It’s the end of the year, and with that, we rewind and reflect on all the things we blogged on in 2020, from photo projects to ways to improve our skills! A huge thank you goes out to all the amazing team members, guest bloggers, and colleagues who shared their knowledge with us! Enjoy the following recap and then let’s look forward to next year! 2021 – here we come!
1. 6 Surefire Ways to Restore Old Photos & Relive Memories
By Sovanik Singh
Do you cherish the pictures of your grandparents? You love showing childhood photos to your kids, right? Old pictures often lose clarity and become blurred due to dust and water ingression or insufficient upkeep over the years. Of course, you cannot preserve everything from the past, but restoring a handful of old photos could be a great way of remembering your long lost loved ones, childhood friends, and reliving past moments.
It is equally important for your descendants to know about his or her family roots and feel the same sense of belonging. So, given all the sentimental value, you should give photo retouching services a try if you cannot fix your aging photos on your own. From removing scratches to adjusting the colors, a professional editor can do it all for breathing new life into the old pictures.
2. Canvas Photo Editor – A Free Smart Tool to Edit Photos Online
By Yaser Khan
A good photo editor is essential to give a pleasing look to your images. Whether you are a photographer who manages and stores photos, or a business owner who uses stock images for commercial purposes, you need to have an image editor that suits your individual requirements. Tools like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop are fantastic for most professionals, but what if you are a beginner and don’t want things to be complicated? The problem with these tools is they have a slightly steep learning curve, and not everyone has the time to learn them. Moreover, they can prove to be expensive.
In the current era, photo editing has become easier with the availability of online image editors. The challenge is that it is not easy to find a free, easy to use online editor with maximum features.
Recently, I came across a good option, “Canvas Photo Editor,” which is a free online tool by Canvas Prints UK. While it may not be a great editor for experienced graphic design professionals, it’s quite a nice choice for beginners because it has all the features you need to start. In this post, I’ll show you my experience of using this editor and give you some of its pros and cons.
3. Computer Running Slow with Your Photos? Here Are Some Simple Ways to Speed It Up!
By Aaron Smith
A lagging computer is an annoying waste of time, especially when it slows down every time you try to do something you enjoy. When you edit, view, and print photos, the last thing you want is to deal with photo programs that turn your computer sluggish or cause it to crash – especially if photography is how you make a living.
We’re not going to tell you to dump your cookies and defrag your computer. You already know that. It doesn’t hurt to delete unnecessary files, but that’s general computer maintenance. A picture problem typically requires a different kind of fix.
4. Enhancing a Photo with Visual Captions in PhotoWorks
By Caroline Guntur
PhotoWorks is an “intelligent photo editor” that lets you enhance pictures and improve image quality at the same time. You can download it from the PhotoWorks website. It’s available for PC users and is supported on Windows Vista, XP, 7, 8 and 10. The interface is available in English, French, Italian, German, or Polish.
The program uses different algorithms to make some of the more common photo editing tasks, such as color correction, automatic – with just the click of a button. This is helpful to newbies who don’t have time to learn complicated techniques, and for making quick fixes, like red eye removals. They have a free trial available and lots of support, so you can get started right away, without any prior knowledge of photo editing.
5. 5 Easy Ways to Transfer Photos from Your iPhone to Your Mac
By Selin Tagmat
Nowadays we constantly use our phones to take daily photos and at some point, we all need to transfer these photos from our phones to computers. Transferring photos from your phone to a PC is a quite straightforward process with a simple wired connection and using the conventional folder structure. On the other hand, when it comes to transferring photos across Apple devices, there are plenty of options depending on how you want to manage your photo organizing process. That’s why we thought it would be helpful to give you an overview of a few different ways you can transfer photos from your iPhone to Mac computer. We mainly focus on those in this post, but at the end, you’ll also find some tips about some basic photo transfer solutions that work across different operating systems.
