Picmonkey: Free Online Photo Editor

[The Dansome]

So you've got a review and you want to clean up some pics, or maybe you just need to resize a picture that's just too large for the forums. I know for most people this can be an overwhelming or confusing process and you just wouldn't know where to start. Well a few years ago Mrs. Manbearpig introduced me to an easy to use online photo editor that has enough power to keep me happy when I'm not near a computer with Photoshop. So today I bring you Picmonkey.

 

http://www.picmonkey.com/

 

 

 

The picture above shows where we start, select ‘Edit a Photo' and you will be prompted to select a photo from your computer. From here you will be taken to the basic editor and as I've highlighted in the bottom right corner (photo below) will always let you know at what scale you are viewing your photo in relation to actual size as it will appear when finished

 

 

 

In the Basic Editor we get to perform simple tasks, Auto Adjust, Crop, Rotate, Resize and so on. I'm only going to focus on the basics as they are likely the most helpful for those wanting to post to forums.

 

 

 

Auto Adjust will attempt to make simple color, contrast/brightness and exposure fixes. If you don't like what Picmonkey suggests you can simply click the left arced arrow at the top of the screen to “UNDO”

 

 

 

Exposure is where you can manually adjust lighting. Contrast, brightness and even shadow/highlight details. There's an Auto which attempts to balance all these for you.

 

 

 

Crop allows you to cut out areas of the photo you don't want there. Just resize the grid area to what you want in the end. I think we all know what part of this photo we really wanna see. Using Cancel on the screens scraps any adjustments you've made and exits you back to the photos previous state.

 

 

 

Colors is the place where you can boost your colors via saturation or selct auto adjust which will attempt to make colors as natural as real life. You can also adjust the overall temperature from cool to very warm looking. Remember you can always “cancel” out of here.

 

Sharpen is exactly what it says, which is to sharpen things up. I like this feature with club photos because you can really bring out the club edges and make them pop. Be careful with sharpness as low light photos will tend to expose grain when used too much.

 

 

 

Resize is the probably the biggest deal for forum posters. A lot of the time people will upload these massive 2500px plus images that just make browsing the forums tedious on mobile devices. So let's try and keep our photos 800x800 and below. It's important at this point to make sure “Keep Proportions” is checked as any size adjustments you make won't skew your image. Just input a new number into one of the fields and your photo will give you a live preview of its new size. Don't like, “cancel" once again is your friend.

 

 

 

Clicking SAVE at the top of the screen will take us to the Save page. Here you can rename your file, change its file type (stick to jpg) or if you've forgotten to resize that options right here too by clicking change next to “dimensions”. There's also three quality options which are Roger, Pierce and Sean. Roger is a very low quality image but will reduce your file size quite a bit (good for load times). Sean is the image at its highest quality and maximum file size. Pierce is pretty much what you want here though as it combines great image quality with a decent file size. Once you have all these options click Save Photo bottom left and select a place on your computer you want to keep it.

 

These are the basic edits in layman terms. I've kept this brief and simple because for the most that's all you want. Please feel free to post questions and I'll be happy to expand on things.

 

 

 

Before I go I want to encourage people to try out the many other features Picmonkey has to offer. There are tons of photo effects such as Lomo & HDR, picture touch up tools and many frames and borders. Play around with these and you'll be a pro before you know it.

 

 

Sample: Auto adjust, Saturation +5, Sharpness +5, Dark Edges Filter, Dusk Filter

 

[Matt Saternus]

Holy crap! This is the best thing ever! The learning cliff of Photoshop is way too much for me, but this is PERFECT! Thanks for sharing!

 

....but now I don't have an excuse for my crappy picture taking....f***....

[Blade]

Thanks for that! I'll definitely try it out.

[The Dansome]

Edited to add exposure & another sample pic

[GolfSpy WD]

Very cool site.

