Quote of the Month

When love and skill work together, expect a miracle. John Ruskin




Monday, January 31, 2011

Choices, choices, choices...Flex or Funky

Last week I needed to do some quick editing of a graphic that I wanted to use on this blog but Adobe Photoshop was on my computer at home.  Quickly searching online I discovered a site, while up and running for several years, was new to me...FotoFlexer.  This site boasts of being the world's most advanced online image editor.  Images can be uploaded from your computer, FotoFlexer, PhotoBucket, Facebook, MySpace, Picasa, Flickr, Phanfare, Smugmug and Yahoo Search.  Upon uploading your graphic a series of tabs appears at the top of the work area:  Basic, Effects, Decorate, Animations, Beautify, Distort, Layers and Geek.  The Basic tab includes Auto Fix, Fix Red Eye, Crop, Copy Region, Resize, Rotate, Flip Horizontal or Vertical, Adjust (hue, saturation and lightness), Contrast and EZ Collage.  There are 25 different options included in the Effects tab.  Stickers, text, glitter text, draw, erase, fill, grab color, insert a face, fun cards, borders and poster are choices within the Decorate tab.  The Animations tab reveals animated stars, animated lovies and animated stickers.  Believe it or not under the Beautify tab are smooth, sharpen, fix blemishes and smooth wrinkles.  Images can be twirled left or right, bulged, pinched, stretched or squished be selecting the Distort tab.  Under the Layers tab the user can add images, select, select all, duplicate, opacity, push back, push forward group, ungroup or merge.  And the Geek tab contains Smart resize, Smart recolor, Smart cutout, Smart scissors, curves, morph and web cam.  Some of these features are still in Beta form but will be useful to the more experienced photo editor user.  When you have tweaked the graphic you can save it to your computer or a variety of social or photo sites or a tiny pic can be created to embed it in your blog or web site, it can be emailed or a URL/Link can be generated.  I did have trouble trying to get the tiny pic function to work.  That is probably because my computer is older than dirt and slower than molasses in January.

As much as I like Be Funky ( it was mentioned in a blog on 9/21/2010 regarding the making of comics) in comparison it lacks the extent and sophistication of FotoFlexer.  After uploading a photo for editing a bar of choices appears across your image as opposed to tabs above your image in FotoFlexer.  The choices in Be Funky are Edit, Apply Effects, Add Goodies, Add Frames and Add Text.  Options included under Edit are rotate/flip, resize, brightness/contrast, exposure, hue/saturation, color filter, temperature, sharpen, blur filter, enhance detail, smooth, highlights/shadows and duotone.  These are similar to those available in Fotoflexer.  I did use the crop tool in both.  The tool in FotoFlexer was better by allowing more options for sizing before the crop.  There are 26 possibilities under Effects.  Many are the identical to those in FotoFlexer but not always. The Goodies are all stickers with various themes.  The Frames does offer more choices for fun and the holidays.  There are 15 fonts within the Add Text selection.   Upon completion of editing an image in Be Funky can be saved to your computer, the library, Facebook or Twitter.  It can be printed or shared via email, Facebook, MySpace or Flickr. 

For both of the web sites users need to be 13 years of age.  No registration is required and they are free.  These sites could be very useful in adding appealing graphics to school, professional or personal creations.  They offer excellent possibilities to users of various capabilities. 


Be Funky Pop Art Effect

FotoFlexer Pop Art Effect








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