It was while ago now that we first talked to you about a new feature we were planning on starting called I Heart My Edit. But today we are here with the first ever I Heart My Edit; a feature which we hope will see some of our lovely readers getting involved and showing off what they can do.

So what is I Heart My Edit? It is basically a chance to learn about how people have managed to achieve certain affects with their photo editing. We are providing an original photograph and then asking people to edit it however they would like and simply let us know what they did.

This week, it’s our first time. So the I Heart Snapping team are editing this time. But next time it could be you. We were really impressed with all the people offering to take part when we first mentioned I Heart My Edit, rest assured your details are all safely in a spreadsheet and we WILL be getting in contact.

So without further ado, there is the first I Heart My Edit…

Original Image

A daisy photo taken on a Nikon D5000 with an 18-55 lens with macro filter.

Katie’s Edit

I basically used idarkroom app and added the cross process filter.  This made it really green so I wanted to dull it down a little.  I used the Photoshop Express App to slightly adjust the contrast (to make it look more dream like).  Finally I added a white border to bring out the vibrant colour of the petals.

Lucy’s Edit

I used Camera+ first of all to crop the image so that it obeyed the rule of thirds a bit more, and I applied the clarity scene filter. I then used BeFunky to edit it further, by using the vibrance filter and I added the grunge1 border to it to frame it and finish it off.

We both went for phone apps to edit with, just to prove that you don’t need fancy expensive editing software to make your images look lovely.

If you haven’t already been in touch with us and you want to be involved, then let us know.

The next free photo editing tool we want to tell you about is Be Funky.  For those of you who haven’t heard of it, this editor comes both as an app and also as a free online editor too.  I think both tools are good, but the online editor ever so slightly gets my vote.

Like most of the other editors we have discussed, Be Funky is really easy to use.  In fact in my opinion, it could be the easiest.  What you see is what you get, and what you get is rather nice as well.

This is just a really quick overview of what Be Funky can do, but no doubt we will explain more about it over the coming months.  I really like the software- it is very clean and easy to use, and does have a lot of really artistic filters and effects.  There are other things that you can do, like add speech bubbles or clipart which I personally wouldn’t use, but they would be very useful for some.  If you like adding filters to your photos it is definitely worth a look as it has some really great ones and I love the fact that you can choose to paint only parts of the picture with the effect- it makes for some really interesting and varied photos.

I could play for hours on Be Funky, so if you like photo effects then I would definitely head over to their site and take a look.