So I’ve had a few people ask me how I add all the text to my photos for Bryson’s photo project. I use Photoshop Elements – which is a scaled down version of Photoshop. I got it on Ebay (new) for around $20 but it has a pretty big learning curve – at least it did for me. It’s not the most user-friendly program and I’ve had to download a bunch of free fonts, actions, and brushes over the years.

I wanted to share a new site I just found called PicMonkey. This site is cool! It has a ton of options and is really user-friendly. I played around with a photo of my son to see if I could come up with a similar look that I had previously achieved in Photoshop.

Here is the photo straight out of the camera
Here are the two edits
Honestly I was a little surprised at how close of an edit I was able to achieve. The tones are a bit different and if I had played with it more I probably could have gotten even closer but I didn’t have a ton of time. I don’t claim to be a great photoshopper, I’ve just learned things here and there and I’m probably doing a lot of things “wrong”. Someday I will take a class, but for now I just look up tutorials online and watch YouTube videos!

PicMonkey is free for a lot of the features but if you want you can pay $33 per year to have the full version. Depending on what you want to do with your photos that may be worth it to you. You can do most simple edits, add fun effect, simple touch ups (blemish remover!!), overlays, textures, frames and add text all using the free online version.

I hope this ends up being a useful tool for some of you! Happy editing!