Picmonkey vs. Picnik for Editing Family Photos

Picnik closed.  Boo.  I took the advice of several favorite bloggers and I tried picmonkey tonight for photo editing.  Picmonkey turns out to be very similar to Picnik, with a few effects and fonts missing/different here and there, and a few cool new ones too.  One of my favorite effects to use in Picnik was the cross process with 1960s, and then the May Queen font.  I miss that font.  I took some snapshots and played around for about an hour, and I thought I would share a few things I really like.  Here's the first.

The original photo:

 And edited in picmonkey:

For this one I chose to add the "time machine" effect in Norma and faded at about 50%, then added the first "film edge" frame.  Love the frames.   That might sound super complicated if you haven't tried editing with an online program like these, but, trust me, once you find what you like, it's a few clicks of the mouse button.

The original photo:

And edited in picmonkey:

This one was kind of fun to play around with.  I chose to brighten the exposure just a bit in basic editing, then added the "orton" effect with the bloom at about 75% and the fade at about 50%.  I put the "daguerreotype" effect on top in "shiro" with a fade at 50%.  I love that one.  There is also one called "Brady," and wouldn't you know, it's on top of my list too.  I added the "daguerreotype" (dang, that's hard to spell) frame on top in "shiro" as well, and faded it until it was just noticeable. (I can't believe how much Harlee, our new dog, looks like Maggie, our previous boxer, in this picture.  Wow.)

Bottom line, using picmonkey is as simple as this blog post.  I think the first edit is my favorite out of five I've tried so far.  It's for sure not rocket science or pre-cal, and anybody can give it a shot and probably come out ahead.  You don't have to sign up either.  Just start uploading photos and edit them.  The one down-side to that is, you can't upload a stack at a time and save them to the online service, which is kind of a pain.  Maybe that will be fixed soon.  There are lots of things to play around with, but be prepared to sit for a while.  It's addicting.   And my neck hurts.   But I think I'll edit a few more and see what happens.