"How do you create the graphics that you use on your blog?"
This question was asked by a fellow blogger, in reference to photos I modify or quotes that I artify on my blog. I wish the answer was a simple as one app. In that case I would have responded to her e-mail. Since I use a number of apps and software, I thought this could be a blog update for my neglected blog Appsider. Her question was prefaced by, "I know you are a Mac girl in a PC world...." This was true up until my Windows laptop died about a month ago. Since then I have been using my husbands MacBook Pro and nothing has changed in what I use for the graphics on my site.
Since Pinterest became the latest social networking craze, and people can "Pin it" from anywhere, this became a great opportunity to extend the contents of kenyagjohnson.com to my Pinterest followers. For the most part I had been using my own photos for my blog posts, but then it became more of an obsessionrequirement. If someone was going to Pin anything of mine, I wanted it to lead back to my blog.
One might be suprised to know, that I mostly use my iPhone for everything. For this blog post photo, I started out with a sticky note from ABC Notes; an iPad and iPhone app. There is also a desktop version of ABC Notes for Windows but I do not have a use for it. Within the sticky note app, I chose a plain green sticky note and typed in and centered Blog updates. I then saved the photo to my phone.
From the iPhone camera roll, I chose my green sticky note in the FX Photo Studio app. Fx Photo Studio is an iPad, iPhone and Mac app. I do not use the desktop application. To change the plain green sticky to the mix of color and texture you see here, I chose one of the many FX effects that Photo Studio has to offer. I saved the creation to my iPhone camera roll again.
The app I use the most happens to a free one, Be Funky Photo Editor. There is a pro version of this app but I have not had a need to explore it. The frame (border) for the photo used in this post was from the Be Funky app.
I usually start or end with the desktop version of Photoshop Elements 10 (PSE). In most instances I use PSE for text variety. In this instance I used it to tilt the photo. I found a push pin on google images, changed it to green and added it to my photo.
TMI? If you were hoping for a simple answer to the question, sorry I don't have one. The bottom line is, I have used a variety of great apps. Since I've become mostly a Mac girl in lack of a PC world, I am exploring iPhoto '11 and hoping it will simplify some of my process. I'm not complaining though ~ iLoveapps!
Other great apps I use:
- Skitch for drawing arrows in this post
- Photogene was used to mirror the image in this post
- Dropbox Photo Sender merged the photos in this post
- I used PSE and BeFunky to make the social networking follow icons on my "Here's the thing" blog
- I used PSE for the small photo used on my Facebook banner
- I used TinyPlanets and PSE to create the photo on my Google+ page
There you have it - my apperspective. If you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to answer!