An Amateur's Guide to Photographing Children {Part 3} : Editing

I remember the days when editing photographs before printing them was the stuff of dreams. Or at least the stuff of professional photographers.

You sometimes printed photos only to find that the subject had red-eye or the picture was too dark or too light. 

This need not happen anymore.

Really, even Costco offers customers the option to edit photos in the store. It's crazy how far we've come. 

For at home editing, especially fabulous for bloggers and individuals who like to share photographs on social media, there are a ridiculous amount of options available including many that are extremely low cost but provide an amazing variety of options. 

For the purpose of today, and my sharing what I personally use on the daily, I will focus on PicMonkey.

The service can be used at no charge for basic edits {think resize, clarify, add a filter} or in the vicinity of about $5/month for their "royale" features which allow you to do just about anything. Think photoshop but not as advanced. or as confusing.

I assure you it is money well spent.

Here is just a small sampling of what you can do in no time at all.

unedited photo

auto adjust only

manual adjustments including a crop, removing the {ahem} gum from her hair {on right side} + a small spot on her shirt {i also slightly lightened up the darkness under her eyes just to show you what it can do!}

one click filters
rapture / b + w / tranquil

 Amazing right?

And honestly, so user friendly that literally anyone can feel comfortable using it. 

It even lets me make my little sweeties into the sweetest vampires ever.
Oh yes, I did.

What do you use to edit your photos with?

Read part 1 + part 2 in this series.

Winner of the My Mummy Loves Shoes giveaway is a shoe lover I admire, Celia from High Heeled Life. 

Congrats friend!