Don't Overlook Featured/Seasonal Effects

For those of you who turn to Picnik for much of your photo editing, you may have noticed that in the "Create" tab there is always a section with "Featured" effects.  These usually correlate with whichever season (sports and nature), holiday, or other major event is coming up.  After the event has passed, these effects are then relocated to the "Seasonal" tab.  If you're anything like me, you largely ignore these featured effects.  Many of them seem tacky, such as the effect that provides dorky St. Patrick's Day clipart or the bunny filter that was featured around Easter.  However, over time I have learned that not all of these seasonal effects are cheesy and unusable for anything other than comedy.

Surprisingly, many of these effects are quite cool. A personal favorite of mine is "Scary Movies" in the Halloween section.  We actually used Scary Movies for a couple pictures of my brother.  If you follow my blog at all, you may recognize both pics from my earlier post on taking your own senior pictures and making your own invitations.

My brother's graduation invitation minus the invitation information.  Text was added when he got closer to the date of graduation. 

One of my brother's senior pictures.  The photo was taken by my sister, but was edited by me.

Ialso used Scary Movies on one of my own photographs to give it a slightly different feel.  Below I have two identical pictures of a swingset that is at a school playground near my house. The first pic is edited with more typical coloring, and the second uses the seasonal effect.

This photo was edited using the Lomo-ish effect, faded slightly.

The same photo edited with Scary Movies.

Personally, even though the orange sky is artificial, I prefer it to the original.  I like the spookier, red/orange tone in the sky better than the typical blue.  Another interesting feature that I used recently was the "Space Textures" feature.  I was looking for a wackier editing option, so I gave it a try.  Using a combination of Posterize and Space Textures, I turned a picture of my eye into something that looked more like a painting than a photograph:

It's true that the majority of these featured effects will not generally provide you with a terribly natural-looking photography in most cases, but they're still worth a try!  You may be surprised by how interesting some of these effects can be if you use them in the correct situation. Nearly every holiday has at least one texture/effect that is applicable year-round.

For those of you who aren't sure where to find the Featured or Seasonal section on Picnik, I have provided screenshots for you below (click to enlarge):

As you can see, this section is easy enough to find.  Featured effects should show up before anything else when you go to the "Create" tab.  The featured effects will rotate out depending on the time of year, but remember that you can always find them again in the Seasonal section.

Season is the little calendar icon under the create tab.  All of the featured effects are stored here, even when they are out of season.

I wish I could give you a full list of featured/seasonal effects that might be reasonable for editing year-round, but as you can see from the photo of the Seasonal section, there are too many to sort through.  I will say, though, that I have had a lot of luck with Halloween in the past: Scary Movies, Halloween Textures, and even VampiraScope are all workable.  Other than that, I invite you to dig around on your own to figure out which effects suit you the best!