A Guide to Using PicMonkey

Through a pin on Pinterest I discovered this handy little site, PicMonkey, which I have been addicted to ever since. It is a photo and collage editor, that allows you to add little images, text, overlays and touch up the image. I have found this really helpful and use it in all of my posts images.

The three images above show the main page of PicMonkey, where you can choose what you want to do, the settings options, where you can choose the quality of your picture and also the save screen, where you save your image any where on your computer.

There are four main sections to Pic Monkey which include: EDIT, TOUCH UP, DESIGN + COLLAGE. Today, I am going to focus on the section called EDIT.

In the image above I have highlighted all the important buttons that you might want to use.
open - open up any image for you to edit
save - click here to save your image as you have edited it
share - here is the option to share you image on all social media sites, etc
settings symbol - here you can choose the quality of your image depending on its purpose
100% button - choose at what percentage you want to edit your image and see how big your final image will be
menu on the left - here you can choose the different things you want to do to edit your image and from then change edit it in whatever way you want

This picture is of all the different menus that you can choose from and what appears when you click on each menu

Effects -

This option is like what you can do on most photo editing software: it allows you to make it black and white or old looking etc.

Text - 

Here you can add all the different fonts they have to offer, all of which I love, and you can 

change the text's shape, size, colour etc, which means you can give whatever affect you want.

Overlays - 

These are generally shapes, whether they are simple squares or doodly drawn hearts, but they are just shapes. I like to use these to add something extra to a picture, but that is still simple.

Frames - 

To get to 'frames', you have to click on the little image of a frame on the left. (highlighted in blue) Here you can choose from a variety of frames, which can make your picture look like a Polaroid or as though it is in an actual picture frame.

Textures - 

There is a checkered square button to click on for this option. This is where you can make your picture look as though it is made of paper or metal or even add your own texture too, to make it completely unique.

Themes -

This is probably my favourite option, but basically what it is, is where you get themed graphics. For example, the 'school u' option gives you graphics of pens, pencils, stamps, paper, tape etc, which all lead back to the theme, school.

This is a second tutorial to do with PicMonkey, a free photo editing programme, but this tutorial focuses on using its COLLAGE functions. You can find the previous post PicMonkey Edit Tutorial here if you want to learn more. There are basically a couple of different sections on the COLLAGE option, for making, adding photos and editing your collages.

The first is simply where you add your images into the collage, picking and choosing your favourite ones that fit, as you go. It is simple to use and involves selecting all the images that you may want to use, which all appear in a list done the side as seen below. From here you can select which ever ones you want, and drag and drop them into your collage.

This second section - layouts - is where you can determine you layout of the collage, whether that may be lots of square sections or a mix matched jigsaw, or two photos in a row. You can choose from the different options that appear on the left and check out to see if they would work with your collage.

This little zoomed-in snapshot, is of editing each individual image in your collage. It gives you the option to re-size it in its area, move it about so you can focus on a specific part, rotate and flip and edit the pictures exposure. The menu will appear when you click on an image in your collage and will disappear again when you click away from the picture.

The last menu is where you can make final edits to your collage. This options include: the spacing between the pictures, how rounded the corners of the images are and a colour background for the collage or transparent if you want. This options all help to make the collage yours and are simple to use with little sliders for the corner rounding and spacing and an entire colour spectrum for background colours.

There are also some more smaller options for changing up your collage too: rotation buttons for completely turning your collage; dragging at the edges of images and the entire collage changes the shape to make it more landscape or portrait depending on what you want. Finally like all other PicMonkey projects, there is the open, save, share and the new edit buttons along the top. If you click on edit this takes you to the same screen that appears for when editing a normal image, but your collage is there to edit instead of any other picture.

This is the third PicMonkey tutorial, but this one is all about DESIGNING images using it. You can find last PicMonkey tutorial to do with COLLAGE here. DESIGNING images on PicMonkey is all to do with using all of the edit functions, shown in the EDIT tutorial, but without an actual photo behind, just a blank canvas.

Firstly, when you click on edit on the main PicMonkey screen, you have this screen appear in front of you of a blank canvas, shown above. Using the menu on the left you can do lots of different functions to change the image to start.

Crop - where you edit the shape of your canvas. It's done in pixels size which you can type in and you can choose to crop it so its square, or other shapes.

Canvas colour - does what it says, where you can choose a background colour for your image.

Rotate - literally rotate rotates your image for you, but can also spin, flip and straighten your picture too.

Exposure - like exposure on cameras, exposure on PicMonkey does pretty much the same, adjusting how much light is in the image.

Colours - this picks the perfect adjustment of your photo in terms of colour and can change the temperature, saturation and there's a function for a neutral picker.

Sharpen - if you have chosen to edit an photo, then you can sharpen it using this function.

Resize  - here you pick how big you want your picture to be, which is measured in pixels.

My last PicMonkey tutorial is for the TOUCH UP feature of PicMonkey. The tutorial before was about DESIGN which is here. The whole point of the TOUCH UP feature of PicMonkey is to be able to edit portrait or images with people in because it gives you all the options to perfect the picture so its just how you want it.

So the options you can choose from, some of which are in this image, include features for editing -

Skin - Blemish fix - Airbrush - Wrinkle remover - Shine reduce - Blush boost - Spray tan

Mouth - Teeth whiten - Lip tint

Eyes - Eye brighten - Eye tint - Mascara - Eyeliner - Eyebrow pencil - Eye shadow - Red eye remover

The rest - Nip tuck - Weight loss - Whisker grow - Highlights - Clone

image

Did you find this tutorial useful? Which software do you use to edit pictures?