So, you liked your friend’s BeFunky creations and tried to create your own. But something isn’t right. Your friend’s artwork looks like it belongs in a respected art gallery and yours looks like it belongs on the wall of a kindergarten classroom.

Don’t worry. There are usually some technical and artistic reasons why your digital creation didn’t come out the way you expected. In this article, we’re going to walk you through some basic stuff you might want to consider when applying BeFunky effects. While this isn’t a specific step-by-step guide—the real fun comes when you try new things on your own—these tips provide a little insight into what leads to better results.

Know the mechanics

Light

If your source photo is underexposed (very dark) or overexposed (very bright), you’ll usually end up with distorted results.

If you don’t have a different photo to use and you really want to play around with the one you’ve got, try opening the effect settings to fine-tune it. In many effects, you’ll be able to play with the brightness and other parameters before applying the effect.

Composition and Background

The key to great art is to keep it simple. And that goes for composition and background, too. A solid background like a wall or other flat surface will help your subject pop. Stay away from complex backgrounds with too much depth like a dining room with fancy furniture. Too much complexity might make the artwork appear too busy after you apply the effect.

Size (BeFunky Plus Feature)

We built our BeFunky Plus feature to be really fast, even when processing high-resolution images. But if your image is too large in size, processing complex effects could take longer than you might expect. That’s why we built in a “Preview Mode” for faster manipulation. It lets you work on a smaller copy of your photo automatically so that you can try more effects and play around without being frustrated by having to wait around for the effect to render. Once you’ve decided on the best result, you can switch back to the original size.

Understand what works

Just because one effect didn’t work out, it doesn’t mean that the right effect isn’t just a click away. For example, let’s look at one of our most popular effects, the Old Photo effect. The stained paper and the torn corners would make a photo of an older woman look fantastic. But if you applied the same effect to a young woman rocking out to the latest Lady Gaga single on her iPod while surfing on her MacBook Pro at a Starbucks, the effect might seem a little off. You might want to try the Pop Art effect for that one as the results would look phenomenal.

The key here is to understand your subject and play around with the effects until you find one that works. If you’re posing for a photo for a specific effect, do whatever you can to help the result look amazing. By understanding each effect and figuring out what photos work best with it, you’ll be on your way to producing some unbelievable artwork with no effort at all.

In a nutshell

Bottom line? Play around and have fun. Just because one effect doesn’t work as planned, don’t give up. There could be a variety of reasons why your digital art doesn’t look as good as others you’ve seen and once you understand them, you’ll be able to fix it and create artwork that everyone will be envious of.