Personal Tech For Women: 5 Things To Know About Photo Editing With BeFunky

Monday, June 01, 2015

Melanie Sevcenko, GoLocal Contributor

Although the name has little to do with picture taking, BeFunky claims to make amateurs into professional photographers. And the numbers are indeed looking good for this Portland-based company. This spring, the photo editing app and platform set a record with 45 million active visits per month from desktop, tablet, and mobile users. So if you’re not already using it, here are 5 things you need to know about BeFunky – and how to turn your quick snapshots into personalized works of art.

1. Over 300 hundred effects

It’s true that while Instagram applies some artful textures and tones to your smartphone pics, BeFunky offers a library of over 300 effects and filters in its photo editor, which you can also combine to make your own look. Play around with charcoal, color pinhole, cooler, cartoonizer, and even pop art effects. It’s for serious art or silly fun. Make your next selfie a sepia-toned 1920s portrait-meets-Andy Warhol cartoon. You can also layer hand-drawn graphics and choose from tons of fonts to add texts to your images. And no photo editor would be complete without a collage-maker – this one’s got 50 templates.

2. Fix your botched photos

The beauty of the app is that you don’t have to learn a whole new expensive program, like the early days of Photoshop. BeFunky can perform like a professional platform but is simplified for those with no expertise who curse at the tedious technicalities of editing software. And if you’ve shot sloppy pics, no worries, its photo editor has enhancement tools that can remedy poor lighting, digital “noise”, fuzziness, and nasty red eye, as well as add “light leaks” to dark photos and mesmerizing bokeh, which are those orb-like blurs in the out-of-focus parts of an image.

3. It’s for anyone

BeFunky is as user-friendly as it gets, whether you’re a mom looking to collage family photos, a crafty scrapbooker, a business that needs to refine product pics, or a budding photographer wanting to break into the art world. “Today, the world is driven by images,” said CEO Tekin Tatar in the company’s most recent press release. “It is estimated that over a trillion photos are stored on mobile devices alone. Our goal at BeFunky is to make it easy for anyone to make any photo exceptional, whether it is a simple edit to brighten a face or whiten a smile, or an artistic application of awesome effects.”

4. The pioneer of photo editing

Tekin Tatar’s claim-to-fame is that he pioneered online photo editing at a time when only graphic designers were savvy enough to navigate professional editing suites, circa 2007. Remember, this was before everyone had smartphones and became addicted to snapping random pics and instantly publishing them to social media sites. The key to Tatar’s success is that he not only created uncomplicated software, he also made it free. And even at no cost, BeFunky still comes with hundreds of editing features. If you want to upgrade, BeFunky Plus will cost you $4.95 per month.

5. Get inspired

BeFunky’s blog offers tips on everything from black and white photography to how to take great self-portraits and style blog photos (indoors) on a rainy day. There are also tutorials on turning a photo into an oil painting (imagine your landscapes and portraits as mini Van Goghs), and using the miniature effect – you know the one where cityscapes look like tiny toys? BeFunky is a cross-platform photo editing suite too, which means you can start editing a photo you took with your phone, and then continue editing at home on your desktop computer.

Melanie Sevcenko is a journalist for radio, print and online. She reports internationally for BBC World Service and Monocle Radio (M24) in the UK, and for Deutsche Welle in Germany. Melanie also reports for the online news source GoLocalPDX, in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been broadcast by CBC in Canada and the Northwest News Network, and published by Al Jazeera English, Global Post, Pacific Standard, the Toronto Star and USA Today, amongst others.

Related Slideshow: Worcester’s Tech Startups

Prev Next

BuzzLanes

Buzz Lanes started out as a small idea for a Business Model Competition at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Success there led to the semifinalist round at Harvard, and a new business that aims to accelerate the careers of talented musicians that don’t have big marketing campaign resources.

“As graduates of WPI’s School of Business, and with several years of experience in the entertainment world, we decided to push forward and make Buzz Lanes a reality,” said Gonazlo Cruz Blanco, the man behind Buzz Lanes.

A native of Spain, Blanco's passion for music and business led to the creation of this monthly subscription music platform. One of the bands he’s promoting right now is Heffay, a Worcester Hip Hop band.

“It’s a win-win situation: musicians grow their fan base and connect with new fans, and the fans will always have the opportunity to find new music they haven’t heard before.”

The company's online Beta version launches April 4, 2014

Prev Next

Salespod (Repsly)

Salespod makes mobile/cloud software for organizations to manage field teams and the data that they collect.

“We currently have 2200 users in 31 countries, and are growing 10 to 15 percent per month. We are getting ready to launch a major marketing initiative and expect to grow to over 10,000 users this year,” said Mat Brogie, Salespod, Inc. COO.

