Perfecting Effects on Paint.net - Similar on Photoshop as well

I'd be covering all the important effects that you're going to need to perfect Paint.net in this post. It's just going to be a series of different pictures showing you what each effect does. So, rather than wasting time let's begin:

Re-sizing images:

The first thing I did was opened a new tab and went to Pixabay.com and searched for a picture of a flame - Here's the link to the Picture.

However, I've not added the original picture below, instead I've re-sized it to fit the blog well and I've chosen to make them all squares which are 400X400.

Here's what you do:

Open Paint.net and go to File>Open (Pick out the file you wish to open).

OR

Right click on a image and say Open with > Paint.net

Now that you've got the image open, the next thing you would need to do is re-size the image.

Go to: Image > Resize

This is what you'd see:

I've made this small else it's going into the sidebar

5 Ways Brands Utilize Instagram to Increase Engagement - A Guest Post

Since we’re focusing on increasing your traffic using effective photos, this guest post by Steve would be a great addition to the series. Take a look at how you could use Pictures to increase visitor engagement on your website.

If you are a regular internet user, you must have come across or at least heard about the popular photo tool known as Instagram. It is a smartphone app that makes it possible for users to incorporate visual effects to their photographs, before sharing them with their friends and followers on the various social media websites.

In recent times, Instagram has proven to be an effective tool for engaging and conducting business.

This is because it has an incredible digital PR potential, which helps in giving your business the much needed exposure. The following are five of the most significant ways brands and other businesses in general can utilize the Instagram app to boost their engagements:

Photo Contests

One of the most excellent ways brands can make use of Instagram is by setting up photo contests, and encouraging users to participate in them. Since the app is very simple to use and millions of people across the globe have access to it, there is always a great chance that a good number of people will show interest in participating in your photo contest. 

To heighten their interest further, promise to offer attractive rewards for the winning contestants. Such competitions greatly assist in giving your brand better coverage, especially if you are able to attract a huge number of participants to the competition and they share their photos on various social media pages.

Brand Marketing

Business enterprises can also make use of Instagram photographs for the purposes of marketing their brands. For instance, apart from seeking the services of a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to make certain that your brand can be seen and ranks as high as possible in search engine results such as Google, a business enterprise could also spice up their marketing campaigns by posting and sharing attractive Instagram photographs of the products they are trying to promote. 

Made for Pinterest Pics - Getting Started

As promised, here's the very first post of the series: Made for Pinterest Pics, it's not going to be an overwhelming post as that's the last thing you need when you're just beginning. This article on Enhancing Photos for beginners explains how you could add life to dull pics using any software at hand. Once you've checked that out you'd be interested in modifying them even more - this post will help you accomplish that:

By now, I hope you've got yourself Paint.net or just about any other Photo Editing software.

If you haven't, then I suggest you read this post about the top Photo Editing software's for beginners.

The very first time I came across Paint.net was through a friend on Wizzley, she suggested it and I'm really glad I went ahead and began the download - it's Awesome! (For beginners at least).

Some time next week, I'll be giving Photoshop a try - it seems much easier now that I'm familiar with Paint.net



So, where should we begin? 

Oh yes! I almost forgot, let's get the necessary Plugins first:

I've got just one of the many installed and there's a reason I have just one, that's because it's the only one you'd need - The Grim Color Reaper! (Click here to download it)

Using Grim Color Reaper for Paint.net

What does the Grim Color Reaper do? That's definitely the question you have in mind; so, as the first step in this tutorial, let's see when and how you could use it:

Blogging Tips - Use Pictures to boost your traffic

If you're a blogger, one of the first questions that you'd want an answer to is - 'How do I increase traffic to my blog?'. If you want the usual answers of back linking and social networking you've come to the wrong place. One thing I can tell you - I'm relatively new to blogging; but, the technique I use for HubPages does seem to work there and I'm sure it would work here as well.

If you're ready to learn - Check out this Post (It's the first in its series)

Made for Pinterest Image

One of the best ways to give your traffic a boost is by creating unique pictures for each post. It's definitely going to be time consuming at the very beginning. But, once you get the hang of it, it would be  a smooth journey. However, considering the amount of long term traffic that you could get by doing this, I'd say it's definitely worth the extra effort.

Before going further into this discussion, I'd like to thank Wrylilt for bringing this up through the humongous Pinterest shares that she'd received and continues to receive. That surely made me think about it and I went back to check on some of my Hubs and viola - they had 30+ Pinterest shares! That's without me even making my own pics (They had some crazy illustrations). So, that's when I began creating special images which are popularly known as - 'Made for Pinterest Images'.

Best Free Photo Editing Software for Beginners - Create amazing Pics that people Share!

My Illustration of Paint.net - Get Caught in it's web!

Have you always wanted to give Photo Editing a shot? Whether you're just modifying your personal pics or trying to create some amazing ones to share online through your website, you're going to need a superb photo editing software.

I'm relatively new to this field myself; however, a friend on mine on Wizzley suggested Paint.net and I gave it a try (After trying Photoshop and giving up a few months prior to this software, I never thought that I'd give it another shot). However, this particular software was much easier to use and now thanks to it I can at least move around in Photoshop comfortably.

So, if you ask me which is the best Photo Editing Software for beginners, I'd certainly say - Paint.net! It's absolutely free and if you want to download it - Go to their website. The site doesn't look professional at all, but the software sure is.

If you're not happy with this choice, there are plenty of other alternatives, so let's take a look at some of the Best Photo Editing Software for beginners (Which I've tried out):

• Paint.net
• Gimp
• Photoscape and 
• Photo Toolbox

If at all you've come across any other Photo Editing software for beginners, leave a comment as I'd love to add to this list. 

If at all you're looking for top notch and professional looking pictures, there's no alternative to Photoshop as the depth of each feature as well as the number of features cannot be listed out.

So, go along and download your software, because the next post the tutorials are going to begin. I'll be using Paint.net to explain how I create my Images - the one above took me just 3 minutes to complete: Pixabay + Paint.net = Amazing pics