Technology is Hard- Editing Photos Edition

Here you are, friends. The Editing Photos Edition of Technology is Hard- A Blog.

Photo editing should be simple, shouldn't it? I mean, really. It should. We all have iPhones with cameras on them. We all have the Nikon cool pix that Ashton Kutcher whips out of his back pocket all the time just like in the commercials...or the Canon Digital Elph. We just want to take pictures with our friends, and post them on the internet like normal people.

If you're smart, this is easy for you.

If you're on Team Technology-Inept like myself, then you struggle using Instagram. (Seriously though, it doesn't make sense and I can't post anything. How do you even get to all the filters???) So when I was told we would be editing our own photos, needless to say I was concerned.

"But it's easy!" Yeah, and I'm here to say it's not. We were directed to all of these great FREE online photo editing websites, like http://www.sumopaint.com/home or http://www.pixlr.com or http://www.photoshop.com/. Or we can download free things like:

• Java Image Editor (free) (Windows & Mac)
  • Download from this site. (http://www.jhlabs.com/ie/)
• GIMP (free) (Windows & Mac)
  • Download from this site. (http://www.gimp.org/)
• ImageJ (free) (Windows & Mac)
  • Download from this site. (http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/)
• Picasa (free) (Windows & Mac)
• Download from this site. (http://picasa.google.com/

And I felt reassured. I don't have to spend 8 million dollars on anything made by Adobe. Life will be good. I'll use it this one time and go back to tagging myself in other people's pictures that aren't even of me, because I can't upload my own. No problem.

Except there was a big problem.

The assignment is to resize a photo, and then put different filters on it. Easy enough. Until I tried it. Can I just say that I NEVER did figure out how to resize a photo correctly in pixlr? Actually I never got it. I kept uploading these large photos that suddenly became incredibly normal sized once I put them in the program (were they doing that on purpose? because I wasn't...). And then I would crop them to become even more normal sized. But I didn't want to crop the photo, I wanted them to HAVE LESS PIXELS. I still want to see this lady's face, I mean, I can't cut her out, I just also can't have her taking up the whole screen.

I googled.

I was told to use "free transform" or something. (Whatever that means) So I did, and magically the picture became smaller. Until I uploaded it, and the lady was indeed smaller, but which a giant, white, rectangular border around where the rest of the photo had been.

WTF!!

So I tried a different program. Sumopaint. I upload my photo, and am magically and easily able to resize the image, no problem. Even a person on Team Technology-Inept was able to do it. And then I start looking at the filters. Cool! Lot's of weird effects, 3D...all sorts of nonsense I can't actually justify doing to a photo (and we do have to justify it on the webpage with some sort of meaningful and artistic reason for the choice we made) and I realize....there's no black and white.

Really? 

I just need a "make photo black and white" button like on my Canon. There's even a button for Sepia!!! But not here. And all of the free options don't make black and white photos, at least not that I can tell, although again I really know nothing here...

So now we're off to try a DIFFERENT program. Two down, one to go. This is madness. 

When I find the perfect one- I'll let you all know!

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Editor's Note: I figured it out! I didn't end up using a different program, because to make something black and white, you click "desaturate." And I NEVER would have thought of that.

The key to all technology? If it doesn't work, you haven't clicked enough buttons yet.