Monkeying Around with PicMonkey... Cool Tool #4 (It's Awesome!)

After doing a little research on PicMonkey, I've found that it has some pretty rabid fans. Essentially, it's a photo editing and graphic creating program.  It's very easy and user friendly. There is a desktop program as well as the mobile app.  I'm using the desktop one but the app looks just as good - maybe with a little less functions but still pretty darn powerful! Like Canva, it's sort of like Photoshop without all the bells and whistles. But you can do A LOT with what is available.  Let me just say that I am going bananas over PicMonkey!  Here's what it can do: 

• Basic Editing - cropping, resizing, rotating. Plus sharpening or adding color.
• Retouching - fix any blemishes or other facial "imperfections" easily
• Effects - a variety of gorgeous effects that use a variety of color saturation, selective focus, tones, etc to truly make your photos stand out
• Text - add text boxes and manipulate text effects like drop shadows
• Overlays - add more visual elements (almost like digital "stickers") with everything from arrows to doodles to facial features (ie a mustache)
• Frames - obviously, different edge effects for your photo
• Textures - add visual texture like woven tapestry or parchment
• Themes - mostly festive or seasonal compilations of effects and elements that fit within a theme (like "birthday" or "comic book")
• Templates - pre-made setups for posters, diagrams, invitations, etc. that you add your photo(s) into and manipulate to personalize (only available with upgrade versions)

As far as actually editing the photos (rather than creating a graphic or meme, like i did on my Canva review) the possibilities are seemingly endless. I literally just signed up for Adobe student subscription for my Major Project but am kind of regretting it (although to use the best features on PicMonkey, you'll need a paid subscription as well.  I "signed up" for a 7 day trial but will probably cancel because I don't need to pay for Adobe and PicMonkey but I need the Adobe stuff for my project!)  So anyways PicMonkey's paid upgrades- Premium and Supremium - allow you to use more editing features as well as photo storage and interfacing your mobile and desktop account. 

Premium: $7.99/month (3.99/month if billed annual lump sum) 

Supremium: $8.99/month

So besides having to give up my credit card info to sign up for a trial - I like pretty much everything else about this program. There are a TON of premade facial/skin retouching filters! Seriously... there's one called "eyebrow pencil" and even "weight loss" and "whisker grower." Huh. I can see why some photographers who are more interested in taking pictures than retouching them would prefer this program to something more complicated (but more flexible) like Photoshop. Especially with it's mobile app capability. I want to play around on this for personal experimentation... but as far as applications in education, well... beautifying models isn't necessarily a high priority project so we'll move on.

PicMonkey could be used for a variety of projects... posters, brochures, advertisements, memes, albums - there are lots of possibilities!  A teacher could incorporate any number of them into her curriculum. 

So, let's experiment, shall we? I just got hired by my neighbors to paint a tropical under-the-sea mural in their house... so I've got fish on the brain.  So, since these photos are pretty dynamic, let's experiment with PicMonkey.  I'll use this one that I found on Pintrest (it attributed to wallpaperup.com... gotta 'share' properly, after all). 

This is the original

This is my very quickly and easily done masterpiece!

This did not take me long at all.  I skipped the numerous colorization filters (like sepia, etc) since the bright colors are kind of the appeal for under-the-sea imagery.  But I easily amped up the colors, did some lens focus effects, added light burst and bubbles, text... easy peasy!

OK, so I couldn't resist and decided to try some of the retouching options. Woah... You could take a bare-faced subject and give her a full face of makeup in minutes!! Look, I've got white teeth, a slight tan, bright eyes and I lost a few pounds.  Seriously, this took all of 5 minutes. I really do like this program!!:

So, relating this to education.  Well, obviously I could see utilizing this program in a graphic arts class to teach photo editing - although if the point were to teach how to edit photos, it would probably be best to use a from-scratch program rather than a bunch of preset filters... But if I were just teaching the very basic principals of photo editing - especially to younger students, this could be a very useful program. It is easy, rather flexible, and allows for structured creativity without being intimidating. I suppose it could be used in any creative setting - i.e. creating a poster for science class or a playbill for English... It's fun! Students would have a great time experimenting with PicMonkey's capabilities... as long as teacher keeps it educational then I can see this being an asset to any content area. Two thumbs up!

PROS:

1. SUPER easy to use - a total novice could be comfortable within minutes
2. Tools that do specific things are labeled as such (i.e. instead of "dodge" and "burn" as in Photoshop to brighten eyes... just use the "Brighten Eyes filter...)
3. Tons of possible projects with so many design options and additions.

CONS:
1. Could use more text effects
2. You have to pay for the best stuff