I love it.