I love the word monkey, that is what I sometimes call my little almost 6 month old daughter. Monkey, monkey pants, muffin, walnut muff, the list goes on...all those sill baby names. But I would like to introduce you to pic monkey. The blog "oh my! handmade" posted a link on their Facebook page that of course grabbed my attention: Grab Customer's Attention on your website in Less than 15 Minutes. Lisa White, from Moxie Pear Design, is the author of the post and she gives a great video tutorial on vim.

Anything to help make better pictures of my product I am interested in. My camera is a Nikon P7700, which I know nothing about it. I really would love to take a class but now with a baby it's kinda hard to get extra free time. I use photoshop elements or photoshop, bringing the photos first into iphoto. I know Photoshop and Illustrator because this is what I use when I designed mens sportswear. For those of you who don't know Photoshop, Pic Monkey is perfect! It is pretty fun, very similar to photoshop, user friendly but it's free! There is a Royale membership that is paid for and you will get access to more tweeking, fonts, and effects.

I did a quick collage just to experiment and show an example. I do like the way the collage looks. I think it definitely is a good way to grab interest on your home page of a website. I show 3 things that will assist in your kitchen; apron, tea towel and napkins. It was much quicker to make a collage thru Pic Monkey than Illustrator or Photoshop.

Here are the three images before collage and effects.

I rounded the corners, added the text, slightly changed the exposure. I didn't want to add too many effects because I don't want to change the actual look of the fabrics. However for photos of people, Pic Monkey has lots of air brushing effects to offer.

If you are looking for a quick way to improve and format your photos check out Pic Monke y. It's worth the 15 minute tutorial from Lisa White.

If you do check it out, send me a link. I would love to see what your creative fingers will do with it!

Tracey Toole

http://www.etsy.com/shop/traceytoole