Editing photos - Where to start ?

Picasa 3

If you are a beginner and want to edit your photos in a user friendly, easy and FREE way then we think Google Picasa is a great place to start! It is really easy to use and download. There are some other great free editing tools but this is the best one we have found so far. You can edit the contrast, change the effects from black and white and sepia to a range of others to enhance your image.

You can crop your image to square which is really handy for canvases and it only takes seconds. You can even type in exact measurements so that it will fit perfectly, when cropped, on to the canvas size you want.

Picasa also has an advanced tool bar which is called picnic, however the majority of the tools are not free but if you want to edit your photos with a more professional variety of effects it might be worth having a look at ,as it comes without the heavy price tag of photoshop! Picasa is also good if you have taken a great family image but some people have red eye, you can edit this too, but be warned sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt . It is a great tool when it works as it really reduces the red eye so lets hope they keep working on it so it reduces it everytime . Another feature is the straighten tool which allows you to straighten an image. If you have taken a beautiful sunset on holiday but your hands were a little shakey, Picasa can fix it so that your horizon is canvas ready and perfectly straight .

I hope this has given you a small insight into Picasa, googles free editing suite. If you want a real beginers guide to using Picasa visit our page on a step by step guide of how to start. If you dont already have Picasa and think its just what you need click the link bellow. 

Download Picasa 3 and start editing your photos for a perfect canvas every time.

Photoshop

If you have a lot of money to spend on editing your pictures then photoshop is definitely the best money can buy. Make sure you research in to which Photoshop you want and need to suit your specific editing desires as you could easily end up spending a lot of money on which you only use a few tools. There are so many from the very basic photoshop elements which retails at around £40 upto the latest photoshop CS5 which has a price range from £150 to £500 depending on where you buy and if you can get student discount, so if you are looking into getting yourself some decent software definitley shop around as it doesnt come cheap.

However saying this you are getting what you pay for. Adobe Photoshop CS5 is so much more that just a photo editing suite, you can use it for web design,video editing,web development,3D designs and all the cool stuff photoshop did before.

Photoshop is a little harder to use to start with than Picasa as its not so easily signposted, you have to go through tabs and tool bars to find what might just be a single button on Picasa. You may want to watch editing videos on youtube, to help you, if you are looking to do a specific thing, like remove a background from a photo. Photoshop just has so much more to offer than Picasa and if you want to have really professional looking photos I dont think there is any software that beats it.

If you already have Photoshop but still dont really know how to use it visit our basic Photoshop guide page for some easy ways to edit your images.

If you are looking at buying one of Adobe's many Photoshop suites have a look at  www.adobe.com/products they may not necessarily be the cheapest but they should have all the info you need to get started with buying Photoshop.

What file size do I need to have to upload to canvas?

The bigger the better especially when it comes to canvas prints,as the resolution will never be as crisp as if you printed your images on high gloss platinum paper because canvas is a material and it has texture . We would prefer it if your image was no less than 150 dpi and a general rule when printing is 1 MB per inch however you can get away with much less when printing  your photos on canvas. Here are some tips to make sure that your canvas print comes out as looking the best it can .Follow these size guides and you will have a print worthy pic everytime.

If you are not sure about the quality or size of your picture email it to us before you upload you photo and we can tell you which size we think would work best. Our team of friendly staff are always here to help.