Tech Table Wednesday, August 27, 2014
August 27, 2014
Justin: Welcome to MPA’s Tech Table. I’m Justin.
Diana: And I’m Diana.
Justin: And we’re your hosts. We’ll be serving up a heaping spoonful of all things tech.
Diana: We promise it’ll be easy to digest. Well, hi there, Justin.
Justin: It’s Wednesday.
Diana: It’s Wednesday. Web Wednesday.
Justin: Web Wednesday. We’re going to talk about online image editing.
Diana: Yes, a lot of people are doing this on their own now.
Justin: Oh yeah.
Diana: You know, it used to be, you took a picture and you got what you got.
Justin: You did or you’d have to use, you know, clipart and then try to get the picture in the, you know, bring the picture, put the picture back — no, you bring the clipart forward over the picture. You know, all that.
Diana: Oh, boy. See, I never even messed with it because it was just too difficult and I never was able to do anything that I had, you know, a vision for.
Justin: Yeah, there weren’t a lot of options. No.
Diana: Not for people who didn’t have the professional program.
Justin: Exactly, right.
Diana: Like, designers and such.
Justin: Or even…
Diana: Photographers.
Justin: Right.
Diana: But now…
Justin: Now everyone can do online photo editing, and you can have a lot of fun with this.
Diana: Yeah, you need the Internet.
Justin: Oh, yeah, true.
Diana: And digital photos.
Justin: Online would infer the fact that you need the Internet, yes, and you need digital photos, true. So, we checked out several of these online photo editors. And you know, we’ve talked about PicMonkey.
Diana: I love PicMonkey!
Justin: We love PicMonkey. We realized that there are other great ones out there, too. So, our focus today is on BeFunky.com.
Diana: Yeah, now BeFunky.com, that’s B-E-F-U-N-K-Y.com, it’s great for everyday use. So, you know, most of us out there, we are just doing things for fun. It’s just every day, you know, maybe sharing with family or friends or online.
Justin: Right.
Diana: You know, it’s not, this is not meant to be a professional photo editor.
Justin: Right.
Diana: Yeah, so here’s what you do. You start by uploading a new picture. You can pull pictures right from your computer, from a webcam if you want to sit there and take the picture of your face. Maybe you and your little puppy dog. Facebook, you can take photos from Facebook that are there, Flickr, even more. You know, maybe you’ve got a thumb drive, you put it on your computer, go from there.
Justin: Right.
Diana: Then, next you’re going to try some quick touch-ups. So, there’s a top palette. It knocks out very sophisticated effects in seconds. So, some of the things, Justin, that you can do is you can add color and contrast.
Justin: Right.
Diana: To make your photos pop.
Justin: Right.
Diana: And now, you have to mess around with this a little bit. If you don’t really know what you’re doing at first, that’s okay. You don’t have to save it. Just mess around, see what happens, and apply the changes or don’t. What else can it do?
Justin: Well, there’s Funky Focus Effect, which applies effects like blur, black and white, pixellation outside of a focus area. So basically, you pick an area you want it to focus on, so you want it to be clear, and then around it, it will do all these other effects.
Diana: Yeah.
Justin: To blur out so it draws attention to that single point in the image.
Diana: There’s a bronzer filter that kind of gives you a nice tan glow, so you don’t actually have to go lay outside and…
Justin: Yeah, basically, these are effects that, you know, people used to spend hours and hours doing in Photoshop, and professionals would do, and now the technology is quick enough that you literally just click a button and it will just do it for you. So, that is BeFunky.com, and of course we also love PicMonkey.com.
Diana: Yeah, and so when you’re done, just save it to your computer, save it to Facebook, wherever you want to, and they tout themselves as “the world’s best photo editor” so go try it out.
Justin: There you go. Until next time.
Diana: Take care.
Justin: Tech Table is brought to you by MPA of Bloomfield, Iowa, and God’s Country Radio. You can visit us online at AskMPA.com.
Diana: If you have questions or comments, please send them to questions@askmpa.com. That’s questions@askmpa.com.
Justin: And thanks for listening.
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