View and Alter Photos for Free with PhotoFiltre

I get a kick out of making cards and things on the computer. But it isn't always easy to find free photo manipulating tools online. PhotoFiltre is a free, easy to use photo manipulation tool that can be used to do all kinds of things for cards, gifts and entertainment.

PhotoFiltre is a Windows based tool that can be found on line by typing in your favorite search engine "photofiltre."

As I've mentioned in other articles, I'm a big fan of www.snapfiles.com. So, when I search for photofiltre, I look for the snapfiles site, and download from there, and go through the installation procedure.

Now that you have PhotoFiltre, let's set your default photo viewer as PhotoFiltre. Browse to one of your saved photo's, usually a file that ends with .jpg, or .png, or .bmp. Once you've found the file, right click it and select "Open with…" then "Choose Program." This will give you a little pop up window that allows you to pick a program that you want to open these types of files with.

Select PhotoFiltre, then check the little box in the bottom left of the pop up window that indicates you want to do this will all jpg files from now on. Of course, if you ever want to change it back, just repeat this process and change it back.

Now that you have PhotoFiltre set as your default viewer, allow me to walk you through the process of manipulating photos.

For this example, I'm going to use a picture that I made for my boys.

I did a search for old cartoon sketches of action heroes. I came up with two great sketches, one of Shazam and one of Aqua Man.

After finding each picture, I right clicked it on the internet site, then opened PhotoFiltre. With PhotoFiltre open, I click on "Edit," then "Paste as new image." In this case, once the new image had been created, I went to Filter>Color>Grayscale. I did this because I wanted each photo to have a drawn effect. At this point I would save the photo wherever I wanted, just to be safe. If I felt like any other darkening or adjusting needed to be done, I would open "Adjust" then change the hue or darken as I saw fit. Then save the image again.

At this point I have two pictures, one of Shazam and one of Aqua Man, all cleaned up and set how I want them.

Now I needed pictures of my boys. If I didn't already have a picture, I would just take a digital, then save the jpg image. Since I already had a picture of each of them I just started from there.

Now that I have PhotoFiltre as the default viewer, I would simply double click on each picture. To give them a more sketched effect, I would grayscale them as demonstrated above and lighten or darken them as needed, also mentioned above. If I wanted to go one step further, I could actually give them the effect of being drawn by going to Filter>Artistic>Black pencil. However, in this case I wanted to have somewhat of a photo effect on each face, so I did not filter them further. But, if you want to, play around with various filters and see what effects you can create. Then I saved each of these pictures, just to be safe.

Now comes the time to alter Shazam. I would open up that picture then, while PhotoFiltre is still open, go to File>Open and pick the photo of one of my boys. This gives me two photos open. I click on the photo of my boy and use the selection tool of a lasso (Selection>Set shape>Lasso) and outline just his head. Once that is complete, I right click it and copy. Then I click on the picture of Shazam and right click paste. I then move my sons head over Shazam's head. To make everything perfect, I clicked on the little paintbrush tool on the right hand side and added lines as necessary to smooth everything out. Then I save the picture as something new.

I now needed to do this for my other son. I repeated the same process using Aqua Man and the copy of my other son's head, creating and saving a new picture.

I wanted all of this on one picture, so now I reopened the first Shazam'ed son's image. I needed to make the image canvas wider, so I went to Image>Canvas Size. I then adjusted the width of the canvas of the picture.

Then I open the image of the Aqua Man'ed son. I click edit>copy, then click on the other son's picture, then right click paste. I move the second son's image in the correct spot for the finished picture. I then save it under a new name.

I know this seems like a lot, written out, but it only takes a little time, unless you are overly picky about the art like me. Also it may seem like I now have a lot of extra pictures in trying to achieve that finished product. This is just easier for me to keep organized; I can always delete pictures later. But, if this isn't how you would do it, then please feel free to open all of these pictures up in PhotoFiltre as you manipulate them.

My sons really enjoyed the super-hero picture and it was fun for me to make it. I'm sure that you can use PhotoFiltre to create all kinds of fun photo manipulated images on your own.