Spring has arrived in my backyard in the form of budding leaves, blooming daffodils, and these little red insects. At this time every year, ladybugs begin appearing throughout the vegetable garden, their predatory feeding habits sweeping it clean of pesky aphids. Oh how I wish my camera had more powerful macro functions.
I played around with Picnik, my favorite [free] online photo editing application, and made my mediocre photos look somewhat acceptable. Picnik offers a wide array of functions, ranging from the basics (auto-fix, crop, sharpen, etc.) to fancier options (heat map, night vision, vignette, neon, etc.) to text/frame/sticker add-ons. Picnik's digital cross processing (used in photos 1 and 3), lends a glowy, sunlit effect to photos-- a little bit hazy like a vintage photo, but without washed-out colors. As for a friendly user interface, Picnik also displays the cutest messages while loading: warming breeze, fluffing clouds, coloring flowers, growing grass... Although it may not be very professional, I highly recommend this application for any basic photo editing endeavors.