6. My iCloud Storage is Full – Should I Upgrade?
By Selin Tagmat
“iCloud Storage is Full.” Seeing this message on your Apple device is disappointing for sure… When you run out of iCloud storage, this means your data, photos and videos will stop backing up to your cloud. You’ll also start having some synchronization problems among your devices in terms of your iCloud Drive and apps. If you’re using an iCloud email address, you may also have problems sending and receiving email.
When you set up iCloud for the first time, Apple gives you 5GB of free storage. If you’re an active user with several Apple devices and back up lots of data, photos, and videos, then that amount of storage space will not be enough for you. You’ll need a lot more. However, it’s also important to use your cloud storage space efficiently, so you don’t end up paying for more storage than you actually need. Here are some tips and tricks on how to manage your iCloud storage space and how to know when to upgrade your storage plan.
7. Your Photos Are Organized. Now What?
By Leanne Lobe
You are the guardian of your family memories. It’s an enormous responsibility and often an invisible task. You have spent countless hours:
- Deleting duplicates
- Backing up
- Cataloging
You know way more about metadata than you ever imagined! This photo organizing stuff…it’s kind of like doing the dishes or the laundry: it’s never done! It seems to be always on your to-do list.
So, before we move on, let’s all take a moment to do a self-five. Your system may not be perfect, but you’re the envy of your friends who seem to be drowning in an avalanche of images on multiple devices. You should be proud and recognize all the work you’ve done. Your family and friends will appreciate it. Yeah you!
Well now is the time to ask yourself a really important question: Why did you take all these photos?
8. Let’s Make It Funny! How to Add Humor to a Photo Book
By Shastina Leonard
Welcome to a light-hearted tutorial on something that we all need a little more of these days: Memories of love and laughter! As you read this post, let yourself forget anything stressful for fifteen minutes. Look at this as a short break and entertain the idea of revisiting your fondest memories. That means memories that filled you with joy or had you laughing so hard you could barely breathe. Can you think of some? Who were they with?
Now, have you ever wanted to share those memories and hold on to them? Of course you have. That’s why we all have thousands of photos and videos on our phones and tablets. We can’t get enough. As technology keeps advancing, one day we’ll probably have entire running movies of our lives. If there was ever a more perfect season to push your creativity and share your happy memories, now is the time. Luckily, storing your memories is as easy as simply creating a photo book. In this post, we are focusing on how and why to add humor to your personal photo book.
9. Slideshow in 5 Minutes? You Can Do That with SmartSHOW 3D!
By Caroline Guntur
SmartSHOW 3D is an easy-to-use slideshow maker created by AMS Software, compatible with the Windows 10, 8, 8.1, 7, Vista, and XP operating systems. It’s ideal for the user who wants to make slideshows quickly and without worrying about a big learning curve. The software comes pre-loaded with over 100 ready-made templates and over 350 animation effects, plus a full music library. They have a free trial available for new customers, so you can download SmartShow here to check it out for yourself. We found it very user-friendly!
10. The Benefits of Working on Family History Projects
By Clémence Scouten
When I tell people family history projects are fun, easy, and meaningful, I often get a lot of Yeah, right! thrown back at me. They’re wrong, but I can understand where they’re coming from.
Family can be complicated. And the idea of sorting through boxes of old stuff doesn’t sound exciting. But don’t give up before you start! You are likely to have more fun and satisfaction than you expected. Best of all, the benefits of completing family history projects last for generations.
11. How to Transfer Your Photos with DearMob iPhone Manager
By Selin Tagmat
If you’re an iPhone user (like me), you’re always on the lookout for alternative solutions to transfer photos and videos from your phone to computer in an easy, fast, and secure way. There are a few native options offered by the Apple universe: iTunes can be used for backing up your phone, but it has never been an ideal tool for photo and video transfers. It’s possible to use Apple Photos, of course, but there are a lot of people out there who might not want to use that system for various reasons.
