PicMonkey Photo Editing Tips – for light, bright, airy photos!

I love photography. I love taking photos that evoke emotion, the storytelling that unfolds, and I love all your questions – here and on Instagram. Which is why I wrote a 10 minute marketing Snapseed Tutorial a few months back!

The Snapseed blog post walked you through the process I go through to create the light, bright, airy photos you see on this blog + Instagram using my iPhone and Snapseed (a FREE photo editing app that is very user friendly). You can read this tutorial here.

Today, I’m going to share with you my client and dear, sweet friend KelleyNan’s tutorial on how she uses PicMonkey to create this same light, bright, airy photo style.

I know, I know. You’re always asking me how to use PicMonkey and since I’m a Photoshop + Lightroom gal, I know very little about PicMonkey. Luckily Kelley is going to teach us both!

Kelley’s PicMonkey Editing Process:

1. While this photo is already pretty straight, I adjusted it ever so slightly. Straightening the shot if necessary is always my first step.

2. Crop your photo to get rid of any “extra”.  Zoom in on an interesting aspect, achieve the “rule of thirds”, or “balance the photo” – Sometimes less is more.  BFF Note: I’ve talked about the rule of thirds here.

3. Adjust the exposure. For this shot, I made the following changes: Brightness – 14; Highlights – 10; Shadows – 3; Contrast – 7. *Note: if you aren’t using pic monkey, I enhanced brightness and highlights, slightly brightened the shadows, and upped the contrast.

4. Adjust the colors. Because my “look” is more airy, I do typically drop the saturation slightly. Also, depending on the area of my house, I slightly adjust the coolness/warmth. For this shot, I made it less saturated (-7) and made it a little cooler (-2 on the warmth)

5. Increase the sharpness. I adjusted it up to 17. When I post on Instagram, I usually increase the sharpness again as it seems to lose clarity and resolution once the photo posts to the program.

Thanks Kel for sharing your PicMonkey photo editing tips for light, bright, airy photos with us!

BTW: This was just a snippet of Kelley’s full blog post “Tips to Capture Instagram-Worthy Photos”. The full post will show you the difference of shooting at different angles (wait until you see the shots she took here, yowza) and a few other great tips I don’t want to spoil, so head on over and tell her HI!

Want to know more about 10 minute marketing?  10 minute marketing is an ongoing series of quick, marketing strategies you can start doing immediately. A way for you to start taking ACTION towards marketing your business with just 10 minutes of your time!  Click here to read a few 10 minute marketing strategies.

*Photos by KelleyNan.