My interest in Smart Photo Editor (SPE) began a number of years ago when I installed the free download and discovered the incredible potential to use the program creatively to make Photo-Art.

Below is an example of my photo-art – here a quite ordinary photograph has been converted into an artwork in a few minutes using only Smart Photo Editor.

Although the program is extremely capable for mainstream photo editing, I noted the intention of Anthropics, the company behind SPE, to allow users to create, modify, combine and develop effects that could be used freely within the SPE Community. I was ‘hooked’ – right away I purchased the software and waited for each update with great anticipation, hoping that the next one would open up the Effect Editor to users. Ultimately, when this update arrived, I set about learning all I could about creating effects for myself and contributing them to the community. Most of my effects were, in the early days, designed around the application of textures to photographic images, but as I developed my expertise the range of effect types increased. I’ve tried to encourage others (via the SPE Forum) to create effects themselves and  to share them with the SPE Community. Today, I am the leading effects creator for SPE, but I am delighted to tell you that coming behind are many users who are creating and sharing some incredible effects too. Originally, most of the effects were developed by the program team members, and by manually editing their effects, much was to be learned by users, including myself.

It is my intention to use this new Blog to share my experience by offering an insight into how I use SPE to make Photo-Art. Although I’m an independent user, this Blog is hosted by Anthropics on their Smart Photo Editor Website.

Happily I accepted an invitation to share my knowledge through this means. My philosophy has always been to share with others, so it was a delight when I realised that SPE was  (and is) a community powered photo editing program.

I am well known to Anthropics and have created tutorial videos on their behalf, but, as I said,  I’m just an ordinary user – albeit, with a bit of time on his hands, as I’m 66 years old and long since retired. My background is in engineering, wood-crafts and sculpture and for many years I was engaged in Management Education with Colleges, Industry & Commerce. I was a Senior Lecturer in Management & Management Consultant. However, all through my life I would have preferred to follow a more artistic path. I retired in1998 owing to ill-health and for many years unable to engage in much physical activity. About 10 years ago, I had a heart-pacemaker implant and since then I have been more active. After the implant I studied full-time and gained a Scottish Higher National Certificate in Art & Design with Distinctions. Today, a spinal condition prohibits me from being a traditional artist, so I was overjoyed when I stumbled upon Smart Photo Editor as it facilitated my creativity.

The content of this blog assumes that readers are familiar with the basics of SPE – that they can load an image and apply effects to it.

If you are not at this stage, then perhaps this video tutorial will be of help: Smart Photo Editor – Getting Started.

Check the Smart Photo Editor Forum for more tutorial videos.

Note: The effects applied in combination to create the above abstract image were ‘Intermingle 002′, ‘Vibrance’. ‘Nuances 006′, ‘Watercolor vectors’ and ‘Nuances 006′ again.

There are some great debates happening on the Forum and I will tap into some of these in future blogs.

In the meantime, I hope you have enjoyed this Introduction and I look forward to sharing my experience through text, ‘before & after’ images, SPE screen shots and tutorial videos as well as offering you links to helpful resources.

I would like to add my personal thanks to all the contributors that I have learned from and also thank Anthropics for giving me this opportunity to share my skills through this blog.

Regards,

Andrew