If you use iCloud Photos, you can access your mobile photos from your computer, but what if you don’t want to pay for extra cloud storage? There’s also AirDrop and Image Capture, which work really great in transferring a limited number of photos and videos, but not that efficient for handling large volumes of photos and videos in a rapid and easy way. All of these apps offer some good features and you can read about them in one of our previous blog posts: 5 Easy Ways to Transfer Photos from Your iPhone to Your Mac.
On the other hand, sometimes what we need is a more powerful solution to import and export photos and videos between our iPhone and Mac/PC. That’s why we’ve decided to review DearMob iPhone Manager. Read on to find out what we thought about it!
12. VidHug: An Unbelievably Easy Way to Create Tribute Video Montages
By Kate Salmon-Robinson
Celebrating a “Class of 2020” student/graduate has not been an easy thing. With the COVID-19 pandemic causing sudden business and school shut-downs and unexpected remote work and distance learning, nothing has been business-as-usual around here. For students that has meant: No spring sports. No prom. No senior prank. No senior skip day. And, of course, graduation plans have either been moving targets or have pretty much evaporated.
With all of the upheaval and uncertainty of the end of high school, we decided to honor our 2020 Grad by hosting our first virtual party. I am thrilled to report that it turned out to be a wonderful way to include family and friends in the celebration… and something our daughter totally appreciated!
13. 8 Steps to Creating an Adventure Travel Photo Book using Canva
By Seema Sharma
For her 40th Birthday, this friend of mine wanted to do something that meant breaking barriers! She chose to go for a solo international holiday. There was resistance from her family, but she stood her ground and fulfilled this wish of hers. Naturally, this holiday has become a cherished memory for her and she wanted to capture all the memories of this holiday in a travel photo book. She wanted to use some color, some graphical elements and have fun while creating this memory book in a scrapbook style, but she didn’t want a huge learning curve. That’s why I suggested that she should use a free online tool called Canva to create this photo book. I showed her the steps and she thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating her photo book using Canva.
I thought there may be other women out there (just like my friend) who’d enjoy this option, so I chose to write a tutorial about how to make a travel book using Canva.
14. Interested in DPO PRO: The Ultimate Photo Organizing Masterclass? Here’s What’s New!
By Caroline Guntur
DPO PRO is a complete online course that helps students go from disorganized to organized in their digital photo life. It’s available in two versions, with or without add-on coaching! In this blog post, we take a look at what’s included in the two first versions as well as some frequently asked questions!
I’m a Perfect Pinnable!
15. How to Use the Lightroom Book Module to Create Photo Books
By Leanne Lobe
The Book Module in Adobe Lightroom creates a seamless experience and efficient workflow when you want to create a photo book with your photos. Lightroom offers a powerful integration with Blurb with a happy blend of templates to get you started and customization for limitless design options. If you already manage and develop your photos in Lightroom, you will enjoy the ease of creating your books within the same program. It’s a powerful tool with all the features you need to make your photos come alive.
16. FlexClip: A Free Online Video Maker with Music and Photos
By Caroline Guntur
FlexClip is an easy-to-use, free online video creator that lets you create amazing videos without the hassle. It’s essentially a browser-based video creator with drag-and-drop functions that helps even the most novice of users create beautiful and professional videos (commercial or personal) in mere minutes. A basic account is free, and there is no need to download any additional software or extensions, so you can get started immediately, and without having a blockbuster budget at your disposal.
Need something to market your services? FlexClip is ideal for that. Even the free version comes with great templates that lets you easily personalize your message with either your own media or with stock media. Want a personal video? Yep, you can do that too – anything from vlogs to slideshows are easy to create with FlexClip.
17. The Surprisingly Easy Way to Export Photos from Apple Photos
By Caroline Guntur
We’ve all been there. You need to export your photos from Apple Photos, so you open the program, select your photos, hit “export” and …out comes a mess. Not a mess per se, but just enough of a mess to annoy you and give you a bunch of extra work. To fix this problem, we use Photos Takeout, which is a great little app created by App Initio Limited, who also created SnipTag and Pic Scanner Gold, both of which we’ve had the pleasure of reviewing here on the blog.