“The software runs on Apple and Android smartphones and tablets, and there is a web based management console that managers use to see where and when field reps perform their activities, and to analyze the data these field reps generate.”

Salespod has a research and development office in Zagreb, Croatia, and has established the Worcester office to launch its US presence. The company started in Worcester last year with only 800 users.

“There is a growing culture entrepreneurism in the city, and the physical changes in town add to the energy that is building … not to mention the economics are extremely friendly for a start-up trying to maximize the use of cash.”

Salespod announced in March that they would be making a name/logo change to Repsly.

Prev Next

Incite Advisors, Inc

Incite Advisors, Inc. provides Web application development services for applications in the healthcare and life sciences.

“We are focused on data driven applications and visualizing big data. Our largest client has hired us to develop a web/mobile application that allows doctors to capture patient diagnostic information in the natural course of their work,” said Incite founder and President Ronald Ranauro.

“The application will allow for rapid updates as medical knowledge advances. The idea is that by using the computer care teams can more easily coordinate services. We are also developing a web application for visualizing and searching big picture trends in clinical trials. In support of our work, we have developed an open source software toolkit called BoxspringJS.”

Ranauro grew up in Central Massachusetts and graduated from WPI. He said his company is reaching out to the student population to offer training and real world experience on paid customer projects.

Prev Next

Technocopia

Technocopia is a non-profit (tax-exempt status pending) geared towards creating open-source technologies that will benefit the whole world. As part of this mission they are opening a “hackerspace” in Worcester, which will serve as a home-base for their research and development of these technologies, as well as a common collaborative space for anyone in Central Massachusetts to make their own projects into reality.

Their hackerspaces feature a lounge, kitchen, conference space and computer stations. Technocopia intends to support the development of open-source technology that will allow any individual, family, or community to sustainably and independently satisfy their own humanitarian needs. These needs are defined loosely as things such as nutritious food, clean water, shelter, electricity, medicine, and free access to knowledge (the internet).

Prev Next

Mass Biomedical

Self-described as “World class incubators for world class science,” Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives (MBI) is dedicated to job creation and innovative healthcare throughout Massachusetts by promoting the growth of start-up biomedical companies. MBI is committed to collaborating with the academic, business and government communities to promote Massachusetts as the world leader in the health sciences industry.

Kevin O’Sullivan is the President & CEO of MBI, located on Prescott Street. O’Sullivan describes the company as a private, independent economic development organization that serves as a catalyst for life science and healthcare innovation.

“We help start biomedical companies and create jobs within the Biotechnology, Medical Device, Informatics, and Biomanufacturing industry by providing secure, clean bench and sink surface, staff trained and fully licensed laboratory space for usage by ‘seed stage’ companies. Building and maintaining collaborative affiliations and partnerships are essential to our success.”

Prev Next

MassDiGI

What would a tech company list be without a little fun? While neighboring Rhode Island smarts over Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios disaster, MassDiGI is pushing academic cooperation, entrepreneurship and economic development across the Massachusetts digital and video games ecosystem.

MassDiGI is a US Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration (EDA) University Center. Since starting up, MassDiGI has launched several initiatives that support entrepreneurship and strengthen the talent pipeline between higher education and the game industry.

Timothy Loew, Executive Director of MassDiGI, formerly held senior positions in business, development and academic planning at Becker College.

Prev Next

Compex Software

Jonathan Vo, Principal and Founder of Compex Software, is another Worcester Polytechnic Institute grad succeeding in the WPI neighborhood.

Vo’s software company has successfully deployed many of its software applications at hundreds of specialized operations throughout the US. Like others on this list, Compex Software came about as result of a student project. Vo did so well that he was recommended to an independent company and he’s never looked back.

Compex Software designs, develops and implements integrated business management software solutions to help small- and medium- sized businesses manage their operations. This includes manufacturing, inventory tracking, job costing, quality control, and accounting.

Prev Next

CellMosaic

Yumei Huang is the Founder, President & CEO, CellMosaic, Inc. The company recently signed a collaboration research agreement (CRADA) with the National Cancer Institute to co-develop two AqT based conjugate drugs. One is an antibody-drug conjugate for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma and another is a protein-drug conjugate targeting CA125 for the treatment of ovarian cancer.

Under the agreement, NCI will provide its proprietary antibody and CellMosaic will design and synthesize an antibody-drug conjugate and protein-drug conjugate using its proprietary AqT linker and advanced conjugation processes. The CRADA grants CellMosaic an exclusive license option from NCI for any new products developed under this CRADA.