Friday, April 21, 2017

Graphic design and editing tool for bloggers

Graphic design is such a great tool, specially for bloggers, to help them convey their story with pictures and words. There is something about magazines that pull our attention - especially visual ones. It has photographs, some texts, colors and layout and of course the write up. A blog is really like an e-magazine, well almost. Each post is like an article.
 
I'm not a graphic designer and even though I have a sense of color as I am a photographer, I do not have the skills a graphic designer would have. To have pre-made templates, it makes my work much easier. I don't have to pick the design, colors, placement of text, font size, what font, font color, placement of font. And if I am in the mood of really experimenting, I can make my own designs. The advantages are the various fonts, colors of fonts, background paper/texture, clip art, templates, it really makes endless opportunities for creating.
 
A few week ago, I got an email from Fotojet.com, inviting me to test and review their web based app for graphic design, photo collage and photo editing. In order for me to test and review, they had to sign me up for a free premium membership. I have always believed in full disclosure to my readers, this is not a paid post, however I did get free premium membership, so that I can use all the features and  give you guys an honest review - technically I am not sure if this is a  #sponsored post. I am not a huge fan of review/sponsored posts, as you guys have seen, however this is a tool that is so useful, that I buckled and shared.  I did not receive any additional compensation in exchange for this post. All opinions are mine, as always.
 
 
Graphic designing  and editing tool for bloggers

Graphic designing  and editing tool for bloggers

 

Graphic designing  and editing tool for bloggers
In the image above I have used a textured background complimenting the colors of the photograph, to give it a pleasing dainty look. I did not change the font size, placement or color. I could do that and pick a different font, but most times I have seen the premade font really works, especially if they have multiple words with different fonts.
 
You can choose many layouts and change color, add text, delete parts of the design. I loved the clipart section, it is categorized, so it's an easy search.
 

I could technically do this with other photo editing tools, for that I would need a collection of different wallpapers, fonts and clip art.
 
The advantage of fotojet is the size you can save as large as 2480px X 3508px (landscape) the resolution is for web (72pixel/inch), I wish they could give us option to save high resolution, but then uploading the image and working and then saving a huge file like that - it does not seem practical. I have not seen any other web tool (yet) that will let you save highres. So great for web use, but not so great if you want to get it printed.
 
 
Graphic designing  and editing tool for bloggers
Graphic designing  and editing tool for bloggers
I love collages, as you can narrate a nice visual story or a visual description. To tell my readers that basmati is my favorite rice, because it has long sexy grains, is aromatic and cooks to perfection I can use words or make a collage with words. I fell in love with that wall paper.... I'm sure you will see a lot of it, in the coming posts.
 
Now we come to photo-editing, I am old school and for me it's  shoot the images in raw and process them with Adobe Photo-shop. I am really skeptical about tools that promise to do everything, but if I am doing a review, I need to consider every aspect of the product. I think for a beginner in photography or for a blogger who is not into professional photography, this is a good tool. You have a lot of pre made actions and filters that you can use that can change the feel of the image, example below, as you can see the image was transformed into a dreamy rose. I was quite surprised and impressed when I saw the options. However, remember these are all low resolution images for web. Great for blogging, social media shares. I will still hold myself from using it for editing, but it is definitely has a lot of cool actions and filters.
 
Graphic designing  and editing tool for bloggers
Left image edited with fotojet
I think I have covered the basic features that this online tool provides, you should go and discover for yourself all that I  have left unsaid. The one thing I did not like as much was it does not save your uploaded images (to the site), I'm sure in time they will provide this feature. The feature I really liked was you can pick the file you can download to,  on your computer, unlike a lot of tools where it is automatically saved to downloads. I use a windows machine, I'm sure Mac is no different.
 
I hope this is useful for you guys as I get a lot of questions about text on images, basic editing software for photos and magazine layouts. Almost forgot, you have premade templates for social media... great tool specially for Pinterest and Instagram and social media headers for  bloggers and social media users.
  
You do not need a degree in computer science on how to use it, very user friendly. I know you guys will love me for this post, that is why I agreed to do this review, even though I was in two minds. Any questions just email me or leave your question in comments.
 
Have a fabulous weekend.
 
 
Graphic designing  and editing tool for bloggers
 
Graphic designing  and editing tool for bloggers

All Photographs used in this post are a copyright of Simi Jois.

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