Happy Days Are Here Again for the Busy Sandwich Generation and Our Photo Editing Needs

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Photo editing. With some tools, like Picnik.com used to be, it’s fun and easy to use with both photos from a digital camera or clip art. With others, it’s like pushing a rock uphill – for 5000 miles. That’s about how I felt when I learned Picnik.com was closing their site and migrating some of their tools over to Google+.  As a VERY busy member of the Sandwich Generation, I was definitely feeling frustrated.

HOWEVER, after lots of fun experimenting, and plenty of intensive research, and gaining several great new iPhone apps (and a couple of not so great ones), I revisited a site that had helped some, and found that he had discovered an excellent alternative. Mega thanks to Brad Andersohn of Brads Domain (not to mention being the Industry Outreach Manager for Zillow.com, the Director/Instructor for Zillow Academy, and an Ambassador and Blogger on the ActiveRain Real estate network – all great resources for all of us in the Sandwich Generation who are busy caring for the real estate needs of our elderly parents.)  for introducing me – and now you – to iPiccy.

If you are familiar with Picnik.com, you will probably feel quite comfortable at iPiccy. There are many similarities. There are plenty of differences as well, though. Some things are better. Some are more difficult. And it all takes a few minutes of playing with it to start learning what’s what. But it takes me a LOT longer to figure out things like Gimp or PhotoShop – if i ever do, so I’m happy to say that I find that this is definitely much easier. 🙂

A couple of little pros, cons, and tips. First, I miss the stickers from Picnik that let me point to something. I can do the same thing with the pencil tool, but as you can see, I’m not very straight at it. 🙂

When you are editing the size of your photo, select editor, resize image, make sure it says constrain proportions, then type in the width or height, and it SHOULD change both for you, keeping it in proportion. The SHOULD is because last week, it wasn’t doing it. I suspect it may have been upgraded, as I know they are working on it steadily to make it even better than it is. But just in case it does NOT change both numbers for you – here’s the little trick I discovered. Click on the arrow to the right of the WIDTH %. A little bar will show up and you can toggle that to adjust both the height and width in proportion. 

There are several different choices for special effects from “old photo” to neon to “artistic painting” to this cute “Snow” effect. My grandkids will enjoy seeing granddog surrounded in snow, since our own snow failed to make an appearance this week.

One thing that is of vital importance to me is the ability to add text easily to photos and my cute country clipart from Trina and Friends. This works GREAT. It’s actually easier than Picnik in some respects and, while it doesn’t have as many fonts, I like the selection. It has my favorite font – Comic Sans. I love it because it’s small letter A is the same  way kids write them so it’s easier for little ones to read. I also found a few others I know I will use a lot like:

One thing I noted in the font options is that it always comes with SHADOW preselected. I don’t care for the effect so I always deselect it before anything else. Try it both ways to decide for yourself.  😉

Well, that’s it for now on iPiccy. As I play with it more and learn more interesting and intriguing options, I’ll pass them on. It’s definitely a useful tool for those of us in the Sandwich Generation who like a quick and easy to use photo editor as well as a digital camera.

P.S. iPiccy is definitely one of my favorite helps for my photo editing needs. (All those grandkid pictures, you know. 🙂 ). But if you are looking for help more specific to the Sandwich Generation issues of life, you might want to take a look at the easy to read Kindle book, Knitting With Hospital Gloves: The How-To Guide for Becoming Instant Caregivers eBook by Karen J Rinehart or the more in-depth book for caregivers,  The Complete Eldercare Planner by Joy Loverde .