Old dogs and new tricks

Snagged from Pixelmator

I got an email from Picnik this week, letting me know that it is being discontinued. Picnik is the editing tool I've been using ever since I began writing my blogs to make headers and to add text, show two side-by-side pictures, and whatnot. It's actually not going completely away, but it's moving some of its most popular features to Google+. Now, I'm a member of Google+ but am still not sure I truly want to get involved in yet another social networking site. My friends who post over there keep me entertained when I visit it, but Facebook is just about all I can handle after keeping up with the blogs I follow (almost a hundred), which are way more interesting to me because of their variety and immediacy. I might end up feeling differently about Google+ in a while, but for now I was sorry to hear that Picnik is leaving me in April.

And just by chance, my friend Al mentioned (during Thursday's hike) that he recently bought Pixelmator, a Mac photo editing tool, and was having fun with it. So I of course went to the Apple app store and took a look. Since Picnik is returning the annual $25 I pay for a pro account, and when I saw that this app costs $30, I bought it. The first attempt I've made with it is the new header on this blog. I don't yet know how to make a nice border, but I wasn't unhappy with my first attempt. It helped that years and years ago I learned (I'm using that term loosely) how to use PhotoShop. I took a beginning class with my very capable assistant, Ann.

It was a two-day-long introduction to what you could do with PhotoShop. In some ways, Pixelmator is similar, using layers and tools to cut out pictures and slap them onto others, such as the above picture. Fortunately, Pixelmator has plenty of tutorials for me to watch over and over until I can duplicate the sample pictures. I woke up in the middle of the night and remembered a trick I had learned years ago. While I struggled with PhotoShop, Ann took to it like a duck to water. This meant I didn't have to get proficient myself, just ask HER to create what I needed. She was so creative that she kept the entire office agog with her work. I ended up having to take another beginning class a few years later, because she moved on to another position and I no longer had her to hold my hand.

But now it's years later and I'm having to teach myself some new tricks. I knew quite a bit of theory but I didn't have much hands-on experience with photo editing. Picnik knew just what I wanted to do and made it possible to work within their framework. Now, if I can just get proficient with this program, I might actually come up with some new and creative ideas myself. I'm hoping so, anyway.

This morning the Oscar nominations came out, and I was happy to see that Judy and I have seen all but two of the nine movies that were nominated. Tomorrow we will go to see "War Horse" and later "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." Judy reminded me today that Meryl Streep has now been nominated 17 times for an Oscar, but she hasn't won since 1982 (for Sophie's Choice). I do hope she will win this time. I haven't yet seen Michelle Williams in "Marilyn," but I cannot see how she could have been better than Meryl. But then again, I'm really rooting for Meryl to win. What do you think?
:-)