Poke a Pic

In this swap you will email your partner two files: a photograph you took as it is right out of the camera, and the same photograph once you've done some tweaking (post-processing) to make it look great.

The photograph can be of anything - a self-portrait, a picture of your kids or pet, a landscape, a closeup of something interesting, a flower, whatever. If it needs to be rotated, go ahead and rotate it (to make before-after comparison easier) but otherwise your "before" image should not have any changes.

Your "after" photo can be as simple or as elaborate as you like. Beginners are totally welcome here. If you've never cropped a photo and played with the brightness and contrast, just do that. If you've only ever done that, try playing with levels and curves or some cool effects. And if you want to go all out with filters and texture and vignetting and so on, go right ahead.

Your email should describe what you did to the photo, as well as a little bit about what it's a picture of or why you like it.

Replying to the email with comments and/or suggestions is a great idea, but not required.

Some free resources:

Picasa is a free photo-management software from google. It lets you do basic edits (and some advanced ones, actually) and it's very easy to figure out.

If you have no idea where to start, these are my default edits in Picasa for most pictures:
1) Use the Straighten tool if it isn't straight
2) use the Red Eye tool if there's red-eye
3) Crop the picture (keeping the Rule of Thirds in mind)
4)Click on the Tuning tab. Drag the Fill Light slider over a bit - maybe half a centimeter to start with. Drag the Highlights slider about twice as far, then drag the Shadows slider until it looks cool.

iPiccy is an online editor - this way there's nothing to install! It's a pretty good one, too. It can do all the basic edits listed above, or you can play with levels and curve for some more control, and you can also add all sorts of effects and come up with something really remarkable.

I really like these explanations of what to do with Levels and Curves. You can edit levels and curves in iPiccy or in Gimp, but I don't think Picasa has that option

And there's Gimp for those of you feeling brave (or experienced) It's also free and it can do quite a lot. It can do even more if you install a few scripts. I'm still learning to use it, but it's a lot of fun. Most of what I've learned I've picked up from iffles.com

Those are the only programs I really use - if you have helpful links and/or other program suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.

Please do not use instagram or other apps that do all the thinking for you. That rather defeats the purpose of the swap.

Please remember that uploading the photos you receive to flickr or facebook or your blog or anywhere else on the internet without permission is possibly stealing and certainly a very rude thing to do. So if you want to post it anywhere, make sure you ask first!

As for swapping guidelines, you must have at least a 4.85 rating. Newbies are welcome if their profile is well filled out. No unresolved ones or threes, and if I have any reason to think you might flake or might not rate promptly I will ban you.

Recap: send your partner an email with a photo you took, and the same photo once you've played with it to make it look better. The playing with it can be as simple or as elaborate as you like. Describe what you did, and say a little about the photo itself. Have fun!