An Alternative to Picnik

Many of you are likely mourning the mid-April closing of Picnik.com and searching for a web replacement.  Though Picnik still exists, it moved to Google+, where only members have access to the effects.  For people who want a Picnik replacement but aren't willing to fork out the cash for Photoshop, my sister recently informed me of a good alternative website.  It is virtually identical Picnik in the effects that it offers, though it seems to have a larger number of premium effects, so you can't do as much as a free user (be sure to click on the monkey on the premium effects for a free trial).  It may take you a little while to figure out where everything is on the website, but it should look very familiar to you overall.  Most of the effects have the same name that they had on Picnik, so you should easily be able to achieve the same look on PicMonkey that you always did on Picnik!  A link to the site is provided below.  I encourage you to check it out and celebrate the discovery of Picnik stand-in!

http://www.picmonkey.com/

The Exposure Triangle

For this post, I actually want to refer you to a different website.  I stumbled upon this article while browsing the internet, and found it to be handy in explaining and simplifying the different elements of exposure.  As someone who has not yet had a tremendous amount of time to experiment with the settings on her DSLR camera, I found it very useful.  I plan on messing around with the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO settings on my camera a great deal this spring break and summer vacation to see if I can get a hang of choosing the correct exposure settings.  Below I have provided links to the various articles that I found.  The first is just an overview of the "Exposure Triangle" and how ISO, aperture, and shutter speed are related to each other.  The next three links go into greater depth (but not too much depth) on each of those topics.

The Exposure Triangle

ISO

Aperture

Shutter Speed

I thought that these articles were a nice starting point for people trying to learn more about their DSLR (like myself) and that it would be a good idea to pass the information along.  Happy reading!  I hope you find these articles as informative as I did. :)