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When Alexey Ivanov and his future wife, Marina Kiseleva, were dating, she gave him a memorable gift: a photograph of himself that looked as if it were hanging in the Tate Modern in London.
To create the image, she used a simple photo-editing program. And it gave the couple the idea for their Web site, Photofunia.com, which allows users to upload a photograph, select an image from dozens of templates showing a scene, and then merge the two photographs. It is just one of many Web sites for enhancing photographs that are becoming easier than ever to use.
The Web sites cater to novices, unlike sophisticated software packages like Photoshop, making it possible to create a greeting card, make photo collages, design new images for a Web site and tweak personal photographs without doing much more than clicking a button.
Some sites, like Photofunia, which is based in Ukraine, merge or mash up images. Others are aimed at transforming pictures to look as if they come from another time or place. Some sites have a more commercial aspect, selling products like lipstick by letting you try it by painting a virtual copy of the makeup on a photo of yourself.
Photofunia contains dozens of templates — of art galleries, urban scenes and locations like the Sphinx in Egypt. For example, users can put a picture of themselves into a scene from Times Square so that it looks as if the user’s image is on a billboard. The site also has tools to digitally detect a person’s face, extract it from a picture and graft it onto the head and body of another image, like Santa Claus or the Mona Lisa.
A similar site, based in Russia, is Photo505.com. It offers a wide array of templates, and can place a face in a wanted poster or the cover of a magazine like Cosmopolitan.
“We experiment and realize every idea we have in mind,” said the site’s founder, Vasily Giharev. “Even the most insane ones.”
Mr. Giharev said he was inspired to create the site after seeing the film “Forrest Gump,” which sliced film of the actor Tom Hanks into historical images from the 1960s, making it seem as if the character was present at the important events of that era.
Other sites — like Aviary.com, Pixlr.com, Splashup.com, and Citrify.com — are competing to offer simple tools for cropping an image, fixing red eye or making other tweaks to an image.
“The typical user is not a professional, but a step below, a beginner,” said Ola Sevandersson, the Stockholm-based founder of Pixlr.
While Pixlr itself is meant to be easy to use, Mr. Sevandersson also created an even simpler version that does most of the work with the push of a button.
Pixlr includes another feature that allows users to modify the colors in a photo. For example, effects named Melissa, Sophie or Tony (to make them easier to remember) will mute colors and change the focus to imitate the film and lenses commonly used in different eras. The vintage ’60s effect, for instance, amplifies the red tones and mutes the blues, effectively producing more yellows and purples, and imitating the way that films and photographic paper of that time reproduced light from the scene.
Other sites take photo editing into different realms. Taaz.com, for instance, allows people to test various colors of makeup.
“Our main positioning is not as a photo modification site,” said Deepu John, vice president of marketing at Taaz, which is based in San Diego. “It’s a site where women can try on thousands of different makeup colors on themselves.”
Users upload a photo of themselves and can then modify it by trying on foundation, lip gloss, blush and other cosmetics. Cosmetic companies pay fees to the company to include their products. Making the images look realistic was a challenge for the company’s software designers, Mr. John said. “We have to focus on light interacting with surface. That’s part of the key to realism.”
The makeup test is licensed by Taaz to other Web sites like People.com and Esteelauder.com.
Mr. John said more than a quarter of a billion tests of makeup products were performed each month on all the sites.
Yet another site is Bighugelabs.com, where users create badges, jigsaw puzzles and art work meant to emulate the styles of Andy Warhol or David Hockney. John Watson, the site’s founder, said it had almost a half million registered users.
The most popular service, he said, produces images that imitate a popular line of black-matted, motivational posters often found in office hallways. The site matches a picture with a caption and produces an image with the correct typeface. Many of the people visit the site to produce posters that are sarcastic, not inspirational.
“I think most people can be creative but not everyone is going to learn to play guitar,” Mr. Watson said. “But there are other ways for people to be creative. You can give them tools that allow themselves to express themselves in ways they couldn’t before.”
