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.

We are absolutely loving writing I Heart Snapping for you guys. We hope you’re finding the tutorials useful, the reviews helpful and that you are generally feeling inspired to take better pictures and to make your blogs more brilliant and more gorgeous than they already were.

But now it’s your turn. We are looking for some of our lovely readers to get involved with a new Monday feature. This will be your chance to feature your skills on the pages of I Heart Snapping and show off what you can do.

Each week three different bloggers who decide to join in, will be emailed a photograph. This photograph could be of anything, but it will be unedited. The challenge for those three bloggers is to edit the photo, anyway they like, using whatever software or apps that they like. Then email back the finished article explaining how they did what they did. Every Monday we will share the original image and then the three different takes on it and how they were achieved.

You don’t need to be a photo editing whizz to take part. In fact we’d love to showcase all sorts of different people’s styles and ideas. And don’t feel like you would have to do something completely amazing and outstanding and complex. We want instructions that other people can follow, so that our readers can learn from you.

Next week your I Heart Snapping team will be doing the first ever I Heart My Edit so that we can hopefully give you an idea of what we’re after. So if you want to wait and see what it’s all about, then check back on Monday for the post.

If you would like to be involved then let us know and we’ll be in touch. You can simply leave a comment on this post and we’ll use the email address you leave to get in contact. You can DM us via twitter letting us know your email address. Or you can let us know via our Facebook page (which is very new and feeling a bit lonely so come across and like us!)

Carrying on with our series of iphoneography apps that we just love, the next on our list is Pixl-o-Matic.  Made by the people behind the photo editing app Pixlr (more on that in another post) Pixl-o-Matic is a little gem that makes your iPhone photos great.  You can even use the app online as well, making it a hugely versatile package whatever your photo editing requirements.

The main thing to mention about Pixl-o-Matic is the filters.  There is a huge range to choose from, here are some of our favourites…

These are just from the free version, if you want to pay 69p you get lots more choice.

There is also a really large selection of light effects, they really can add a different dimension to your photos.  Here are just some of them.

There is also a large selection of frames, which again are useful if you like using them for your posts.  Like other app’s there is a random button you can press which does some really different edits that you might not necessarily think of yourself.

Pixlr-o-matic is in my top five app’s that I use for iPhoneography so it is well worth a look- the free one is amazing so I am sure that the paid one is even better and at only 69p it is so much cheaper than most of the other photography app’s out there. I think my favourite part of the app is the fact that there is such a large range of light effects and filters- there are some that are really different than the other app’s out there.

I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for an app that does a huge amount of filters and effects- it doesn’t have the functions like crop or basic editing- but I don’t think that lets it down as the app’s main selling point is the wide range of effects- and it does that side really well.

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.