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"Google has been busy (and a little scary) today. It\u2019s unveiled a host of new Google+ features, including enhanced photo-editing tools, a new What\u2019s Hot area and a viral visualization for posts.  Plus, Google is finally making its upstart social network Google+ available to Google Apps users.\nPhoto editing in Google+ is not new, but the Creative Kit, which adds a wide range of pre-made and fairly powerful photo-editing filters is. Google also used the opportunity to add a special set of Halloween filters. \nThe search giant snuck out the news this morning by letting some of its execs and a select group of celebrities Halloween-ize their own profile pictures prior to the announcement. These limited edition effects are now available to all Google+ members as part of the Creative Kit. I gave them a test-drive and found them intuitive and fun to use. They do not auto-transform your photos into scary Halloween surprises, but offer enough pre-sets and controls, like Draculan Dermis and Vampire Eyes, to help you apply some pretty entertaining effects to some of the 3.4 billion photos Google+ members have already reportedly posted on the service.\nEagle-eyed users will recognize controls from Picnik, Google\u2019s stand-alone online photo-editing service. My guess is it\u2019s all Picnik's photo-editing engine underneath.\nCheck out the gallery to see what I did with Google\u2019s Halloween photo filters.\nGoogle also unveiled \u201CWhat\u2019s Hot,\u201D a new area that appears just below your new posts in Google+ and a new menu item on the right side of the interface. I had to sign in and out to finally see the \u201CHot stuff.\u201D The feature\u2019s designed to help Google+ users weed through the \u201Cbillions\u201D of posts added to the service each day. Google promised that What\u2019s Hot \u201Cisn\u2019t just the same old faces, we do our best to provide a variety of posts.\u201D Fair enough, but we did notice posts from Google+ heavyweights and industry notables Mike Elgan, Chris Brogan and Google\u2019s own Natalie Villalobos. \nThe third item on Google\u2019s list is Ripples, a new post visualization tool that should help Google+ users understand how posts spread among their contacts and beyond. Sadly, this feature may be rolling out slowly because I couldn\u2019t get it working on my Google+ account.\n\n\nEditing Photos in Google+ Creative Kit\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAccessing Creative Kit\nYou access Google+'s Creative Kit by selecting a photo from your photo albums and then choosing Edit. Creative Kit is a selection under there.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUsing Google+ Creative Kit\nThe new editing tools in Google+ include a number of pre-set image filters and effects.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUsing Google+ Creative Kit to Edit\nThere are a number of basic adjustments like cropping and contrast, as well as Auto Fix.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nUsing Google+ Creative Kit's Halloween Effects\nThe Limited Edition Halloween Effects are suitably silly.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEdit in Creative Kit Adjustments\nEach filter has a variety of settings including brush size and opacity (known here as \"fade\")\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEdit in Creative Kit Overlays\nThe Creative Kit even lets you overlay pre-made images and then resize, distort and rotate them before placing them on your image.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nEdit in Creative Kit Save It\nYou can replace the original image with your edited work or save it as a new photo.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Final Product\nWow, that's scary.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/10/27/google-photo-editing-whats-hot/>