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當(dāng)阿里克謝.伊萬諾夫和他的未婚妻瑪麗娜約會時，她給了他一個難忘的禮物：一張照片，其中伊萬的照片似乎被懸掛在了倫敦泰特現(xiàn)代美術(shù)館里。
瑪麗娜使用了一個簡單的照片編輯軟件來生成這張圖片。這讓這對新人產(chǎn)生了一個想法：辦一個網(wǎng)站，Photofunia.com，讓用戶上傳照片，從數(shù)十個背景模板中選擇一個模板，并將照片和模板融合在一起�，F(xiàn)在有不少這樣的網(wǎng)站，讓圖片處理比過去簡單了不少。
這類網(wǎng)站迎合菜鳥的需要。和復(fù)雜的軟件，如Photoshop相比，這類網(wǎng)站可以讓你只需輕點(diǎn)鼠標(biāo)，即可制作賀卡、照片拼貼、設(shè)計網(wǎng)站圖片，或調(diào)整私人照片。
有些網(wǎng)站，比如設(shè)在烏克蘭的Photofunia，可以將圖片進(jìn)行融合或混搭。有的網(wǎng)站可以讓你將照片整得像是來自另外一個時空。有些則商業(yè)味更濃點(diǎn)，比方說通過在你上傳的照片上涂抹虛擬的口紅來進(jìn)行口紅的銷售。
網(wǎng)站Photofunia包含數(shù)十個模板，有藝術(shù)館、城市景觀，以及像埃及獅身人面像一類的景點(diǎn)。打個比方，用戶可以將自己的照片放到一個時代廣場的背景里，看上去就像是其照片出現(xiàn)在時代廣場的廣告牌上了。該網(wǎng)站還提供工具，可使用戶將自己的臉嫁接到另一幅圖片中，比如圣誕老人或蒙娜麗莎的頭上或身體上。
另一個位于俄羅斯的類似的網(wǎng)站叫Photo505.com，提供內(nèi)容廣泛的模板，可將一張臉移植到通緝令上，或者像《大都會》這樣的雜志封面上。
網(wǎng)站創(chuàng)辦者瓦西里說：“我們把腦子里想得到的所有東西都拿出來試驗，包括那些最瘋狂的東西。”
瓦西里說他是看完《阿甘正傳》這部電影后受啟發(fā)才創(chuàng)辦的這個網(wǎng)站。在電影里，湯姆漢克斯的影像被移植到了60年代的圖片中，效果看起來就好像阿甘這個角色就出現(xiàn)在了重要事件的現(xiàn)場。
其他網(wǎng)站，像Aviary.com，Pixlr.com，Splashup.com和Citrify.com，都競相提供照片微調(diào)的簡單工具，如裁剪、修紅眼等功能。
奧拉.賽萬德斯是位于斯德哥爾摩的Pixlr網(wǎng)站的創(chuàng)辦者。他說：“典型的用戶都是非專業(yè)的，菜鳥類型。”
Pixlr網(wǎng)站就是為了便于用戶使用。賽萬德斯先生還制作了一個更簡單的版本，只要按個按鈕就可以完成大部分工作。
Pixlr網(wǎng)站還有另一個特色：可以讓用戶修改照片的顏色。打個比方，圖片效果阿貓、阿狗、阿朱（只是為了好記）可以去掉顏色，讓照片模仿不同時期的膠片和鏡頭的特點(diǎn)。舉例來說，六十年代的經(jīng)典效果就是夸大紅色調(diào)，淡化藍(lán)色調(diào)，效果看上去偏黃偏紫，并模擬那個時代的現(xiàn)場光。
有的網(wǎng)站將照片處理代入了不同的領(lǐng)域。拿Taaz.com來說，它讓人可以試驗不同顏色的化妝。
“我們的定位不是照片修飾”，迪普.約翰是這家位于圣地亞哥市的網(wǎng)站的市場部副經(jīng)理，他說：“我們目的是讓女性可以在她們自己身上試驗上千種不同顏色的妝扮。”
用戶將自己的照片上傳后，可以試用不同的粉底、亮唇膏、胭脂及其他化妝品。化妝公司要上他們的產(chǎn)品的話需要向網(wǎng)站付費(fèi)。對公司的軟件設(shè)計者來說，挑戰(zhàn)來自于如何讓畫面真實(shí)。約翰先生說：“我們的重點(diǎn)是光線和面的交互作用。這是真實(shí)感的關(guān)鍵。”
Taaz將化妝測試的證書頒發(fā)給了其他網(wǎng)站，如People.com和Esteelauder.com。
約翰先生說，每個月在網(wǎng)上進(jìn)行的化妝品測試有2.5億次。
還有一個網(wǎng)站叫Bighugelabs.com，它可以讓用戶制作徽章、迷宮和模仿安迪沃霍爾和大衛(wèi)霍克尼風(fēng)格的藝術(shù)品。該網(wǎng)站的創(chuàng)辦者約翰.華生說他已經(jīng)有了近50萬的注冊用戶。
他說，最受歡迎的服務(wù)，是制作一排啞光的勵志海報，就像貼在辦公室走道里的那種。該網(wǎng)站為照片配上圖題，并生成一幅帶正確字體的圖片。許多人訪問該網(wǎng)站制作海報倒不是為了勵志，而是為了諷刺。
華生先生說：“我覺得大部分人都是有創(chuàng)造力的，但不是每個人都會去學(xué)彈吉他。但是人們可以找到發(fā)揮創(chuàng)造力的辦法。你可以給他們一個工具，讓他們用以前從未試過的方式表現(xiàn)自己。”