Photos Takeout is a program that is meant to give you a better experience when exporting pictures from your Apple Photos library; to let you pull your photos out in batches that make sense and put them into a folder structure that is organized from the beginning. No more redundant work! And for the low price as of the date on this post, it’s a STEAL.
18. My Biggest Takeaway from DPO PRO: The Ultimate Photo Organizing Masterclass
By Bryn Mohr
When I started attending the DPO PRO digital photo organizing masterclass, I thought that as long as my iPhone was syncing to iCloud that my photos and data were fully protected in the event my phone was stolen or crashed. But syncing is not the same as having a backup. Did you know that? Do you know the difference between the two? I do now.
Backing up means to copy files from one physical device to either another physical device or to the Cloud. Syncing occurs between two or more devices and is when the activity you do on one advice, such as adding or deleting files, gets copied to your other devices so that each device has an identical set of files at all times. Backing up and syncing can both be done manually or automatically, but the distinction is important.
19. What Type of Computer Should I Get for Photo Organizing?
by Caroline Guntur
There’s nothing more frustrating than a slow computer when you’re trying to accomplish something. That goes especially for running a program like Lightroom. Previews that don’t render fast enough… aargh, that drives me nuts, so naturally I’m always looking for a fast computer. The same goes for hard drive space. There’s nothing more annoying that not being able to fit your entire photo and video collection on your computer. Photo editing is yet another thing. It’s so much fun, and nowadays it’s not just for photographers. An Art Daily article titled Why Editing Images is Important in Present explains how photo editing is easy nowadays, as it lets you alter the color, background, lighting, and shadow without problems in programs like Photoshop, giving your old photos a new touch, and making them professional-looking. It’s easy enough that anyone can do it!
In order to do all this, however, you will need a computer that can seamlessly run a good photo software, or you’ll have to endure a process that’s excruciatingly slow. Invest in the right computer so you can organize, edit, and create efficiently and without difficulty – you’ll be glad you did. Before buying anything, check out the guide below on how to choose the best computer for you!
20. Create Better Stories by Storyboarding Your Photo Books
By Leanne Lobe
Maybe you’ve heard of storyboarding or maybe it’s a completely new term. Either way, in this post you’ll discover some new ideas about how to use this approach to create your next photo book in less time with less stress.
We all know that planning is important and that we SHOULD do it, but the reality is we often jump into our projects with only a vague idea of what we want to accomplish. Planning is B.O.R.I.N.G. And it feels like you’re not making any tangible progress. So you jump into your project with excitement and energy only to get distracted and overwhelmed. Raise your hand if this sounds familiar?
Storyboarding is a fun way to plan (yes, fun!) and will help make your big project less intimidating so you can actually finish.
21. How to Celebrate the Holidays Virtually During the Pandemic
By Selin Tagmat
As the holiday period approaches, we start to feel one of the biggest challenges that the pandemic brought us: the celebration of the Christmas and New Year period this year will not be like any other… Some of us live far away from their loved ones and will not be able to travel. Some others live in the same city, but will rather not organize a large gathering of the family for health concerns.
That’s why we wanted to share with you some tips on how to still be able to keep the holiday spirit, exchange best wishes for the new year and share special moments with family and friends during the pandemic. Even if we can not be physically together, why not throw an online party, play bingo together, send our loved ones a card or a gift to show that we think of them?
Here are some ideas that can give you some inspiration for this year’s celebrations.
22. Make Quick Portrait Edits for Free with PhotoDiva
By Caroline Guntur
PhotoDiva is a free portrait photo editor with AI Effects that helps you spruce up your photos with a few simple clicks. It was created by AMS Software, which is the company that also created SmartSHOW 3D, which we wrote about here on the blog not too long ago. The software is available for PC users only at this time, and compatible with Windows 10, 8, 8.1, 7, Vista, and XP.
Well, there you have it! That’s it for 2020!
What do you want to hear about in 2021! Comment below!
Featured Photo Courtesy of Hamann La
