I can’t resist the allure of Instagram. Especially fashion-related Instagrams à la From Me To You, The Glamourai, Song of Style and most recently Chicmuse. And since I’m not getting a ($650) iPhone anytime soon, Imma keep at it with Picnik. After all, Instagram is just a series of filters. And Picnik has it’s fair share of awesome effects.
Here are some heavily edited photos from another Sweet Sixteenth I was invited to. I usually don’t manipulate my photos to this extent (I prefer the raw, natural look) but party/evening photos look much better with effects. My friend decided to throw her sixteenth on top of the Royal Ontario Museum, a.k.a. the C5 Restaurant Lounge. Dat girl cray!
To get the Instagram look, I played with Vignette (the faded black edges), Lomo-ish (black edges + warm glow), Orton-ish (soft blur) and Cross Process (yellow-green-blue-purple tint) under Effects. I also used Rounded Edges and Border under Frames.
The great thing about Picnik, as opposed to Instagram, is that you get to control how much you want each effect to take over (e.g. by sliding the Fade bar). Also, there is a wealth of options to choose from without overwhelming users, even beginners.
Another great thing about Picnik is that it’s fast, user-friendly, and convenient, unlike Photoshop. And it’s download-free! It’ a pity that Picnik is going out of service in a month- April 19th, 2012 is it’s last day of operation! When the announcement came up, I had to read it over thrice to fully realize the doom of photo-editing for me. Does anyone know a way to save Picnik? Are there any similar photo-editing websites (besides Fotoflexer)? Please leave a comment below if you know!