 

I've been using simple ol' Preview on the Mac. If you do alt-command-c it opens a photo edit dialog, letting you fix exposure and colors, such as yellow tones from light bulbs or overly blue from the sun. This seems more powerful, I'll have to give it a shot.

 

Btw, is the crop feature broken? I'm curious why it wasn't cropped more?

[apprenti23]

I def like the one with Mrs manbearpig by her lonesome!!!

 

Haha thanks for the link- I hate when I try to upload a photo and it says that its too large then I have no idea what to do lol

[The Dansome]

Very cool site.

 

I've been using simple ol' Preview on the Mac. If you do alt-command-c it opens a photo edit dialog, letting you fix exposure and colors, such as yellow tones from light bulbs or overly blue from the sun. This seems more powerful, I'll have to give it a shot.

 

Btw, is the crop feature broken? I'm curious why it wasn't cropped more?

 

I missed me.......

[Ice]

It makes images so much more vivid. I like it. Not as complex as photoshop, and it does more than photobucket. Win.

[hckymeyer]

Thanks MBP, that looks like a great tool!!

 

Not trying to thread jack, but for anyone that just wants a simple way to resize pictures I bring you Image Resizer for Windows

 

it's really basic, but also very simple and quick. Once you install it just right click on the picture you want to resize and select 'resize pictures' from the drop down menu. Then you can choose what size you want to go with. The Mobile option works great for the message boards.

 

I like this tool because it also allows for batch resizing. Just highlight or select all the pictures you want and right click to resize all of them at once.

 

Sorry it doesn't work for the Mac guys, but for anyone on windows it's a great little tool. Just keep in mind that it doesn't edit the pictures at all, for that Picmonkey looks like the way to go.

[GolfSpy WD]

I've posted it before, but this is what I always use so I can batch resize and autorotate...takes seconds

 

#! /bin/bash

get_size() {
 height=`sips -g pixelHeight "$1" |tail -n 1 |awk '{print $2}'`
 width=`sips -g pixelWidth "$1" |tail -n 1 |awk '{print $2}'`

 echo "Current size: $height (height), $width (width)"
}


[ ! -f "$1" ] && echo "$1 is not a file (maybe add quotes around the file name?)" && exit 1

echo "Original Size"
get_size "$1"

scale="800x600"

cp "$1" "$1".bk
convert -auto-orient -resize ${scale}'>' "$1" tmp
mv tmp "$1"

echo "New Size"
get_size "$1"

 

You can run it on linux or Mac in terminal. You'll need cygwin for windows to run bash scripts.

[The Dansome]

Excellent suggestions hcky & WD.

[GolfSpy WD]

Excellent suggestions hcky & WD.

 

I updated one of my pictures using this site, definitely nice, but easy to go overboard

[Mrs.Manbearpig]

minimal adjustments should be needed with picmonkey if you take a good picture, but if you're needing to make some quick edits and don't have photoshop expertise or photoshop elements then this is super easy to use.

 

it is easy to get carried away though so be careful.

[The Dansome]

Just a friendly bump reminder to downsize those forum photos.

[The Dansome]

Anyone been using this?

[Mr_Theoo]

I will be using it now

[GolfSpy WD]

Anyone been using this?

 

I have, but I still like iPhoto.

[The Dansome]

For everyone who may be writing member reviews or applying for that matter, posting your own WITB pics, or even general forum content in the future.

 

There are free ways via the internet to re-size your images(preferred 800px wide max) and rotate them even.

[GolfSpy WD]

For everyone who may be writing member reviews or applying for that matter, posting your own WITB pics, or even general forum content in the future.

 

There are free ways via the internet to re-size your images(preferred 800px wide max) and rotate them even.

 

+1.

 

It gets painful really fast to load that many oversized pictures.

[The Dansome]

Just a reminder bump

[GolfSpy WD]

Love picmonkey. It's the unofficial sponsor of the member reviews

[The Dansome]

Bump