Ever wondered how to make the best use of your cherished photographs in your home? Technology today affects every aspect of human lives, and photography is not an exception. Now, using photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop and Picasa, you can digitally add effects that can instantly turn your photos into gorgeous works of art.

Artworks mounted on canvas are classic within the interior design communityBecause of their elegant and attractive nature, they never go out of style. Commissioned classical artworks, however, can be very expensive.Photographs mounted on canvas are a great alternative to this. Not only do photos on canvas give the same look and feel of a commissioned artwork, they easily brighten up any living space and bring a burst of colour and life in to the room.

With just a few clicks of the mouse, you can turn your own photographs into your own masterpieces. Photoshop’s various filters can spark anyone’s creativity. You can render your photographs to look like traditional artworks. Other things you can do are adding textures to your photos, playing with your photos’ colours and saturation, have it distorted and even transform it into an abstract art.

Artistic Effects. Your photos can be made to look as if it has been painted in water colour or in oil paint. You can even convert them into a coloured pencil drawing and charcoal sketches. You can control the resulting effects by adjusting the various options such as brush strokes length and strength, the amount of light and shadows, and even paper brightness.

Distortion. Distortion effects include ‘diffuse glow’, ‘glass’ and ‘ocean ripple’. Diffuse glow gives your photographs a fog-like effect. You can edit the amount of graininess and glow to your preference. To make your photos look as if you’re looking at it through a glass panel or even through an ice block use the ‘glass’ filter.Ocean ripple creates an ocean-like surface on your photograph.

Textures. Textures allow your photographs to look as if it had been printed into various textiles.Such textile includes craquelure, grain, mosaic tiles, patchwork, texturizer, and stained glass.

Colour. You can edit your photos’ colours through the many options available. Play with your photos’ hue and saturation, render them as a classic black and white picture using the desaturate option, or transform them into pop art by using colour variations. Apply a sepia tone on your photos if you want to achieve an antiquated feel.

Blurring. You can easily change the depth of field of your picture by playing with the various blurring and smudging tools on most photo editing software. Solid lines of your subject’s features can be softened through the use of different blur filters, such as ‘radial blur’, which gives a hazy circular blur on your photo and ‘motion blur’, which gives off movement effects.

By experimenting with various effects and filters, you can come up with an artwork worthy to be mounted on canvas and displayed for everyone to enjoy. What’s more, your beautiful stretched  canvas art print can not only be used to decorate your walls, but it can also be a wonderful gift to family and friends.