Thursday, April 3, 2014

Week 13: Free Apps

My task was to review two free apps. I chose PicMonkey and Google Drive.

As a Google Drive, formerly Google Docs, user I figured I could just tell about how my family has used Drive to plan many events from graduation parties, to trips, to college scheduling. We also have a little thing for spreadsheets. We use them for everything. This morning I downloaded Drive onto my iPad so I could work on an assignment that I had started on Drive on my laptop. It is wonderful! I am able to pull up my documents to work on them anywhere. Sharing on Drive is very easy and you can set a document to allow people to just view it or to edit it. Recently Drive added add-ons. You can now get Avery Label manager, Lucid Chart, and VerbTab Music Notation, just to name a few.

I have always enjoyed playing around with picture editing software. I don't like to spend a lot on it, I just want something to fix blemishes and red-eye. PicMonkey does that and more. I was able to brighten up some pictures, use some special effects, even add fangs to some of my families photos. Something I have never used before was make-up effects. The blush effect was nice, but adding lipstick is going to take some practice. My pictures looked like a toddler on espresso applied my lipstick. The collage feature is fun and easy to use as well. But there is so much more! If you want to design a cover photo for your Facebook page, there is a tool to do that! No more stretching photos odd ways. This app does it for you.