Friday, April 5, 2013

PicMonkey Chrome Extension - Easy Photo Editing

Google Chrome Browser has many handy extensions.  One that I recently came across and have really enjoyed is the PicMonkey extension.  I like to use the PicMonkey site for quick photo editing. No account setup needed, just pull your photo in, edit, and then save back to your computer.  
A Little On Extensions and How to Find Them:                                 You can find extensions in the Chrome Web Store, which can be found on your apps page of home screen when using Chrome in a few places.  As you can see on the right, I have the Web Store on the main page, as well as the ability to access it in the lower right hand corner of the screen.   When extensions are added to your Chrome Browser, you can find them as small icons at the end of your address bar (see upper right hand corner of image).  

Once in the Chrome Web Store you can search the store by categories, by name (if you know what you want), as well as filtering by either app or extension.  Apps essentially are quick shortcuts that take you straight to a certain site, where as extensions are tools that you can utilize while on any page.  
Once you find the extension you are searching for, tap the button "Add to Chrome" and it will install the Extension for you.                                  

Now Back to the PicMonkey Extension

When on a page that contains photos (below I'm on Google Images), I can click on the extension icon at the top right.  It will then generate a drop down of all the images on that page.  By clicking on the small image in the drop down, I am then immediately taken to the PicMonkey website with that image already loaded ready to edit.  

As you can see in the image below, the workspace in PicMonkey has a lot of great options.  Quickly rotate or crop, add text or stickers, frames, adjust brightness...






As always, make sure that you are using photos correctly, following copyright and fair use guidelines.  In Google Images advanced settings, you can adjust the filtering to all for only "free to use or share".  We have a post on where to find this option "Free Image Search with Google".